Little Red Bear and I have rescued a number of orphaned baby birds and other baby critters over the years. Are you a friend of the birds and like helping out? Do you knit or know someone who does? The NBC Nightly News on Saturday evening (August 23, 2014) featured wonderful work being done to rescue orphaned baby birds at a wildlife rescue center.

The name of the center is Wildcare and they are located in San Rafael, California in Marin, County. Each spring throughout the country, baby birds are orphaned while still in the nest due to severe weather and storms, tree trimming, flooding (for ground nesting birds, baby rabbits and such), lost parents, and other causes.

The Wildcare center has a “Baby Bird Nest Craft-along” project where people make knitted nests in various sizes (for different sized baby birds) and donate them to the center to help care for orphaned babies. The fabric nests serve as snug and cozy replacement nests while the baby birds are being cared for in the center, being the next best thing to real nests. The fabric nests retain heat and insulate against the cold, keeping the babies toasty warm (very important for baby birds!), and are soft for fragile little bodies, preventing injuries from the birds bashing against hard cardboard boxes and the like.

Wildcare has instructions for making the nests on their website. Knitting a bunch of little nests would make for a wonderful and rewarding project thru the upcoming cold winter months to have a supply ready to help out orphaned baby birds come next spring’s nesting season. If reading this outside the U.S. or if one did not want to send the knitted nests out to California, I am sure any local wildlife rescue organization in your area would be delighted to have these available for their use. I think the larger size would be perfect for baby rabbits, squirrels and such.

Here are some helpful links for more information and the patterns to download, along with the NBC news report to help get you going. Happy knitting! And thanks for helping the baby birds and critters! — Jim (and Red!)

Wildcare’s Main Site→ Wildcare Wildlife Rescue

Information On Making Knitted Nests→ Making Knitted Nests Patterns & Downloads

NBC News Feature→ NBC Nightly News Wildcare Feature 08-23-2014

Knitted Nests for Baby Birds, courtesy of Wildcare Wildlife Rescue Center