With the Wild Things: Baby Birds 1

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|a With the Wild Things: Baby Birds 1 |h [electronic resource].

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|a Ft. Myers, Florida : |b Whitaker Center in the College of Arts and Sciences, Florida Gulf Coast University.

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|a 5 podcasts, approximately 1 minute each in length

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|a Please contact the owning institution for licensing and permissions. It is the users responsibility to ensure use does not violate any third party rights.

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|a Source: Baby Birds 1 Length of Segment: 00:01:14 Hi, I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. It's that time of year: it's nesting season for most of our backyard birds. It's also the time of year that wildlife rehabilitation centers are inundated with orphan baby birds. Most backyard bird babies are songbirds, small birds that must lay pretty small eggs. As a result of the size of their eggs, there's a very limited supply of nutrients that can fit inside, so growth of the bird in the egg must be limited and most development takes place after hatching. If you're lucky enough to find a nest with eggs in it, it's well worth your time to take note of the daily events that take place. And also, we're sharing with the youngster from a distance. Don't touch the eggs. The parent birds will not smell your scent on the eggs and abandon them. Most birds have a poor sense of smell, but mammals such as squirrels and cats and also climbing snakes can tell you've been there by smell. The most important reason not to touch those bird eggs is that there is a tiny, living, breathing creature inside. The egg shell is porous, so that the developing chick can breathe. If you handle a bird egg, oils from your skin can plug the pores in the shell and cause the chick to suffocate.

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|a Source: Baby Birds 2 Length of Segment: 00:01:09 Hi, I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. Most small birds lay one egg a day until the clutch is complete. Eggs are usually laid in early morning. During egg-laying, an adult may be near the nest but won't be warming the eggs. Development of the chick inside an egg doesn't begin until the heat of incubation is applied by the bird fluffing its feathers and placing the eggs against its bare skin. By waiting to begin incubating until after the last egg is laid, the birds assure that chicks will all hatch at about the same time. The chicks will thus be evenly matched when competing for food and the nest will be occupied by baby birds for the minimum amount of time. Songbird babies usually hatch after only about two weeks of incubation. When they hatch, they have at best a few wisps of down emerging from almost translucent pink skin. During their first week, one parent usually stays at the nest, often sitting over the young to protect them. During these early days, it's important to keep your distance from the nest. Keeping parents away for only a few minutes can be the difference between life and death.

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|a Source: Baby Birds 3 Length of Segment: 00:01:15 Hi, I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. When a baby songbird hatches, it emerges from the egg pink and helpless, totally dependent on its parents for food, warmth, and protection. Such baby birds are referred to as being altricial: A-L-T-R-I-C-I-A-L. They may start out helpless, but growing rapidly and within a little over two weeks, most can leave the nest. That initial helplessness, however, requires parents to provide much care and an abundance of the right food. While birds such as northern cardinals normally eat seeds as adults, they and most songbirds provide their young with insects. The high protein content of insects and the ease with which insects can be digested help baby birds grow quickly. Parent birds are kept very busy, often making ten to fifteen feeding trips to the nest in an hour. But the rate of feeding is not constant during the day. Just as human parents need a break sometimes, adult birds must find food for themselves too. However, early morning is crucial to altricial babies. After going all night without food, young must be fed quickly in the morning, and then the adults get a break.

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|a Source: Baby Birds 4 Length of Segment: 00:01:07 Hi, I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. Unlike our backyard songbirds, baby chickens, quail, ducks, and killdeer hatch covered with down and ready to go. They leave the nest soon after hatching and are led by a parent to an area that's safe and that can provide the food the chicks need. Like a child who seems advanced for his or her age, we refer to chicks that are well-developed at hatching as being precocial. Obviously, precocial chicks do a great deal more developing in the egg than do the babies of songbirds and it takes a bigger egg to provide the nutrients needed for that development and a longer time in the egg for the development to occur. While a cardinal's eggs may hatch in two weeks or less, the eggs of precocial birds such as ducks may take nearly a month to hatch. Precocial chicks are not fed by their parents, but are led to food by them. Just as with the helpless babies of songbirds, however, precocial chicks feed extensively on insects, snails, and other small creatures, food that's high in protein.

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|a Source: Baby Birds 5 Length of Segment: 00:01:12 Hi, I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. It's that time of year: the feathered kids are on the streets. Baby birds are out of the nest, and many will be encountered by humans. What do you do when you find a baby bird? First of all, most baby birds found out of the nest are not abandoned. Mom and pop know right where they are and will be looking after them. The best thing to do in most cases is to leave them alone. That's the only legal thing to do, also, since our native birds are protected by both federal and state laws that say that you may not take them home. Birds such as our northern mockingbird normally leave the nest two to three days before they can fly. Sometimes, they leave much sooner. If you've got a mockingbird nest in your neighborhood, listen for those babies. When they near time to leave the nest, they begin periodically giving a high-pitched note. You can never quite tell where the sound is coming from, and neither can most predators. But the parent mockingbirds know it's the baby's location call saying, “Here I am, come feed me”. Give the feathered kids a break, enjoy them from a distance, and watch how well they're cared for.

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