Well, my kids actually did raise 5 baby birds one time. It had been raining very hard, a tree came down in the bush, the tree had a hole in it and there was a nest in the hole, which fell out. My kids noticed that, and brought home the whole nest, fluff and all. And they wanted to raise the baby birds. Now these birds were 24 hours old me thinks, eyes closed, all bald, little tuft of hair on top of their head and they had big yellow feet. I figured they were some kind of woodpeeker, cp puck wont let me say the name of the bird!!!.
I figured, ok, let the kids try, but these baby birds will be dead by morning. So my kids got a big shoebox and put some old rags in it and then put the whole nest in the middle, birds and all, and put the lid on the box.
The kids went outside, the ground was very moist from all the rain, they dug in the dirt and found worms. And they cut them in little pieces and fed the birds with tweezers. And they shared night time duty and got up every hour on the hour and fed more worms to the baby birds.
Well, morning came, birds were alive, squawking real good, they were hungry and wanted more to eat. Kids had to go to school, they had a plastic container full of worms, so I now had feeding duty for the day.
Anyhow, the birds thrived. Of course, as they grew, they demanded more food. And when the kids could not find enough food, we fed them raw hamburger. And they ate that with a passion too.
They began to get feathers, their eyes opened, they were more active, had to be real careful now when you opened that shoebox. We kept it in the mechanical room, in the dark. Well when we entered the room and turned on the lights, they must have been able to distinguish that and they started squawking real loud, they knew food was coming.
Two of them got pretty tame and would sit on the kids fingers while they fed them. Then they started to test their wings. And one day, we had a couple of birds flying around the house because the kids forgot to close the door to the mechanical room.
By this time, they were pretty well all feathered out, real feathers now, not those ugly pinfeathers that first come out. And you cant keep them in a box forever. So I suggested it was now time to take the box outside, open the lid and let them fly.
Reluctantly, the kids did that. They could really fly well right away. All five kind of flew together for five minutes and then they were off.
Oh, and by the way, the kids raised 5 starlings!!! Ugly birds in the end and nuisance birds, but that is what we hatched
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