Bang! Something smashed off the window. A bird undoubtedly, I thought, and correctly too as it turned out.
Sometimes, in summer, big bees can take a fair clout as they blunder into the glass.
But usually it’s birds, thinking their reflection a rival or some such.
It must hurt on the snout flying straight into the window and, certainly, once or twice in the past I’ve found that it did for them altogether, and I’d had to give them a decent burial.
A bit worse for wear
On this occasion, I went out to have a look, and there was the accident victim, sitting on a branch near the feeder, looking decidedly wabbit.
I didn’t know the breed. Bit bigger than a wren and with lighter colouring.
Oddly enough, later I was reading my old local weekly, my alma paper so to say, when I saw a picture of a bird looking like mine: a migrating spotted flycatcher.
Turning the page, there was another one (my old paper has a lot of wildlife news) that also seemed similar, this time a red-eyed vireo.
Research revealed the latter was really a bird of north America, though not unknown in Britain: after all, one had turned up on my old stamping ground.
The islands north of the Scottish mainland frequently got “blow-ins”, little critturs seemingly blown all the way across the Atlantic.
But it was when I opened the free magazine serving my current place of residence that, yet again, amazingly, I saw a picture of a wee bird, and was sure this was mine: a barred warbler.
A leading idiot. Hear his name
t’s a rare migrant from eastern Europe, first recorded round these parts in 1884 when one of the leading idiots of the time shot it.
Let his name ring out in shame: Mr Dumville Lees. Not a local at least.
Indeed, if you read evidence given to the Napier Commission of 1884, it’s clear that crofting folk couldn’t abide these balloons who came north to massacre the wildlife.
Anyway, this little fellow on the branch had had a good try at massacring himself. As I watched him up close, he suddenly seemed to come out of his dwam and eyed me with surprise.
Then he went back to sleep again.
I took the opportunity to stroke his fluffy chest. No reaction. So, fearing he might topple off the branch, I took him – so warm and soft –in my hand and put him onto the sheltered floor of the feeder.
He came alive and panicked a bit as I carried him over. But, soon, he was back in a dwam again, and I just left him to it.
Some time later, he flew off.
Idiots like us…
I’ve seen this before: birds going into a coma and suddenly snapping out of it.
Probably a mercy if they’re in pain. At any rate, this was an interesting encounter.
There’s nothing much I can do about the window. I could put up a sign saying “Beware of the glass”, but I fear they’d just ignore it.
It’s shame that birds and animals aren’t very bright on the whole.
They let idiots like us swan about as if we own the place when, like every other creature on the planet, we’re just passing through.
