I’m like a bird…

…I keep flying into windows

About a week ago, I was sitting in the living room of my house with Middle Daughter, and, all of a sudden, we heard a very distinctive “thunk”.

We both knew what that meant – once again, some little bird had come crashing into our front windows.

It doesn’t actually make any sense; the house I live in has a little bit of an overhang in the front; it kind of gives the illusion that the top floor is wider than ground level, but it also creates a little bit of a front “patio”. Many say that the birds mistake the reflections off windows for the real thing, but it hardly makes sense here; not only do the birds have to fly between the posts and under the overhang, it’s not like we have a big picture window – the window section itself is comprised of four vertical panel windows.

Yet somehow, this set of four windows is a bit of a bird magnet. When we hear that thunk, we know that some other poor bird has headed straight into them. They always seem to be these little brown birds, and a couple of them have actually died on impact.

In any case, on this day, we went over to the window to look out, and there was the little bird, lying on its side, the wing under it looking as if it were not quite in the right place. At first, it almost seemed as if it might be dead, but it had its eyes open, and it was obviously still breathing.

After a few minutes, the little bird got to its feet, and stood there another couple of minutes, like the bird in the picture here. It stood incredibly still, dazed from the hit, eyes not completely “with it” and beak partially open.

I looked a little bit into what would need to be done if the bird needed more help, but it then hopped to a more hidden spot about a foot away, stayed there a couple additional minutes, then, I assume, flew off. Once the bird was standing, it didn’t look like anything was wrong with its wing, but I’m sure the bird was very sore for a couple of days after this.

It is amazing to me that these little creatures that can fly on the wind with ease, can travel hundreds of miles in groups, and are pretty adept at avoiding predators can be fooled by a set of windows that are obviously not the sky.

At the same time, at the moment I feel like I am a lot like the little bird, having “hit a window”, and working on the part of getting back up and keeping going. It’s what they are programmed in their genetics to do. For us, it’s easy to talk about giving up when we do “hit the windows” (or a wall) but even if we do need a little bit of time to regroup, it’s important to get up and keep going as much as possible.

Yesterday, I was sitting in the living room again, and once again, I heard the familiar “thunk”. Lord have mercy. Luckily, the bird did not hit with as much force, and it didn’t even look like the bird went through the stage of laying on its side, so I felt like I could go outside and get a couple of pictures without disturbing it too badly. (Thank goodness for a decent zoom!) In the picture above, the bird’s eyes aren’t open completely, but its beak is kind of open… Still stunned, but recovering. Just a couple of minutes later, the bird was gone, because that’s what these little birds know to do.

I could add in Nelly Furtado’s “I’m Like A Bird” here, which is kind of the easy thing, but instead, I’ll share Jim Croce’s “The Hard Way Every Time”.