Please DO NOT go around throwing birds (including swifts) you find on the ground up into the air!
A bird on the ground that can't get away from you is in distress*. Put it in a quiet, safe place (a closed paper bag or cardboard box w/ a paper towel is ideal) and contact a wildlife rehabilitator for advice.
SOURCE: I've been doing bird and wildlife rescue for nearly a decade.
*The exception here may be fledglings in spring/summer. Call a wildlife rehab if you're not sure.
@jencmars@loren I would also like to encourage folks to see if there’s a local organization to report window strikes to. These data can be used to encourage buildings to install bird-friendly windows, and help researchers diagnose the extent of this problem.
In Chicago I volunteer with Chicago Bird Collision Monitors and they work with the Field Museum to track data and use the dead birds for research. Strong data helps with lobbying for better building regulations and to put pressure on businesses to do their part (like turning off lights during migration and using bird-safe glass in new construction).
@jencmars@loren yeah, Safe Wings is actively monitoring new construction and lobbying to get bird-safe glass in new buildings. We’ve also got Bird Friendly Ottawa, who I’m helping with their cats and birds campaign.
@jencmars thank you! It is a tricky problem, with lots of very strong opinions on both sides. Unfortunately, many city councils don’t take it seriously. A couple years ago Toronto voted on a “leash law” for cats and then-mayor John Tory actively scoffed at it after the motion failed.
I have friends in Chicago and I know it’s really bad there, too. They keep telling me about outdoor cats in/near a bird sanctuary. And they rescued a kitten on the side of the road that I later adopted!
I remember seeing a talk by a scientist who wrote a book about it, bc he thought it was a more solvable problem than the glass thing, since we're mostly talking about human behavior changes and not architectural changes. But getting ppl to change how they act is hard, esp when feelings are involved.
Some places in the city it's worse than others. Pet owners here are very resistant to reining in their pets. Aw! What a great end to a rescue! My last cat was also a rescue. :)
@jencmars like many problems, it is intersectional - often poorer neighbourhoods have more community cats, in part because vet care is so expensive that spays and neuters are less common. So the population grows and grows. And climate change is impacting the length of kitten season.
@ashinonyx Very true, and also I love cats so I get it. There are no simple solutions. I think I'd be happy to start with just seeing people acknowledge it as an issue, rather than just shrugging (or, as you described, laughing) it off.
Ugh, I hadn't considered how climate change would effect kitten season, compound problems.
@jencmars Good post! As it's nesting season in the Northern hemisphere it could be a fledgling too. As long as they're in a relatively safe spot, you should observe from a distance for about an hour, if their parents are still around and feeding them. If this is the case, everything is fine. Except if it's a swift. Swifts on the ground are ALWAYS in distress.
Whether fledgling or adult bird: Please DO NOT put a water bowl in the box. And refrain from putting water in its beak.
@fifilamoura Right! The original post I'm subtooting was specifically about swifts, which can't perch because of their small legs, but... they CAN fly from the ground if they're not exhausted or injured. And giving blanket advice to people on the internet that they should pick up a wild animal and toss it in the air is very likely to lead to animals being injured or killed.
@jencmars@KeithAmmann the other day in a local group someone found a swift on the ground, and an ornithologist recommended to throw it off a roof or out of window, without checking for injuries first 😳
Thank god there were no underlying issues preventing it to fly, and the person “just” threw it in the air, not off their building, would have been a painful death otherwise 😰
Related: I saw a post today of a guy trying to work out how a bird projectile-pooped onto a glass door.
The bird did not projectile-poop, most likely a bird was trying to fly to whatever was reflected in the glass and hit the glass and pooped. This is common. In Chicago, you can walk around downtown and see poop on glass all over. It's all birds hitting windows. You don't see the birds bc some recover and fly, but A LOT are eaten (gulls/crows/rats) or swept away by maintenance workers.
@jencmars Jen, may I ask in which direction the pigeon you observed was flying? I too watched the video and it seems to me his analysis of the flying bird has it moving in the wrong direction (away from the window). The velocity vectors don't add correctly unless the bird is flying towards the window, I think.
@scholand Haha sure! The pigeon was flying away, but it started off standing just in front of the window on the porch roof, then as it took off it wheeled around and it was windy and somehow magic happened and my window had a gigantic bird poop on it.