This is so strange. This spring I have been the bird finder.
Anyway, we are having major thunderstorms, and multiple trees have fallen down. This little critter fell out of its nest in one of the trees. It’s soaking wet and resting in a felt cowboy hat with lots of shredded paper towels.
I guess it’s some kind of corvid, but beyond that I know not what kind it is.
It sounds like a beautiful lovely crow.
I’m going to call a rehab place when they open in the morning. I just got the machine now and “if you have an emergency call the vet.”
It’s at the age where its adult feathers are just coming in. So it may be a starling, because I think a crow would be bigger?
It is dry now and sitting on my shoulder! It’s so fun. I need to find some dog food, somebody feeds that to their starling, so if it’s a crow it should be ok eating dog food, too, since crows eat everything under the sun.
I want to keep it but I know I can’t.
Here it is dry:
I hope it’s not a starling because the rehab place doesn’t take starlings or sparrows because they’re not native and I don’t want to take it to a vet to be put to sleep, it’s just a baby.
P.S., please ignore my hairy arm. I haven’t shaved lately.
It does look like a baby starling. I had a starling as a pet for four years; he got pushed out of the nest by his bigger brother, and since the nest was about 30 feet up in the eaves of a building, I couldn’t put him back. If it is a starling and you want to keep him alive, you can make up a mush to feed him baby bird food. I fed my bird a mixture of baby cereal, hard boiled egg yolk and Spam (yes, Spam), but there is a website on caring for baby starlings that suggests dog food:
This site has more information on raising starlings. You need to feed him soon (today!!) or he will starve. You should also give him a little water with an eye dropper.
Starlings are an imported species and so are not protected. My bird was an unbelievably nice pet; since he was male, he would talk and sing. He didn’t like to be petted like a parrot, but he would rocket through the apartment looking for me and zoom in on my head. I couldn’t release my bird because he was completely tame and unafraid of animals or people. He lived to be four years old and died while being taken care of on my honeymoon. He was looking pretty old at that point though, so I think it was just his time. I still miss him a lot. I called him “Weenie”…
P.S., Baby starlings are grey. They don’t get glossy iridescent feathers until they are older, I think maybe after the first molt.
I forgot to mention that this bird looks like a fledgling. If so, it is probably just having left the nest, and was being taken care of by its parents. If you think they are still around, you may want to try putting it back outside and see if they come for it.
If you do try to take care of him, go to this page:
I know I shouldn’t pick them up, but the trees were fell and it was raining hail so I didn’t want to leave it laying there on the muddy ground. If it was a sunny day I’d just left it alone, no doubt.
I’ve concluded that it is a starling. I fet it lots of dog food (made soft by soaking it in warm water), and it seems to be really lively, but it can’t fly at all, just sort of flutters then falls.
Cran, if they’ve fallen from the nest, at least from a US nest, you have to pick them up. Othewise they fall prey to predators. The best thing to do is put them right back in the nest. If the nest has been destroyed, you make a new one out of a butter dish or something, lined with moss or grass. This won’t bother the parents one bit. You can even tuck them into the crotch of the tree, if there is a depression, and they’ll be fine. Mom and dad will find them.
If they’re old enough to start learning to fly, you may find them on or near the ground in shrubbery. They haven’t fallen. If you put them in the nest, they’ll hop right back out. It’s ok in that case to put them in shrubbery where the parents can find them. They’ll be fine.
If it was hailing, then you did the right thing. Tomorrow morning, you might want to see if you can find the parents and give him back to them. Watch for a while to make sure everything is ok. Look for any siblings he might have had. They might have gotten blown around, too.
He can flutter, but not fly, because he isn’t ready yet. He may actually have been out of the nest before the storm, roaming around on the ground and in low shrubbery. He has good legs, it looks like, and his wings are getting there. Looks like he can hop and climb well. He may be flying soon.
I think if you can find the parents, he’ll do fine outside with them. Probably doesn’t need a nest anymore.
Do starlings caw? To my knowledge I’ve never heard one, I just realised. I’ve only seen them in passing. But starlings do have stubby tails just like the fledgling pictured.
No, I don’t think they caw. I knew a lady who had a nest of them in the exhaust vent that led from over the stove. She’d been hearing scratching and cheeping coming from it, so she removed the grease filter to have a look and was literally attacked by the indignant parents. As I recall, they sort of shrieked. She was unable to cook until they left the nest, at which point she cleaned the duct and put wire mesh over the supposedly bird-proof exit. (The birds had perching on the brick, holding up the little bird-proof trap door, and climbing in. Very talented.)
Starlings like nesting in secure hole-type locations, so I am thinking it’s unlikely that this little one fell from a nest in the storm. Either he was out roaming about to begin with, or he’s something else.
I’m waiting to hear Cran’s account of how things are going. Cran?
