Despite being the highly intelligent balls of fluff that they are, hummingbirds can find themselves trapped in a garage or house in the pursuit of nectar and insects.
We still like to believe that hummingbirds are some quite shrewd birds, but these tiny things can actually mistake the emergency release handles in a garage for a trumpet vine because of their red color, which is forcing us to start doubting our beliefs.
You’ll often find trapped hummingbirds standing by a glass window and attempting to get past it by darting right into it as fast as possible, which can easily get their delicate bodies injured.
Sadly, there’s no way you can explain to wreckless fliers that you can’t just get through anything that you can see through. That’s why you need to act quickly whenever you see a hummingbird in your garage.
If you step into your garage and you find the little birdie still flying around trying to find an exit, it may be best to not do anything at all and just wait for it to tire out before you can help.
In the meantime, you should be looking for the reason it was tempted to get inside your garage in the first place so that you can prevent the situation from happening again. Look for anything that resembles a flower. Also, look for see-through materials or shiny objects.
Helping a Hummingbird Escape Captivity
You need to start by clearing the area completely from anything that might scare the bird or make it nervous. This includes pets, children, and anything that can move suddenly or make noise. Even you should remain quiet and move with ease. If there are ceiling fans inside the garage.
Also, turn off the fans inside your house because even if you succeed in getting the bird outside of the garage, it may still find its way into your house, which leads us into the next tip.
It’s important to close off all places around the garage. You don’t want the bird to be out of one prison and into another. Your house door, room roods, or closet doors, keep them all shut.
It would also help to remove any red objects in the area, hummingbirds tend to be fond of the color red. If you can’t remove such objects, try your best to cover them until the rescue operation is concluded.
In your garage, however, the complete opposite needs to be done. When hummers are stressed and nervous, they fly everywhere frantically seeking an exit, so you should do your best to provide as many easy exits as possible.
You need to keep all doors and windows in your garage open. Also, you should remove window screens so that the hummer doesn’t fly straight into it thinking its a way out.
Next thing you need to do is to turn off all the lights in your garage so that the exits are clear for the bird to see. If you have curtained windows inside your garage, the curtains should be open and tied back in a way that doesn’t hinder the bird from escaping.
Anything that emits light but isn’t considered as an exit is to be covered completely so that it doesn’t seem like an exit to the hummingbird.
Close to the most obvious exist in your garage, place a hummingbird feeder to attract the bird’s attention. Alternatively, you can place bright red objects outside the exit to lure the bird to safety. Any piece of red clothing or a child’s toy should do.
If you notice that the bird isn’t really attempting to escape or not moving at all, grab a broom and gently shoo the bird towards the exit. And by shooing we don’t mean that the broom is to touch the bird. In fact, don’t touch it at all, just do your best to make it move.
Now that the bird is moving and on its way to the nearest exit, you should observe as it attempts to leave. The bird’s movement might a little disoriented, which in that case it might try to return back into captivity.
After ensuring that the bird is safely outside of your garage, quickly shut all entrances and exits to prevent it from getting back in the garage again. And like we’ve mentioned, try to figure out how the bird got into the garage in the first place and take action so that it doesn’t happen again.
Dennis Baldwin had this issue! See how it unfolds below!!
What If That Didn’t Work?
After trying everything to get the bird out of your garage, it may be time to pick it up and help it out of the area. Hummingbirds tend to exert a lot of energy into flying, so it’s likely to find it all exhausted and unable to find its way out. In this case, it’s okay to pick it up and help release it from captivity.
Remember, the size of these birds is very small, some of them are actually 2 inches in length and weigh around 1.6 grams, so you need to be extremely careful when picking the bird up so that you don’t injure or tangle its super delicate frame.
You go about this by cupping your hand around the bird very loosely and without applying any pressure on it. When taking the bird outside, make sure that you’re walking slowly to avoid sudden movements that can harm the bird.
Now that you and the bird are outside of the garage, it’s best to place the bird near a feeder. You don’t know how long that bird had been trapped in the garage, it might be starving. If there’s no feeder available, simply place it near a nectar-producing flower.
As a reward for your chivalry, you get to watch the cute little thing feed on the nectar. Just make sure that you watch it from afar so that it doesn’t get scared. It may take the bird a few sips to regain its energy and be able to fly again, so make sure that you don’t miss out on watching it in those very brief moments.
