Can Birds Pick Up Their Babies? (Read THIS Answer First!)

White Storks are large birds that lay multiple eggs at once. When the baby birds grow older, the parent birds spend too much effort to feed so many of them, and have to take out the weakest link in some cases.

Unfortunately, for the weakest or youngest of the lot, nature can be really cruel sometimes.

Here’s a YouTube video of it happening in action. Look at the 0:30 mark:

In some less savage cases, mother birds sometimes face unforeseen circumstances when a baby chick dies while it is still a nestling or died upon hatching.

In the below video, a falcon picks up its deceased baby bird to throw it out. A sad but necessary act, in order to keep the nest from diseases:

Birds That Can Pick Up Their Babies On Their Back

On a much lighter note, although most birds cannot pick babies up using their beaks or claws, some can still carry their baby birds on their back while swimming! There have been instances where some people have seen Swans and American Coots do so.

However, these cygnets (swan chicks) need to be able to climb and jump onto the mother’s back in order to be carried. The chicks will then need to hold on to their parent’s feathers to prevent themselves from falling over. It’s really a cute sight, have a look below.

Here’s an example from a YouTube video that I found:

Pretty cool isn’t it? It’s definitely amazing how dedicated these birds are to carry their young on their back/under her wings. One thing to note is that this behavior is not just confined to swans.

It seems that most birds with this behavior are those that live in the wetlands or water and fly infrequently. Examples of other birds that do this are ducks, coots, loons, and grebes!

Can Birds Get Their Babies Back In Their Nest?

Birds cannot get their babies back in their nests. Most non-birds of prey do not have the required muscular strength to lift up a baby bird into their nest. However, if the baby birds are fledglings, they may still be able to fly back into their nests by making short flights from one branch to another.

Why Do Birds Throw Babies Out Of The Nest?

Birds throw babies out of the nest to kill them because they are either undernourished, developed some sickness, or have died due to sickness. Birds like storks throw babies out of the nests because they are unable to support feeding too many chicks, and will only allow the healthiest chicks to survive.

Final Thoughts

While most birds cannot pick their babies up, there are some birds that actually can, such as stork which pick their weakest chick to kill them and falcons that remove their deceased baby birds.

There are also birds that pick up their babies on their back such as aquatic birds like the coots, grebes, swans, and loons. I hope you have your question answered and thanks for reading. Happy birding!