glumshoe:

secretfandomtrash:

glumshoe:

I hate when bird parents get mad at me for rescuing their children.

Don’t want me touching your kid? Fine, YOU crawl down there and use YOUR super-dexterous hands with opposable thumbs to gently lift your son out of this window-well. Oh, you can’t do that? Then shut up and stop swooping me, you ungrateful leftover dinosaurs.

Actually, it’s literally part of birds growing up to let them sit on the ground a little bit and figure it out! It’s like school for birds because they can hop around and practice taking short flights while their parents will ward off any attackers (which is you, even if you think you’re helping), so there really is no need to interviene unless you think the bird is hurt, you don’t see the parents nearby, or you’ve seen the bird on the ground for a really long period of time (we’re talking days). Often times putting the bird back in the nest will just result in them hopping out again, and all you’ve done is agitated the bird’s parents. “Over rescues” (or people “saving” baby birds from the ground and then taking them to a rehab center when they realize they can’t handle a fledgeling, which can often result in malnutrition and dehydration for the bird) is actually one of the main reasons birds find themselves in wildlife rehabilitation centers (like the one I work at), and is really sad because now a perfectly healthy bird is at risk of becoming too friendly around humans, which will hurt it in the long run.

I know. I volunteer with a bird rehab center. I did not place the fledgling into a nest or take it to a rehab. I removed it from a deep sheer-sided window well pit in a neighborhood with stray cats and unfenced dogs, and placed it in the grass nearby.

Bothering fledgelings who are perfectly fine is bad. Removing fledgelings from dangerous situations (large holes, roads, parking lots, immediate vicinity of predators, etc) is good.