Kingfisher with broken wing...

Mum just said she has a kingfisher she found on the road which someone hit

I think its a kingfisher?!?! I have no idea, thats what mum said!


Hes in another room away from Fargo of course..


So, i did a little analysis on him, i am surprised how i can feel birds now and see whats wrong, kinda proud!

But his right wing is snapped, and broken...

Left fully stretches out perfectly, and the right is snapped in about the middle and hanging off, so when you stretch it out, its kinda in 2 parts?



I dont get why people just cant drive a bit slower on the road and look out for wildlife, especially because of where we live...

Poor little guy!


So!!! I am assuming he is going to die... But is there anything i can do with his wing or give him?


Any way to bandage his wing back, i cant exactly bandage it cause all the flight feathers are in the road :/


He is sooo gorgeous...
Love his colours and beak..

He also has 2 extra long feathers on his tail... I think that may be a male thing?



Put him in a little cage, put him in a blanket so he was safe...

Now what?

Anything at all, or just keep him feeling safe until he passes away?

Going to die of shock i think, he seems just completely out of it!

Tab! It's not a Kingfisher, it's a Rainbow Bee Eater! There's not much to be done for a broken wing except to bind it gently but firmly to the bird's body (vetwrap would probably be the best bet). Then, do the usual: put the bird in a warm, quiet dark place to recover from shock. He needs to see a vet ASAP.

I wonder what he was doing on/near the road? Is there a creek or river nearby? They build nest burrows in sandy riverbanks, but spend most of their days hawking for insects over and around water. I've never seen one near a road! Poor little bloke! NB. Bee Eaters are related to Kingfishers, but not very closely (ie. you'll often see them on the same page of the bird book, but that's about all). They live in family groups and one of life's great pleasures is to spot such a group sunning itself on a fence wire: they're spectacularly beautiful (as you can see). I hope he makes it! You'll let us know, won't you?

Ahhhhh! Thank you!!! You are brilliant!!!!!! How do you know different birds! Gosh i have no clue



I did vet wrap!!! Smart minds think alike... He is pretty active now and he jumped out of the vet wrap :/ Hes in a dark room under a blanket..

We cant get him to the vet?!?! We live an hour away from the vet and thats a tiny tiny town, thanks to living in the middle of no where -_-
and wont be open emergency hours :/

Mum can take it in the morning?

I really doubt its going to live that long though.. It was 7pm when mum found it.. and he would not of been flying around that late right?!?!

So he could of been on the road for hours :/

If he is a bee eater, does that mean he eats bees and honey?

My brother has 2 bee hives ? Do i go kill a bee for him?

Well, yes, I suppose they do eat bees as well as lots of other airborne insects. Maybe a fly would be a better bet, considering the danger to your brother's hide? Really, though, I doubt this little guy will be interested in food. He might do better just resting quietly in the dark? Leave him some water and if he's still there in the morning, maybe your dear Mum would drop him off at the vet's. Since you're a carer, you'd probably be the best person to look after him.

Do a google image search for 'Bee Eater' to see the lovely colours of other species that live in other countries. (I reckon ours is the prettiest, though).

PS. Lots of birds fly at night. Every night when I go to bed, I look out my window to the street light down on the corner. *Some*thing flies around and around the light, hawking for moths and things. I can't tell if it's bats or birds, but I think it's too big to be bats. One of these nights, I'm gonna march down there with my binoculars and have a good look! (It's hard to be a birdwatcher: people make unfair judgements about you when they see you continually looking through binoculars!)

If there's a wildlife rehabber in your area it would be best to take him to them. They'll be better able to care for him.

Hee! Our Tab *is* the local wildlife rehabber!

OK. Just looked them up on Wiki. It seems they *only* eat airborne prey. They won't eat anything once it has landed. That means, whatever you offer it to feed, you'll need to tie it to a thread and waggle it about as if it's flying. Also, when they eat bees, they whack them against a branch, the same way Kingfishers and Kookaburras do to release the venom. If this guy's still in shock, he may not be able to whack much at all, so I wouldn't offer bees. Wiki says they eat just about any insect, however. Got any crickets?

What a GORGEOUS bird!!!!

I SO hope you can do something for him. I'm sure Sam will love it when you go find him some food.

Can the wing be wrapped and kept steady, so maybe it will heal???

HAHAHA I am the only wildlife carer around our area... The closest one to us is over 2 hours away.. The lady i got my possum from was a 3 hour drive away!!

It really sucks because we actually used to have a wildlife carer just down the road, but she moved away a few years ago !

So now whenever the neighbours have an injured animal they come to me!



I have been looking at the pictures of them, they are so pretty!!!!


I hope this little guy makes it, not getting attached though.. I have already cried over a wallaby i knew for 5 minutes on the side of the road


I gave him a little drink before and he actually seemed to drink really well, just put a tiny bit in his mouth and he, i dont know how to explain it, you could see he was drinking it


Now hes just left alone in the dark, if hes ok in the morning i will go get him a bee and tie it up !

