What do you do when a fledling falls to the ground?

[wpakalka]

What is the right thing to do when a baby purple martin that cannot yet fly falls out of its house and hops around all over the place? I have a purple martin house on a pole and am able to lower and raise the house like you would a flag. In years past, I would lower the house and put the fledgling on a "balcony" but I think the same ones quickly were back on the ground. Advice please.

[Ed Svetich-WI]

What I do is go to my records, check the cavities to see who is short one bird and put it back. However, if you have no records, you can lower the house and place the nestling in a cavity with similarly sized nestlings, being carefully not to place it in a nest with 5 or 6 nestlings. That might overwhelm the parents of that clutch.

You do not indicate the age of the nestling. Is it fledging or just a jumper?

Ed

[flyin-lowe]

The other thing to do is try to figure out what caused it to jump. If it is not old enough to fly they typically jump because of heat, mites, starving, etc. I would inspect the cavity for mites.

[wpakalka]

Thank you both. The nests seem to be pretty clean, and there are a dozen or so other young ones, but I think there are no more than two in any one unit.

The one on the ground is fully feathered but when it hops and tries to flap its wings, it does not move into the air at all.

[Ed Svetich-WI]

Don't hesitate to do nest checks next year. Your martins will not abandon your colony. In fact, they will be back within minutes and as you regularly conduct nest checks, they will return even faster. Your comments indicate that you have been somewhat hands off. Many martin landlords are also not actively managing their colonies. In my case, record keeping adds an entirely new dimension to producing martins.

Print off a copy of the Project Martinwatch Data Sheet from this site and add data as nests are checked. Begin as you see green leaves being brought to the nests. This preceeds egg laying. As you have just experienced, checking nests if only to know how many chicks are in each nest would have provided you with the knowledge as to the origin of your errant nestling.

Collect a sufficient amount of data to allow you to know the date of the first egg, last egg and the number of nestlings in each nest and you can calculate expected hatch dates, which then allows you to approximate fledge dates. It is not neccesary to check daily during an entire season.

Have great success with your colony producing martins.

Ed

[wpakalka]

Will do. Thank you, Ed.

[Spiderman]

This is one of the primary reasons that we do nest checks and document the results.

I have had 3 fall to the ground this year. Well one of them has fallen out twice. He only has sight in one eye and the other side does not have an eyelid. I know in nature he is probably doomed as they feed on flying insects which requires depth perception, but we will see.

When I put him back the 2nd time he was much bigger and wings and tail have developed to the point he should able to fly in a few days.

The other one jumped due to mites even though I had done a nest check 4 days prior to him jumping. So mites can over run a Gourd quickly once it gets very hot.

[wpakalka]

Thanks very much.