We had a number of successful rearings
My dad was the go-to guy at his work for any injured/lost/unwanted wildlife. We had a number of successes, but these were outnumbered heavily by failures. Most birds will die overnight from shock. If you can get fluids in to them before then you have a chance.

My most memorable success was a housemartin chick that was very young with no feathers. We fed it all the way to a juvenile with full flight feathers. Then we knew we had to let it go. We had no idea if it could fly or not, as it spent its time in our porch, but when I lifted it above my head and motioned for it to fly away, it did nothing. Sat there, uninterested. Before anyone could say anything, I decided it needed some tough love and I threw it upwards. Suddenly it whirled upwards, circled the garden a couple of times in true hollywood clicheness and shot off, never to be seen again. I cried.
(mersault, Wed 1 Sep 2010, 12:51, 2 replies)

Oddly enough
That's what you're meant to do with housemartins, swallows, etc. They can't take off from the ground because their legs are too short so you have to throw them upwards. Touching story though :)
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Wed 1 Sep 2010, 13:39, closed)

Ours were doomed...doomed I say!
Good work on your housemartin!

My step da taught me to recognize the splayed legs indicating the chick was weak and could not support itself, probably due to being beaten nearly dead by some big bully sibling, or worse, its own parent.

These were all house sparrows, every last one died.

Some success with mynah birds, a lovely triumph but completely illegal in our area as they are protected as wild animals. We'd turn them over to the nearby "bird lady" who had a special dispensation from the Pope of Good Animal Care to take in wild animals. She once screamed at me to feed the mynah chick some dog food and put it back and stop touching it, the parents would get it to fly back up to the nest. She only stopped screaming at me when I told her I caught it in the pool, where it had tried to jump on my head as I was swimming. Bird brains...

I did have much success with budgies, cockatiels and parrots of all types. Raising 2 parrots and 11 baby cockatiels at once is my record.
( kila is reading clocks upside-down as usual, Wed 1 Sep 2010, 22:31, closed)