Save Baby Birds: Help in Overhead Lamp Socket

[Vagrant]

A bird has built her nest in the socket of an overhead lamp in the driveway. In the last one week three of her young ones have fallen down. They are very young, I guess a few weeks old and the last one actually survived the fall. Is there anything we can do to save the rest of them without scaring them to death?

 

[Cyrus]

Birds build nests on top of very tall trees, if they fall from a tree they will die just the same. If you touch the nest there is a very good chance the mother will abandon them. Just leave them be.

 

[Vagrant]

Yeah but it's difficult to walk out of your door and see a dead bird lying in near the doormat.

 

[Ki Man]

build something to catch the birds?

even if you save them, seems like the momma bird will abandon little francis and not accept him back in after he takes the big dive regardless of wether he survives or not. kinda like going to college

 

[out of whack]

http://www.chicagowilderness.org/wildchi/livingwild/wildinfant/bird/index.cfm" may help.

 

[Moonbear]

If three babies have fallen out of the nest, and there are still more in there, she must've had a very large clutch of eggs. I've never seen more than 3 or 4 nestlings at a time before, and usually only 1 or 2 make it as fledglings. The siblings are probably pushing out the weaker ones because the nest is overcrowded. It's also possible that the other ones didn't die from the fall, but had already died or grown weak in the nest and were pushed out because of it.

If you're going to take the suggestion in that link out of whack provided and try putting it back in the nest, wear a helmet! Nothing worse than being dive-bombed by the bird parents who don't understand you're just trying to help.

I usually opt for leaving nesting birds to their own devices. If there are too many mouths to feed, or one is getting weaker, and one or several get ejected from the nest, I'm not sure it's a good thing to interfere unless it's an endangered species (even then it can be ambiguous whether you're helping or making matters worse to try to save the weakest nestlings).

 

[hypatia]

And when this batch of babies is done, remove the nest, put some poultry wire{chicken wire} around the light to discourage them from nesting there again.