Dear past Tom: So your toddler found a bird in the garden

Dear Tom from last May. You're currently standing on the patio in your dressing gown, holding a lukewarm mug of instant coffee while watching Maya and Lily enthusiastically poke at a pulsating lump of grey fluff on the lawn, so I need you to put the mug down and step away from the Calpol syringe before things get completely out of hand.

I know exactly what's going through your head right now because I remember the sheer, cold panic of realising you're suddenly responsible for a third, even more fragile life form before 7am. You've just stepped out for a quiet moment of morning reflection, only to find your two-year-old twins forming a sinister circle around a tiny, vibrating creature that looks like a mouldy potato with a beak. Your paternal instincts are going non-stop, telling you to swoop in, scoop the poor thing up, wrap it in a tea towel, and build an elaborate incubator out of a desk lamp and a shoebox. Please, for the love of my current sanity, ignore those instincts.

I'll be perfectly honest, right now Maya is wearing her olive Kianao sleeveless organic cotton bodysuit, dragging her bum across the damp grass to get a better look at the little trespasser, and you shouldn't even care because that specific bit of clothing is basically bulletproof. It's genuinely my favourite thing in their wardrobe since the fabric actually stretches over her ridiculous post-porridge tummy without losing its shape, and the grass stains miraculously wash out on a standard 40-degree cycle. She looks adorable, she's completely comfortable despite the morning chill, and she's currently trying to offer the bird half a chewed digestive biscuit, which brings me to my first major point of intervention.

The great fluffy imposter on the lawn

You're going to pull out your phone, squinting through the glare, and frantically search for how to identify infant wildlife while simultaneously using your foot to gently block Lily from dropping a plastic bucket over the situation. The internet will confidently tell you that your entire course of action depends entirely on whether this creature is a nestling or a fledgling. This sounds like helpful advice until you actually try to apply it to the wildly uncooperative blob on your grass.

According to the wildlife lady I eventually called in a blind panic, you're supposed to look for feathers. Have you ever tried to define what a feather is at a distance of four feet while sleep-deprived? The bird on the lawn has what I'd legally describe as 'spiky fluff.' The website said fledglings have short, stubby tails, which is deeply unhelpful because everyone in this house currently has short, stubby proportions, and I've absolutely no frame of reference for what constitutes a mature tail on an animal the size of a golf ball.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time debating the semantics of avian plumage with myself before realising the bird was sort of awkwardly hopping away from Maya's biscuit offering. That, apparently, is the golden ticket. If the little weirdo is feathered, hopping around, and gripping the grass like it owes it money, it's a fledgling. It's basically a feathered teenager going through an awkward phase where it can't quite fly but wants to wander away from its parents. You just have to leave it exactly where it's. If it's completely naked, has eyes sealed shut, and looks like a tiny pink dinosaur that fell out of a tree, it's a nestling and you need to put it back.

Oh, and your mum was completely wrong about the smell thing by the way, birds have a rubbish sense of smell so they couldn't care less if you touch their kid with your sweaty, panicked dad hands.

Making a terrible plastic treehouse

Let's say it's a nestling, and you've looked up into the branches of the old oak tree and realised the original nest is either destroyed or located in a dimension you can't physically reach without a cherry picker. You're going to feel the sudden urge to become an architect.

You will run inside to fetch supplies, inevitably tripping over one of those Kianao gentle baby building blocks that Lily abandoned in the hallway. They're fine as far as toys go, mostly because they don't shatter your heel bone when you tread on them barefoot and they float quite nicely in the bath, but let's be real, right now they're just brightly coloured obstacles sent to test your peripheral vision while you're carrying a ladder.

You'll grab an old Tupperware container—the one that lost its lid during the kitchen reshuffle of 2021—and try to drill holes in the bottom so the bird doesn't drown if it rains. The plastic will crack immediately. You will swear under your breath, tape it up with duct tape, stuff a handful of dry lawn clippings inside, and use garden twine to strap it to the lowest branch you can reach, feeling like an unhinged contestant on a wilderness survival show. You'll scoop up the naked little bird, drop it in your plastic monstrosity, and then sprint away like you've just planted an explosive.