Then mum can take him to the vets in the big city where she works!


Wendy i tried wrapping his wing with vet wrap, i wrapped it around his wings, and under his chest, so his head was out, and he could move his little feet as well.. and he even perched on my finger..

Then i put him in his cage and he hopped around, and squirmed out of the wrap...
So the good thing is he is active enough to want out of it


Hmmmm dont think we have crickets, we have cicadas? but they are big

Got flies? The only reason I'd say no to bees is the sting. D'you feel able to - erm - snip the stinger off? If you read the Wiki entry under Diet, it says that young Bee Eaters get stung until they learn to remove the stingers by bashing the bee against something. We don't want the little bloke to get stung - in his present state, it could cause more harm. Any ideas?

gosh Tab I sure do hope he makes it, if anyone one can save him you and your mom can!!

if anything the shock and the pain he's currently in will kill him,+ lack of food/water... but don't despair, when Num Num broke his jaw he survived thru out the night(mind you I gave him Metecam for pain)but the vet said he still would have survived, and hadn't eaten in 24 hours.
try and give him water which **should** hopefully keep him going until you get to a vet.
he is so very very beautiful!!!
you could try a heating pad on *low* and cover it with a towel.
btw, I think the big man upstairs is giving you great opportunities to enrich you life
GOOD LUCK, he's in very good hands.

How in the world am i meant to catch a fly HAHAHA Want me to use chopsticks as well?

The horses all wear fly veils now, cause flies are super bad, but i have no idea how to catch them :/

I dont think i would be able to kill an innocent little bee.. Some do drown in the water ponds around their hive, so there might be one already dead and i could cut his stinger off... Feel much better if its already dead!


oh and just saw your other comment, so they do fly around at night!

We have some maniacs on the road, even if they hit a kangaroo they dont care.. I swear the people who live on our road are insane.. Literally... One ran over my dog and didnt even apologise... Another hit one of the neighbours dogs and then threatened us and said he would shoot our dogs if he ever saw them Like i said... maniacs...


BUT!!! Dont know if i told you last weekend, a drunk driver ran into a tree and totaled his car... Had to get the ambulance out here?

but it was so funny, cause he said- I SHOULD STOP CARING FOR THOSE KANGAROOS.. I SWERVED SO I DIDNT HIT THE KANGAROO!!!!

HAHA :') I said well at least the kangaroo is ok

Oh Beth i wish the big guy upstairs would stop giving me little adventures! I have had a horrible 3-4 months.. and just this past week has FINALLY been great... and now this little bird is like hey tab, lets make your life dramatic again! haha

But little Num Num is such a trooper!!! He is so brave Definitely wasnt his time to go!

Hmmm, i remember about 4 years ago, a rainbow lorikeet was hit by a car.. and we put him in a cage, this was when i was not so great with birds.. but he had water and food..

and he lived for 2 days.. and then died... Was that like an internal injury thing? :S


Will see how he is in the morning.. If hes alert hopefully he can make it to the vet in time!

Can you dismantle the cicadas??? Like remove the wings, cut them in half or something like that?? YUMMY, hey? :32:

You could try getting flies with a fly swatter. That may work a bit better than the Karate Kid method.

One hot summer Sunday when I was at Uni, there were an awful lot of flies in our college. We were all sitting around, bored, and I was sewing as we chatted. One by one, the guys began catching flies by cupping their hands over them. After quite a few had been caught this way, it took but a drop or two of chloroform on cottonwool to put them to sleep in a glass jar. During this while, we tied neat little bows around their necks out of my sewing thread.

Then they woke up.

We walked into the dining hall, each of us being led by half a dozen airborne flies on a pink cotton leash. After a while the cottons all got tangled, so I cut them short with my scissors. For days afterward, people in college kept spotting flies with little pink bows tied round their necks.

The moral of this story is: it's not hard to catch a fly, it's what you do with it after you've caught it that matters.

Trish!!

I cant breathe HAHAHAHAHAHAH

That is the craziest thing i have ever heard of!!!!

The pink bowed fly epidemic! Poor poor little flies..

Oh, they didn't die! They just spent the rest of their days wearing pink bowties.

Only bats, owl species and Kakapo are really nocturnal....

If the vet wrap is not tight enough, he'll wiggle out of it. I never had to steady a wing, all I know is to wrap it first by itself and then to the body, leaving the other wing out. By steadying it, you will avoid much pain for him, better chance for his survival?
Maybe you can you tube it and see how it's properly done?

He is just stunning! How about putting sticky tape/fly paper in the barn? You should catch live flies that way?

Oh I hope he turns out ok. Such a pretty bee eater (unfair, you guys have all the fun animals...)

Just spotted you were having trouble with the wing wrap.

Wing Wrap Placement in Birds « LafeberVet.com

Ii found this really helpful!