Expert: Roger Lederer - 7/16/2007

Question
Hi Roger- I'm having a bit of a problem with some baby robins. Last week I found a baby robin on my driveway. He appeared hungry but was fine. My neighbor and I made a "nest" out of a strawberry container and wired it to a tree close to where I found it. While we were wiring the nest, I found another one. We put it in the same nest as the other one. Today the second one we found jumped out of the nest and hopped into our bushes. The other one tried doing the same, but he sort of did a faceplant on the ground. I put him back into the nest as he didn't look old enough to start trying to fly. Was that wrong of me to do? Should I have just left it? Because now it looks like it has a problem with its wing :(

Answer
Robins and other songbird babies leave the nest before they can fly and are fed on the ground by their parents until they can. Best thing to do is leave the babies alone and their parents will take care of them. Unfortunately, if you disturb the babies too much, their parents might abandon them. So, yes, you should have left them. The baby might have broken a wing by jumping out of its "nest" too many times. I understand your concern, but in this case nature knows best.