A dose of thrush
There was a loud bang a short while ago.
It made both Penny and me jump.
It was a sound I am all too familiar with – the sound of a bird smacking into one of our multitudinous window panes. Normally they realise that there is something wrong, veer at the last moment and bounce off the glass, but this time it was the resounding smack of a head on collision. Damn!
For some reason it tends to be the bigger birds that have problems – blackbirds, thrushes and doves have all in the past bounced off the windows onto the terrace below. The smaller varieties must have better manoeuvrability or something.
Anyhows I went out and sure enough there was a wee body on the terrace. Fuck! A thrush had broken its neck. I like thrushes.
I approached and he raised his head and panted at me. Obviously he wasn’t dead which was even worse as it might be up to me to put him out of pain. I’m no good at that.
So I gently picked him up. He didn’t struggle or move. He just panted, obviously terrified at what had just happened. I gently checked his legs and wings. Everything seemed to be in one piece, or at least in as many pieces as the design specifies. He was just scared.
I put him back down and this time he stood and watched me. He made no effort to move and even waited while I went in to collect my camera, as Herself wanted to see him. Then without so much as a squeak, he few off into a nearby Yew tree.
A short time later, he flew back and perched on a bird table staring into the room for a couple of minutes before flying off again.
He was just saying thanks?
It’s good to read a heart-warming end to the tale. When we lived in a 1970s bungalow in Dublin, which had ceiling to floor windows, the summer visitors used regularly to fly into the glass and sadly not revive.
They must be used to the windows here as bird strikes are rare. No fatalities this year so far and only one last year.
I had to stop and pick up a baby bird which had clearly been learning to fly and had got exhausted and landed itself right in the middle of the road. It didn’t seem to be injured when I got out of my car to look at it (no, I hadn’t driven over it first!), and I hoped it would flutter off when I went to pick it up to move it, but no. Thankfully, as I lifted it up to move it off the road into a nearby hedgerow, it didn’t flop about in a “broken neck/back/wing” kind of way. But what struck me most was that it was so light! I knew birds were light things, but this was almost weightless in my hand! When I got home I called the RSPCA to see if I’d done right and they said, yes, I had and that as long as I hadn’t kept contact with it for too long, its parents (who were probably watching from nearby) would almost certainly swoop down after I’d gone to encourage it into the air again. Don’t know if they just said that to make me feel better, but it made me feel like a big bird-saving hero at the time. Which was nice.
I have heard that it is best to leave a bird to its own devices all right. Once I was happy that no bones were broken I decided to leave it for as long as possible. It’s a lovely moment when they fly off!
I have a double aspect parlour, windows to east and south. Birds are tempted to take a shortcut through one and out the other. Seems flying in through a half-open sash is easier than finding the way out.
That south window now has a crack in one of the panes, noticed a couple of months ago after a big storm. Now it might be that some debris caught up in the wind hit it, but it appears to have been struck by something with a very sharp point, I suspect a bird strike — rook, pigeon?
I have similar problem[?] here – a three quarter circle of windows. Luckily no panes have broken .. yet. We had one beauty a while back where a dove hit the kitchen window causing no damage to the bird or the window, but he left a lovely dusty imprint on the glass where even the feathers left their mark.
After one absolutely tremendous late evening crash, I discovered the perfect dusty imprint of an owl on my french doors.
How it didn’t break the pane is beyond me, but it looked stunning (which, of course, sadly to the owl it must’ve been). I was glad there was no evidence of the owl nearby by the time I got to investigate-I guess it was also just stunned.
The image was really something – wings outstretched and perfectly barn-owl shaped. I wish I’d taken a photo, but I was keen to get outside and check the owl was ok, and the next day the window cleaner removed it all.
I believe the image is made of keratin dust from the feathers.
Luckily we’ve only had one bird fly into one of our windows. It was a robin and since it had to manoeuvre around the apple tree just outside the window it didn’t make much of an impact. It wasn’t damaged at all but probably quite disgusted with the whole incident.
A happy ending for all concerned.