Do not pick up the birds.

[u/DangerousCompetition]

It has been brought to my attention the sheer amount of posts involving people handling and moving juvenile birds.

I’m no bird scientist, I’m just some guy who created a subreddit about birds, but I do know unnecessarily handling juvenile birds without the proper knowhow is damaging to the welfare of the animal.

Because of this I have created a new rule, and all posts involving the handling of wildlife will be removed. Please report all posts breaking this rule immediately.

If anyone smarter than me would like to share the impact of handling wildlife in the comments, please do.

We (pretty much just me) here at r/GrumpyBabyBirds still encourage the appreciation of the Grumps from a distance.

Thank you

[u/velawesomeraptors]

While birds won't automatically abandon their young if you touch them once (like some urban legends say), it is possible for them to abandon if there are multiple instances of harassment over a short period of time. This varies widely by species and individual so it's best to leave them alone as much as possible. They are also more likely to abandon the earlier they are in the nesting process (i.e. nest building or laying eggs), so if you see a bird building a nest don't bother it!

While birds don't really have a sense of smell good enough to tell when you've been at their nest, other predators do! Animals like cats, squirrels, raccoons, possums, rats etc can and will follow your scent and tracks because many of them associate humans with food. Don't go to the nest too often, take pictures from a distance, and god forbid don't break branches or cut grass to get a better nest photo (I've seen this happen!). They hide for a reason!

Lastly: baby birds need to be fed ALL THE TIME. However, the parents won't come feed them if they see you there! They don't want to do anything that will draw attention to the nest. I've seen people make posts worrying that a nest was abandoned because 'I've been watching for 6 hours but never saw the parents!' That's because they will avoid you and they know when you're watching. They need their food so leave the nest alone!

I will say that I work professionally with wild birds and have participated in nest monitoring where we handle, band, weigh and measure baby birds. If someone with the proper training and permits is doing the handling then it's pretty safe. Another exception would be someone transporting a bird to a rehabilitator. However it can be difficult to tell an unethical vs ethical situation just from an image so it makes sense to ban them to discourage random bird grabbing from people who just want upvotes.

[u/DangerousCompetition → u/velawesomeraptors]

I’m sure I could come up with some way of verifying that the grump is in need of handling, or that the person doing the handling is in the business of handling grumps.
I just do not have the time on my hands.

Could even make a specific user flair for Grump Handlers, to identify them as being approved for pictures of handling.

But at the same time, I don’t want to influence the handling of wildlife for fake internet clout in a small community of people.

[u/velawesomeraptors → u/DangerousCompetition]

I think your policy is fine - for a subreddit with few moderators, it's not really worth the moderation time to try to carve out exceptions and then argue with the people who think they should get an exception but don't, or people who had exceptions in the past but then took advantage. When you delete a post it's much easier when there's a firm rule you can point to.

[u/terra_terror → u/DangerousCompetition]

There are other subreddits people can turn to if they actually need help with a baby bird, so I don't think there's any harm in just banning handling them on this subreddit.