I just received an e-mail entitled “Emergency – Baby Bird” and since I’m not sure if my advice would be the best advice in this situation, I thought this errant fledgling could benefit from the wisdom of crowds. Here’s the situation:

My husband just rushed in to tell me that a baby bird had flown into our garage. It seems distressed and is breathing rapidly. We suspect it might be a baby red winged black bird. As my husband tried to follow it, it made its way to our niger seed storage ben, and it is sitting on top of the seed in there. We really don’t know what to do. We have too many cats in the neighborhood to just let it go. If you think it advisable, we could set it in our yard under bushes carefully, and hope a mother bird hears its call. There are many red wings on the little run-off shed lake in our neighborhood who come to our feeders.

Any suggestions as to what we should do to help the little critter? We have not touched it with our hands, but my husband did help it with a clean towel to secure it safely in the feed storage ben to protect it. The ben is getting air, so suffocation should not be an issue either. Let me know ASAP what we might do to help it.

What is the right thing to do here?

Written by Mike
Mike is a leading authority in the field of standardized test preparation, but he's also a traveler who fully expects to see every bird in the world. Besides founding 10,000 Birds in 2003, Mike has also created a number of other entertaining but now extirpated nature blog resources, particularly the Nature Blog Network and I and the Bird.