How to help baby swallow out of nest that can’t fly

[Troton]

There’s a swallow nest on our roof. This morning I found one baby dead on our patio and another hiding amongst some plant pots and shrubs. I’ve left well alone for a few hours and the alive baby had decided to hide in a drain. I’ve fished it out and put some old towels down around the plant pots and blocked the drain area off too. It’ll never survive in there as it’ll flood as soon as it rains. Is there anything else I can do to help? It can’t fly but looks healthy. I don’t know if it’s fallen out the nest or been pushed or what. I’ve just had a quick google and it says swallows should be able to fly when they leave the nest so it’s got no chance of flying back up to the nest :-(

Saw this posted by local rspb reserve on social media.

Can you get it back in the nest? It's probably fallen

Looking at this site www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/how-you-can-help-birds/injured-and-baby-birds/baby-birds/

A swallow seems a bit different from most baby birds:

"The young of most familiar garden birds fledge once they are fully feathered, but before they are able to fly. These fledglings spend a day or two, sometimes longer, on the ground while their flight feathers complete their growth. The only exceptions are swifts, swallows and house martins, which are able to fly well as soon as they leave the nest and should never be found on the ground."

I wonder if you might need to put him on a ledge so he can fly off (but I'd be anxious about putting him on something too high in case he just falls again).

Maybe he and the one you found dead on your patio were undernourished? Which is why they left the nest before being ready to fly properly? Are the adults still going backwards and forwards to the nest? If something has happened to them, then there are places on the net that talk about what to feed fledgling swallows but it all sounds a bit labour intensive.

community.rspb.org.uk/chat/f/the-tea-rooms/86430/swallow-fledgling-help?pifragment-4271=1

Thank you that’s the bit I read on the rspb site too. Sadly this afternoon while I popped out for about an hour or so when I got back one was dead and another was lying on the patio with an injured wing. So sad! I don’t know if the dead one was the one from earlier or another fallen from the nest. It’s been so so windy here today and I’m wondering if they’ve actually blown out the nest today.

So what's happened to the one with the injured wing? Have you got a wildlife hospital nearby you could take it to?

I put it on a towel and moved a few plant pots to give it some shelter/protection but it died within about an hour :-(

Another dead one on the patio his morning! What’s going on!

Are there any crows about? They could have pulled the babies from the nests. We've had starlings nesting on the roof of the garages over the back of us and in the tree in our garden. The crows arrived and raided the nests about a week ago, lots of dead baby birds on the grass and the rest eaten while the parents all flapped around screeching, I know it's nature but

Oh no that's so sad. Surely the crows would have come back and eaten them, if it was them?

When they pull one out of the nest, or one each if it's more than one crow, they sometimes accidentally knock the other chicks out.