Orphaned Baby Songbirds at WildCare
Feed me!
Please never attempt to raise a baby bird on your own! Babies like this Dark-eyed Junco need very specialized care to grow up healthy and wild.
Always bring any baby wildlife you find to a licensed wildlife care center like WildCare.
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When you walk into the Birdroom in WildCare’s Wildlife Hospital during spring and summer, the noise can be deafening!
Hundreds of orphaned baby birds, all tucked cozily into incubators or perched on branches in netted baskets need to be fed, and they all want to be fed NOW!
So what does a fluffy-headed, wide-mouthed baby bird eat? We have very specific diet blends for different species depending on what the individual species’ natural diet is composed of. Our syringe diets vary depending on whether the bird is an insectivore (such as a wren), an omnivore (such as a Western Scrub Jay), a seed eater (such as a finch) or someone even more specialized, such as a hummingbird.
And each hungry baby must be fed at least every 45 minutes, from dawn until dusk. Our tiniest orphaned birds must be fed every 20 – 30 minutes!
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Please never attempt to raise a baby bird on your own! Babies like this tiny robin need very specialized care to grow up healthy and wild.
Always bring any baby wildlife you find to a licensed wildlife care center like WildCare.
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Why are they fed so often? In the wild, songbird parents (both Mom and Dad!) work extremely hard to keep their hungry nestlings fed because baby birds have incredibly high metabolisms. Each species varies by a few days or weeks but consider the amazing fact that, in general, a songbird goes from egg, to hatchling, to nestling, to fledgling (leaving the nest) in just a matter of 3-4 weeks!
Consider also that just a single day of poor nutrition for a baby bird would be like an entire year of poor nutrition for a growing human infant. Imagine what mental and physical problems would develop if you fed a human toddler nothing but ice cream for every meal for the first year of her life. Most would be irreversible. This is why it is so important to get every baby wild animal to a wildlife care center like WildCare as soon as possible. Proper species identification is imperative so that the baby bird can receive the proper nutrition her rapidly-developing body needs in order to become a healthy, flighted songbird. Click for a listing of local wildlife rescue centers by state.
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Please never attempt to raise a baby bird on your own! Babies like these little robins need very specialized care to grow up healthy and wild.
Always bring any baby wildilfe you find to a licensed wildlife care center like WildCare.
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It requires hundreds of volunteers to provide so many feedings and give these little birds the care they need! Fortunately for volunteers in the Wildlife Hospital, songbirds are diurnal (active in the daylight) but not at night, so our orphaned babies don’t require feeding 24 hours a day.
As our baby birds grow up, they are also introduced to the foods they’ll find in the wild. In the case of the baby robins in the video above, they are being fed mealworms, which are protein-rich insects, similar to those they’ll hunt as adult robins.
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Please never attempt to raise a baby bird on your own! Babies like this little blackbird need very specialized care to grow up healthy and wild.
Always bring any baby wildlife you find to a licensed wildlife care center like WildCare.
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The average nestling at WildCare needs to be fed about 15 times per day. It costs $5 to provide those 15 meals, just for one baby bird!
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[/row]Please never attempt to raise a baby bird on your own! Babies like these little finches need very specialized care to grow up healthy and wild.
Always bring any baby wildlife you find to a licensed wildlife care center like WildCare.
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I found a baby bird, now what?
Every year hundreds of these tiny featherless creatures fall or are blown from their nests, or are found following an ill-timed tree trimming.
Click here to find out how to tell if that baby needs help (you may be checking his poop to see how long ago he was fed!)
You’ll also want to print our handy “I found a baby bird, now what?” flow chart to keep nearby all summer!
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