Feeling guilty over my nestbox chickadee fledging dying
As title states, a carolina chickadee fledgling that was from my nest box died and I want to know if I could have done anything better. I was watching the fledgling early in the day get fed from the parents. Later in the day I went outside and noticed my hose was still on from watering my garden, so I went to turn it off and out from the mess of hose came the fledgling chirping like crazy who scared the hell out of me. I think I spooked it out of its hiding spot and over the next hour it slowly worked its way across my yard until I noticed its parent feeding it on the curb of the road. The parent flew away and the fledgling tried to follow it into the road and ended up just sitting there. To avoid it getting hit by a car I moved it back to the hose area where the parents were feeding it earlier in the day. I watched to make sure the parents would find it again as they were hanging out around the area generally still. They heard it chirping and I saw they were investigating the area where it was, so I assumed they found it. As it was getting dark I didn't want to stress it anymore and figured I could check on it this morning. However, I went to check on it and it was dead, it was pretty hidden within the hose so I guess the parents maybe couldn't find it even with all the chirping it was doing?
I know it's generally not recommended to move the fledglings unless they're in danger but could I have stressed it out enough to where it died? Should I have left it in the road? Could it have died from not getting fed from the parents enough, if they weren't able to find it in the hose - it would have eaten like an hour or so before dark? Should I have gotten up earlier in the morning to check on it?
Anyway, if you have something mean to say please keep it to yourself, I already feel guilty that I didn't do enough or did too much. Since I have multiple nest boxes, I want to ensure that I do the right thing if it happens again.
Posted May 11, 2025, 4:39 PM UTC