The Baby Bird Rescue

It was a little past 6:00 when the kids and I went out after dinner to play until their dad got home. Within minutes he arrived, grabbed a plate of food and hung out with us on the front lawn near the big blue spruce. When he went to return his plate to the kitchen he suddenly noticed a little bird on the ground. It had arrived out of nowhere.

Thankfully he found it before our dog Pepper did. We located the nest up in the blue spruce. It was perhaps 15 feet up and sheltered by many branches on the way up making it impossible for us to get the chick back into the nest. The mother, a mourning dove, didn't show any outward signs of distress that her baby went missing.

A quick look online told us to build a nest and affix it to the tree so, just maybe, the mother bird would still take care of it.

I picked it up in a towel and my husband placed it in a yogurt container he had stapled to the tree and filled with soft wood chips.

But it was cold and we had nothing to feed it. The chick still seemed doomed. So I kept looking online hoping for a better solution.

Then I came across a page on wildlife rehabilitation published by the Mount Mansfield Veterinary Hospital (http://www.underhillvet.net/wildlife-rehabilitation/). Incredibly, it shared contact information for a number of wildlife rehabilitators and even said what types of animals they cared for from songbirds to foxes and raccoons. There was even one who specializes in doves: jackpot.

The first rescuer I called just went to voicemail. The rescuer #2 picked up but was out to dinner in New Hampshire on her vacation. She gave me the number of rescuer #3 which also led to a voicemail dead end. I called rescuer #2 back and she told me to put the chick in a box and bring it in the house to keep it warm until rescuer #3 called back.

In the meantime, during our bedtime routine with the kids, Rescuer #1 called. I sent her photos of the chick and she confirmed that it was a very young chick who would have to be fed with a tube down its throat. She figured the chick would be ok until morning as its mother likely fed it all day long until about 6:00 PM when it must have tumbled out of the nest. I arranged to meet her that night to hand off the chick.

I drove with the radio off and the car warmed for the sake of the chick, which was now snuggled warmly in its makeshift nest with it's tiny back moving up and down with its breath.

Then under the light of a street lamp near the dumpsters at the highway exit gas station the chick drop was made. 

The rescuer will do her best to keep the little chick warm and fed until it can return back to the blue spruce pine tree in front of our house. Keep your fingers crossed. 

Adult mourning dove

Image source: Wikipedia