DUBLIN, Ga. — 13WMAZ recently had a bird lay eggs on our campus, so we had our own question to Verify. Will a mother bird still care for its young if the chicks are touched by humans?
We moved the nest for the eggs' safety and reached out to Vonda Morton of Laurens Wildlife Rescue in Laurens County to find the answer. Morton rehabs birds and other wildlife. She says nests can end up in places they don't belong all the time.
"I know it's not always possible, but you can move the nest like 5 or 10 feet at a time to a safer location, to a more appropriate location, but you want to make sure that the parents come back every time you move it," Morton said.
She said as long as the parents can find the nest, they'll continue to care for eggs or hatched young. That still leaves the question of if they'll care for them if the actual egg or chicks are touched, not just the nest.
"The whole old wives' tale about if you touch a wild baby the mother's not gonna come back, basically, I think, was developed to make inquisitive children leave wild babies alone," Morton said.
She said birds do not have the keenest sense of smell.
"Birds have, other than vultures, have a very poorly-developed sense of smell, so they're not going to smell you on their babies," said Morton.
So we can verify that the mother not returning is false and that you can, in fact, move the nest or touch the young. Morton warns that feeding the chicks should be strictly left to the parents.
"Do not feed it. This is something people do all the time -- 'Oh, it looked hungry, it looked thirsty, it opened its beak.' Well, that's called "gaping," they gape for food so that the parents will give them the food," Morton said.
Birds have a hole in their tongue and chicks otherwise can't filter food away from their lungs, Morton said. If you don't know how to feed them, you can end up hurting the chick.
Morton said if you find baby birds or eggs on the ground and can't find their parents, you can put them in dark place like a shoe box and keep them warm with a heated blanket or microwaved bag of rice until you can find a rehabber like her.
If you have more wildlife questions or want to donate to Laurens Wildlife Rescue, you can visit their website at http://www.laurenswildliferescue.org/.