A Bird Hit My Window: What Do I Do?
A Bird Hit My Window: What Do I Do?
Having a bird hit a house window is an unfortunate consequence that can happen at anytime of year. However, during bird migrations in spring and fall, the incidence of bird collisions increases as birds are traveling to their new summer or winter homes. This white-eyed vireo slammed into my neighbor's window, and with a little TLC, it survived, despite being knocked completely unconscious! This leads to the question, "What can I do for a bird that hits my window?" The answer to that depends on the situation. Audubon suggests calling a wildlife rehabber, and that would certainly be the best approach. Unfortunately, many of us don't have a rehabber nearby, and the task of aiding in the bird's recovery falls on us.
Sometimes, birds are only lightly stunned post-collision. Their eyes are open and they are looking around, but show no interest in flying. If it's fairly warm outdoors, and the bird is not at risk of hypothermia, I fashion a makeshift nest out of a clean cotton hand towel, and place the bird in the "nest" and leave it alone. From a distance, I do keep an eye on the recovering bird to see how it responds, and to make sure it stays safe from predators. There's a good chance the bird will fly off within a few minutes; although, I have seen it take as much as 20-30 minutes.
If a bird is laying on the ground and appears lifeless, GENTLYtry to move its legs. If the legs are stiff and don't move, the bird is likely deceased, and nothing more can be done. However, if you can move the legs, the bird is unconscious and there are some steps you can take to aid in its recovery. Line a small box with a clean cotton or paper towel, and gently place the bird in the box. Bring the box indoors and place it in a dark or dimly lit area of your home that is away from noise and pets. At this point, it's a waiting game. It can take as much as an hour for a bird to regain consciousness and clear its head. When you hear it scratching around the box, it's on the road to recovery! At this point, I take the box outdoors and wait for it to fly out of the box.
What if the bird does not recover, and it dies? It's sad, and not the outcome that any of us want, but the unfortunate truth is that this sometimes happens. It's very likely that the bird sustained extreme head trauma, and/or there were other injuries that were not visually apparent.
In the case of our white-eyed vireo, the time from collision to full recovery was about an hour. It regained consciousness within a few minutes, but sat perched on the shrub and looking around for what seemed to be an alarming amount of time. Fortunately, it eventually flew away, continuing its migration south to its winter home.
More Posts from Justanotherwizard and Others
Not my meme but figured I'd share for those about to ride out the storm
Edit bc I'm seeing a lot of confused international reblogs: this was posted because of Hurricane Milton absolutely demolishing Florida this week after Helene went through and because US insurance agencies are kind of assholes. Stay safe out there and thanks for signal boosting!
you know how mathematicians have the journal of recreational mathematics, right? where they publish stuff like, ‘oh i found this cool property of this one seemingly boring number’, or, ‘this is literally nonsense but it sounds ~scientific~’ and it’s all great fun to read?
well
behold, the journal of recreational linguistics
with such delightful papers as ‘tennis puns’, ‘animals in different languages’, and ‘gifts from a homonymous benefactor’
excuse me while i go read all 50 volumes in one sitting
Imagine if baking bread was a skill any person living independently in their own house needed to have at least a passing familiarity with, so there were endless books, blogs and websites about how to bake bread, but none of them seemed to contain the most basic facts about how bread actually works.
You would go online and find questions like "Help, I put my bread in the oven, and it GOT BIGGER!" and instead of saying anything about bread naturally rises when you put yeast in it, the results would be advertising some kind of $970 device that punches the bread while it's baking so it doesn't rise.
Even the most reliable, factually grounded sources available would have only the barest scraps of information on the particularities of ingredients, such as how different types of flour differ and produce different results, or how yeast affects the flavor profile of bread. Rice flour, barley flour, potato flour and amaranth flour would be just as common as wheat flour, but finding sources that didn't treat them as functionally identical would be near impossible. At the same time, websites and books would list specific brands of flour in bread recipes, often without specifying anything else.
An unreasonable amount of people would be hellbent on doing something like baking a full-sized loaf of bread in under 3 minutes, and would regularly bake bread to charred cinders at 700 degrees in an attempt to accomplish this, but instead of gently telling people that their goal is not realistic, books claiming to be general resources would be framed entirely around the goal of baking bread as fast as possible, with entire chapters devoted to making the charred bread taste like it isn't charred.
Anyway, this is what landscaping is like.
So when are people going to realize that this map is really fucking bad and stupid
“average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
the holidays are never officially here until i see the christmas light extension cord of death by electricity and I have yet to see it.
-
wishing-on-wildflowers liked this · 10 months ago -
lost-lycaon liked this · 1 year ago -
ninamodaffari liked this · 1 year ago -
venerablemonk27 liked this · 1 year ago -
dragoon6776 liked this · 1 year ago -
phlvr2067 liked this · 1 year ago -
justanotherwizard reblogged this · 1 year ago -
justanotherwizard liked this · 1 year ago
-
apollolabsworld liked this · 1 year ago -
covecreekphotography reblogged this · 1 year ago
Where once there was theme,Now sometimes there’s meme
165 posts