As the songs of spring morph into chips from hungry young birds to their diligent parents, we are seeing many fledgling birds in the nets. These fledglings are taking the next harrowing step towards adulthood as they leave the nest and finish growing. While all our songbirds start out helpless and require constant care from their parents, not all birds do.

Consider for a moment how human babies are born entirely helpless, then think about other mammals like deer, whose fawns totter to their tiny hooves almost immediately after birth. This is the difference between altricial and precocial species.

Songbirds are altricial and therefore hatch with their eyes closed, mostly bald, and are incapabl…

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