Baby Hummingbird Rescued
This young man has done an incredible job caring for and training this baby hummingbird.
It is aways nice to have a hand in rescuing troubled wildlife, but it is important that you learn how to avoid doing more harm than good.
If you find an injured hummingbird call your local hummingbird rehabilitation agency immediately. For their phone number, look in the phone book or ask your local animal shelter, zoo, parks department, or conservation agent.
According to Life, Birds, and Everything…
“Rescuing” baby hummingbirds
It’s wildlife baby season over much of North America, a time when people with big hearts and inadequate information sentence untold thousands of young wild birds and mammals to needless suffering and death. Inappropriate diet is a major killer, resulting in stunted growth, rubbery bones, and feathers that break as they mature (if they mature at all). The greatest tragedy is that many of these “orphans” never needed intervention in the first place.
Hummingbirds are frequent victims of misplaced concern.
At this point, 10 to 12 days after hatching, the mother no longer needs to brood them to keep them warm, even at night. To avoid attracting the attention of predators, she stays away from the nest entirely except for the few seconds it takes to feed them. These visits occur at intervals ranging from less than ten minutes to more than an hour and a half.
This is a critical time for hummingbird nests with a human audience. Observers unaware that this dramatic change in the mother’s behavior is part of the normal nesting cycle may miss the short feeding visits and think that the nestlings have been orphaned or abandoned. Panicked calls to nature centers, zoos, Audubon societies, and bird observatories often go something like this: “I’ve been watching a hummingbird nest and the mother hasn’t been back for two days and I’m afraid the babies are going to starve to death!” (If mama hadn’t been back for two days, the nestlings would already be dead.)