I found an injured wild bird and tried to help it.

Copyright

August 28, 2010

Carl Janssen

 

When I went to park a car on a driveway sometimes I heard birds at night and it felt like I was bothering them, but this did not happen every night.  One day I saw a bird fly away from near the parking space, so I felt like there might have been some other bird there.  So I got out of my car and looked and saw there was a bird on the ground.  I parked my car on the street.  I stared at the bird and saw it was trying to move but it could not even crawl at one inch per minute.  I tried to block the hot sun with my body while I was standing and watching.  I saw a red bird, possibly a cardinal with a worm in it’s mouth in the tree looking around, I hoped it would find the bird, but it flew away.  (The little bird was not red, but more of a brown.)

I asked somebody to help me.  He tried to feed it bread crumbs soaked in water.  I thought of a few things and then realized they would not work, and soon realized I do not know how to help.  So I suggested calling an emergency vet, and that person said it would be expensive, but I decided to call anyway.  The emergency vet office person, said they only do cats and dogs so I called the avian vet office person.  The Avian vet office woman said they do not help with wild animals and told me to call the humane society and gave me the phone number.  I also asked them if the humane society killed the birds, and they said no they take good care of them (some organizations kill cats and dogs.)  I called the Humane society office and they said to take a shoe box and punch holes in the sides and not the top a of shoe box, (if you punch holes in the top of the shoebox the bird will try to go up towards the light.)  They also told me to use a damp cloth to put the bird in the shoebox then to take it to the humane society.  The person who was with me put the bird in the shoebox according to those directions.  I then drove the person who was with me and the bird to the humane society.  The humane society woman who looked at the bird said something was wrong with it’s leg and that it was a cardinal.  Also that they release the birds into the wild after they feel they are rehabilitated enough, and that they do not make good pets because they get violent around mating season, so people are not allowed to keep them as pets.  She pointed out that the parent birds usually continue to try to take care of the babies even in situations like that.  There are many humans who would not do the same with their children, but fortunately there are humans who do.