Saturday found me sitting near a window when I heard a hollow thump on the glass. I’d heard that sound before so I rushed outside to find an ovenbird on the ground with its head arched over its back, beak open, and a single wing extended and wracked with tremors. I picked it up, folded its wing into position and checked for broken bones in the wings and legs. The pragmatist in me offered that the compassionate action might be to euthanize this little bird as humanely and quickly as possible.
I didn’t. Inspection suggested no obvious broken bones and once I gently put the little bird’s neck and wing back into a more natural position it blinked its eyes, struggle briefly and held its head. I could feel its heart beating. I could see it breathing. It sat on my hand without moving and without attempting to fly off. Was it stunned? Mortally wounded? I couldn’t say but not flying off wasn’t right.
Ovenbirds are common summer residents of our northeastern forests and they take their name from the covered nest that they build on the forest floor. They are tiny, though relatively large for the warbler tribe. Their call is the signature bird call of hot summer afternoons in the woods. An emphatic:
teacher… teacher… teacher that can be so common as to create something of a background buzzing sound to the woods on a still day. This little bird was likely beginning its fall migration when it found itself in my backyard.
It’s an old cliché to observe that life’s gifts are often unexpected but here I was suddenly holding a songbird in my hand. Its back and wings were a rich olive-brown and over its head it wore two jaunty black racing stripes. Its breast was white with a dramatic black striping. Its dark eye was offset with a white eye-ring. Sentimental guy that I am, I was taken aback by the understated coloring, the intricacies of its tiny feathers, the beating heart observed up close…a gift on a lazy Labor Day weekend. I hope I never stop being amazed and surprised by the beauty around me. I put the little bird in a shady spot at the edge of an overgrown cedar. I hoped that a little quiet rest would enable the tiny body to heal itself.
I’ve killed songbirds before. I’m not proud of it but growing up as I did in the rural Midwest, it was quite common for young boys to be given BB guns and for them to use those BB guns on birds. In addition, as late as last week, I saw a feathered mass bounce off the grill of the mini-van as I was zipping along a county highway. Indeed, many of the essentials of my lifestyle are associated with deaths of migratory songbirds. My cell phone? My computer? The electricity I use? Birds are killed routinely through collisions with communications towers and power lines. Even the environmentally friendly wind turbines sprouting up across the Midwest are killing birds (and bats). My food? My home? Agriculture, urban sprawl, and transportation infrastructure have caused massive changes in native habitat and burgeoning numbers of small predators. The breeding bird census tell us that an appalling number of our native birds are trending downward. Late in the afternoon, I creep up to the old cedar. The ovenbird is still there, head up though. Eyes open.
I'm an environmentalist and I am in it for the duration. A bird in hand is a concrete thing, a little moment of grace to remind me that the land and the community of living things that make the land livable and beautiful are not abstractions. I suppose that’s one of the reasons I keep poking around in the nature diaries at this site…to find digital moments of grace in the photos and writing and to be with like-minded people who want to change things for the better.
On Sunday morning the ovenbird is gone. In the exact spot where I set it down was a little pearl of bird poop. No feathers. No disturbance suggesting loss to a predator. I cannot know what happened to it but I like to think that eventually it recovered and left. I hope that it is winging its way south as I write this. You Kossacks in the south, listen for it won’t you?
Teacher…teacher…teacher…