Any advice for helping an injured bird

September 17, 2015 11:01 AM

When we got home from work Mr. Fence found an injured wood pigeon fluttering about. Have put it in a cardboard box for now, but can't get through to any animal rescues at the moment. Any advice for how not to kill it overnight?

Also if you know of anywhere in the Westmeath area (Ireland) that would look after an injured wood pigeon that'd be great too. I'm guessing most places just take dogs/cats etc.

posted by Fence to Pets & Animals (8 answers total)

Keep in mind that frequently a bird without any evident injuries, may just be stunned (flew into a window, etc kind of event). You might want to just leave it in the box, open, in a quiet safe place where it can leave once it recovers. Obviously, if there is an obvious injury, blood, malformed wing, etc, there is probably little you can do other than take it to a rescue facility as soon as is practical.
posted by HuronBob at 12:03 PM on September 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: They usually die overnight despite your best efforts.

Make sure it has lots of clean water.

All birds can eat crumbled egg yolk, regardless of species.

Try not to handle it. If you handle it you will stress it big time.
posted by Jane the Brown at 12:32 PM on September 17, 2015

In the US, you'd search for the phrase "wildlife rehabilitator" rather than animal rescue; might try that and see if anything else turns up?
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:35 PM on September 17, 2015

Best answer: Make sure it has access to bird food and water. A chickadee/tit will die in a couple of hours without food. I'm sure a pigeon can last longer but I am not certain how much longer. Chopped nuts will do the trick if you don't have birdseed handy. Birds are calmed by dark - they fall asleep. Sometimes that is all they need to recover from a bad shock. Box it up and check in a hour or two.

The biggest thing is to protect if from cats/foxes/dogs if you are just going to leave it in a box outside.

My experience with wild life rehabbers is that they are focused on more endangered species than things that are very common or overpopulated. They generally prefer you look after them yourself but that may actually be against the law where you are.
posted by srboisvert at 1:01 PM on September 17, 2015

Response by poster: Have it in a box with a towel over to keep it dark, and have some bird seed & peanuts as food with water. It is more than just stunned looked like an injured wing.
It's in the downstairs loo for now, keeping it in as quiet a space as possible. Will just have to wait and see in the morning I guess.
posted by Fence at 1:08 PM on September 17, 2015

Looks like Irish Wildlife Matters might be a good resource. They have a list of rehabilitators with a map here.
posted by Rock Steady at 1:44 PM on September 17, 2015

Response by poster: Yeah, I went to them first Rock Steady, unfortunately a couple of numbers no longer seem to work. Have left a message with the closest one, but so far Speckled Jim is still alive.

S/he is younger than I thought, didn't want to stress the bird by looking too closely when we caught it, but there are no nests near to where it was found so it must have flown somewhere before being attacked or whatever hapened it happened.

Have let it out a couple of times to see if it was just stunned but so far no luck.
posted by Fence at 3:03 AM on September 19, 2015

Response by poster: Poor old Speckled Jim didn't make it I'm afraid. And once we were able to get a good look at him it looks like a cat or possibly bird of prey might have done some damage before we arrived home.
posted by Fence at 10:13 AM on September 19, 2015