Fledgling Blue Jay Dangling from Nest? (1 Viewer)

[dsjahn]

There were 3 fledgling blue jays in a nest in our front yard tree a few days ago. One of the babies was dangling upside down on the side of the nest. It kept flapping its wings until it righted itself back up only to flip over again and dangle off the side while flapping its wings over and over again until it got tired. It had been dangling from the next for most of the day. My son climbed the tree and saw that this fledgling's foot was all tangled up in twine. He carefully cut off the twine, and the baby jumped out of the nest and fluttered to the ground along with one of its siblings. We could see that the twine was still wound around its leg and had dug into the leg causing it to bleed. I used manicure scissors to gently cut the remaining twine off its leg. We put both babies back in the nest, and the mother continued to feed them. When we woke up the next morning, the baby that had been entangled was dead on the ground under the tree. There were no signs of trauma. It was just dead. What could have happened to it?

 

[delia todd]

Hi dsjahn and a warm welcome to you from all the Staff and Moderators.

It's hard to say why it died, but it's possible it was just very weakened by the trauma. Nest fatalities are sadly very high anyway, which is so hard for us to observe.

Thank you for doing what you could to see the young one.

I'm sure you will enjoy it here and I look forward to hearing your news.

 

[Tired]

You did about the best thing that could have been done. This is unfortunately rather common- birds don't know not to collect twine for their nests, and some people even put twine and yarn out for birds to nest with, because they don't realize it can be dangerous. Anything string-like that they use in their nests needs to be too short to wrap around their legs and get stuck, including long hair, but they don't know this.

 

[KC Foggin]

Hi dsjahn and welcome aboard!

You did all that you could do and I pat you on the back for trying to mend the mishap and like Delia mentioned above, these mishaps happen more than we are aware of. You did the best you could do so feel good about that.