Stop trying to play avian paramedic

Here's where I need to be incredibly stern with you about the Calpol syringe sitting on the kitchen counter. When you see a tiny creature struggling, your human brain immediately screams that it needs a drink of water, leading you to formulate a wildly dangerous plan to drip tap water into its beak.

I only know this because Brenda, the fiercely intimidating woman from the local wildlife rescue who sounded like she's wrestled badgers for fun, literally shouted at me over the phone when I suggested it. She informed me, in no uncertain terms, that birds have this completely absurd evolutionary design flaw where a hole at the base of their tongue leads directly into their lungs. I barely passed secondary school biology, but even I understand that filtering water directly into a respiratory system is a remarkably efficient way to accidentally drown a creature on dry land. Don't give the bird water. Don't give the bird milk. Just step away from the bird.

The same goes for feeding. I enthusiastically destroyed my own flowerbed looking for earthworms for twenty minutes before Brenda casually mentioned that raising a wild hatchling requires a highly specific dietary formula fed every thirty minutes from dawn until dusk. I already have two toddlers who demand snacks every thirty minutes, I'm absolutely not adopting a third.

Watching from the kitchen while drinking cold coffee

Once you've established that the bird is either a fledgling doing its awkward ground-hopping thing, or a nestling you've precariously shoved into a sandwich box in a tree, you've to do the hardest part of all: literally nothing.

You need to grab the twins, herd them inside, and lock the patio doors. If you want them to stay away from the glass so you can spy on the garden in peace, go browse Kianao's wooden baby gym collection and buy yourself five minutes of distraction while they dismantle it. My girls mostly use the wooden frame as a tent structure these days rather than lying under it, but it's beautifully made and keeps them occupied while I stand at the window with binoculars like a nosey neighbour.

You will stand there for what feels like hours, convinced you've doomed the tiny creature, right up until the moment a large, confident adult robin swoops down out of nowhere and shoves an insect into the baby's mouth. It's a humbling moment. You realise the parents were probably sitting in the tree the entire time, watching you panic, judging your awful Tupperware craftsmanship, and waiting for the weird hairless ape to take his tiny loud offspring back inside so they could get on with their day.

If you're currently staring at a bird in your garden and it's visibly injured or bleeding, stop reading my rambling advice and go call your local wildlife rehabber immediately. If you're just hiding in the bathroom reliving the stress of the morning, why not check out Kianao's full range of sustainable gear for your own kids so you can at least feel like you've accomplished something today?

Questions I frantically googled at 7am

Should I leave a little bowl of water out for the bird?

Look, Brenda the wildlife lady literally shouted at me over the phone about this, but apparently birds have this completely absurd hole near the back of their tongue that drops straight into their lungs, meaning if you try to play nurse and drip water in their beak, you'll just drown the poor thing, so absolutely don't give them water manually.

Can my kids catch diseases from standing near it?

Our local GP basically laughed when I asked if the twins were going to get bird flu from staring at a nestling from two feet away, but she did casually mention you should probably wash your hands with actual soap instead of just wiping them on your jeans if you physically have to pick the bird up to put it back in a tree.

What if the neighbour's cat has already had a go at it?

This is where you actually have to step in and drive the bird to a professional rehabber because cat saliva is apparently full of terrifying bacteria that will quickly take out a tiny bird even if the actual bite wound wasn't that bad, which is just another reason I'm intensely glad we only own a very lazy golden retriever.

Do I need to dig up worms to leave next to it?

I spent twenty minutes enthusiastically destroying my own flowerbed looking for earthworms before I was informed that feeding them random garden debris is a terrible idea since they need a highly specific balanced diet from their actual parents, not just mud and whatever you found under a rock.

How long do the parents leave them on the ground?

According to the wildlife rescue, fledglings can spend up to three weeks just awkwardly hopping around the garden learning how to be a bird while the parents watch from above, which sounds like an incredibly stressful parenting technique but apparently works for them.