Last late spring a baby bird fell out of a tree in our back yard. I fought not to intervene as I watched him for three days try to fly his way back up the tree he fell out of. The parents stayed around, voicing their encouragement to get him to fly back to them. He tried and tried with no success. I watched the parents take turns feeding him, and at night he would hide in the weeds. I kept thinking it was amazing my dogs never found him! He stayed still when they were around though.

On the fourth day the little guy decided he was going to go for it. He hopped across the yard to an area that wasn't so well camoflauged, and that's when my German Shepard spotted him. The little guy took off half flying and half running around the corner of my house, with my dog in hot pursuit, and the baby's parent's dive bombing my dog. They even got a couple talons full of hair but it didn't faze him. I went around the corner to grab my dog and put him up but the baby bird beat him to me. He flew up, grabbed onto my chest and held on for dear life! Now I was starting to sweat. I had my dog looking at him like his afternoon snack and two very POd parents wanting their baby back! I stood there frozen for a couple of minutes watching everyone. The little guy was staring into my eyes the whole time, just as calm as could be, with a "please help me look" in his eyes. I slowly crossed my yard to the tree where mama and daddy bird were, got my finger under baby's talons and encouraged him to grab my finger, and stuck him as high up as I could get him. Amazingly the parents watched me and didn't try to attack me! Here is the little guy:



I sometimes wonder if he made it, and if he'll ever come back this way.

What a wonderful, exciting, even somewhat scary experience. I have often wondered what I would do in that type of situation, to intervene or not. Sounds like the baby bird took that out of your hands and it sounds like you handled the intervention with minimal interference. Good Job. Thanks for sharing.

I try to stay away from baby birds if at all possible. One day I was driving home from work and saw a baby bird in the middle of the road kind of floundering about. I stopped my car and got out to kind of shoo him off to the side. All of the sudden............wham into the side of my head. Everything went black! Here it was a baby blue jay and his parents were flying at my head. Needless to say, I ran for the car. So, I keep clear of baby birds or at least baby blue jays!

Thanks, Robyn. And I completely agree Dee...my mother rescued a baby blue jay in her yard when she was 10. She got halfway back up the tree it fell out of and mother bird pecked a nice little hole in her scalp! We do have plenty of blue jays around here. I've watched my neighbors 20 pound tom cat fly down the street with a blue jay in hot pursuit. It was really quite comical!