Is there any advice on how to help (and whether to help) baby blackbirds in a nest in the garden through 4 consecutive days of over 40 degrees?
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Each to his own, amandastone, but I'd be the last person to ask this question. Blackbirds are feral & take up the ecological niches of ground-dwelling native birds, particularly the Bassian Thrush. If you wish to encourage native birds in your garden you certainly won't be rendering assistance to blackbirds.
Fair enough. There aren't any many ground dwelling native birds in the hot urban jungle of inner Melbourne but I take your point.
If there were Bassian thrushes though, advice on what to do for any birds in nests would be helpful.
Human non-interference is an excellent way to go, I believe, amandastone. Over thousands of years the parents of nestlings have evolved ways of combatting heat for their youngsters. However, there may be circumstances where human protection of the nest & its occupants might be appropriate. E.g.,
In the broader sense, it's important to do whatever is possible to restore natural habitat for birds & other animals. This will help to restore conditions as close as possible to what existed naturally. In this respect, the use of indigenous plant species is important.
Another issue which is increasingly relevant is climate change. Because human-induced climate change is so rapid (compared with natural evolution) wildife species are unable to adapt to their new world. So there may well be an increasingly strong argument for humans to compensate for the loss of those natural conditions. A human providing shade cloth in a severe heat wave may help to compensate in some small way for what humans are doing to wildlife.
But, broadly speaking, ecological restoration & action to reduce the effects of climate change are really important in protecting nestlings in heat waves, amandastone. Most folk, I suspect, are content to go with the shade cloth.
You've answered my question, many thanks. Non-intereference it is.
I guess a bowl of water would only help the parents?
Are baby birds able to extract enough water to support themselves from food alone?
That's a very interesting question Lachlan. I would like to know the answer to that too.
M-L
Yes, I'm wondering if parents take water to their nestlings. Once the fledglings are in flight they fend for themselves, of course. Here are five of the six young red-browed firetails bred at our place recently:
Blackbirds? No thanks, like the Indian Mynah they are introduced ferals, of no fault of their own though. I have two bird baths in the backyard and I change the water two or three times a day and find that sufficient for them to drink and bath.
Yesterday I put the sprinkler on "mist"and sat and watched the magpie family and the crested pigeons walk through it and enjoy.
No Blackbirds in my yard on the north shore, although I have friends at Campbelltown in the south west who have a few around. Starlings are another pest I will not go out of my way to "entertain" either.
Just before dusk I quickly hose down some of the bushes too, that gives them a cool spot and knocks the plant temperature down just on sunset. The little Wrens appreciate that.
Love them or hate them, these 2 nestlings died on the second day of a 4 day heatwave, with temperatures well over 40, not dropping below 32 overnight - just too much for them to cope with. And there were water bowls and bird baths everywhere. It doesn't bode well for other species with heatwaves predicted to be longer, hotter and more frequent.