Dead chicks

[flirty41]

I've recently found a couple of dead baby birds in my back garden. They were featherless, so I don't think they were trying to fly, and they were too far away from anything to have just fallen out of the nest. Do adult birds throw out their dead young? The birds around me are mainly starlings, blackbirds and sparrows, by the way. Thanks!

[andy hughes]

I'm not an expert, but I know that parent birds do 'spring clean' the nest and throw out any dead chicks. In addition, a predator bir - maybe a blackbird or starling, might have picked up the dead chick to feed its own young, and then dropped it in transit.

[desertrat]

I have found live baby chicks in the past some distance from trees. After they have fallen out of the nest they can crawl a fair distance in the vain hope of getting back to the nest.

[Cetti]

These little 'nestlings' can end up on the ground for a variety of reasons flirty. They can fall out themselves after climbing over one another..... the result of a storm.... or more than likely it's a 'survival of the fittest' strategy where older and much stronger siblings chuck out the weakest thereby ensuring more food for themselves.

Then you have the predators - to name a few - rats, cats, Jays, Magpies and the Greater Spotted Woodpecker. It's a miracle any baby ever makes it to adulthood, but they do - it's still horrible to see though, isn't it?

[wildwood]

Yes, most bird species throw out any young chicks that die in the nest. They fly a fair distance from the nest before dropping the corpse (as they do with egg shells from hatched chicks) so as not to identify the locality of the nest to potential predators.

[tartanwiz]

Hi Flirty. Another thing that forces premature chicks out of a nest is the cuckoo, which doesn't build a nest but lays it's eggs in another bird's nest. Cuckoo chicks will then shove the other bird's chicks out and be raised by its foster mother. So if you hear a cuckoo, you'll know what's happened. TW x

[tartanwiz]

(:> (:> (:> cheep cheep

[IndieSinger]

Are the dead chicks expensive?

Well they're certainly not "going cheap"... boom boom.

[flirty41]

Well, thank you for that little gem, Indie. The old ones are always the best! Erm, don't forget your coat on the way out and, er, don't give up the day job! :-D