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Injured bird - help required please

Snake Dave

Snake Dave

Schrödinger's cat
Hey everyone

My cat just brought back what I think is a baby blackbird. It has a rapid heartbeat (obviously from the shock) but I can't see any visible injuries or blood. What should I do? I've currently got it in a cardboard box with some aspen as a bedding. I'm thinking of adding some tissue paper to help it to feel secure. It's about 4 inches in length.

Any advice would be great, thanks.

Here's some pictures, maybe one of you can identify it for me:
 

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I'm not sure if it's a baby blackbird, thrush or robin, but for now keep it somewhere warm and quiet, close the box so it can recover from the shock. In the morning, if it's still alive, you could try a shallow dish of mealworms or smallish earthworms wriggling in front of it to see if it takes any interest. It looks quite fully fledged, with the rubbery surround to its beak gone? If so, force feeding or getting it to gape at food from tweezers is a little more difficult than when they're younger. If it does gape, lean steak mince is a great food for baby thrushes etc. Good luck.
(It may well have internal injuries or punctures you can't see easily. It may just die of shock. If you can spread its wings to check for breaks and check its legs and feet, you may find injuries that mean euthanasia is the best option)
 
UPDATE

It's okay! I think it was just the initial shock and maybe 'playing dead' that caused its inaction. After about 10 minutes in the box I heard some 'flapping' noises, so I went to investigate. It was trying to get out of the box, so I closed the lid, took it downstairs and went outside. I made sure the cat was in, so I gently picked it up and it flew out of my hands and into the conifers :) So hopefully it'll be okay.

Sorry about that, but thank you for listening! The little blighter made me waste about 25p worth of aspen too! :grin01:
 
You know I just watched the David Attenboro (spelling?) movie on birds, that was pretty much my first view of some of your english birds- and I'm quite sure I saw that one on there. I'll watch it again later if someone doesn't already identify it.

Do you think it's a young bird that just fledged or do you think it's older? He looks like he's got a little baby fuzz on him.

You might want to get a little pedialyte or gatorade in him, sometimes they are so dehydrated when found, and that can be the most dangerous thing. I did that with just a q-tip, squeezed it out on the side of their beaks and they would swallow it down. Repeat many times, lol.

Once he's identified you can find an appropriate food for him, though a bit of bread couldn't do much harm in the mean time, most birds like that.. You can also soak a small piece of bread to help him hydrate if he'll eat on his own.

Good luck!
 
Looks like an adult flycatcher to me. I'm glad it recovered- it must have been in shock in the pictures, because to me it looked like it was FTD (fixin' to die, as they say at hospitals in the south...) First aid for birds is generally put in a dark place like a paper bag with the top folded over and let sit to recover for 30 minutes or so and reassess.
 
Thank you guys! Nanci, you're right, it does look like an Old World flycatcher, that would also explain it being able to fly and the lack of the 'rubbery beak' as Janine said.
 
Very happy to hear that he was okay in the end :0) It's such a great feeling when you know you've helped nature a little bit :0)
 
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