At 8:30 in the morning on Feb. 6, I woke up at 7 a.m. to enjoy my regular winter-morning routine of coffee and bird watching from the kitchen window. The crowd was the epitome of “regular.” All winter long, I have had the same 15 to 18 species attending breakfast and almost always in the same numbers as well. Over 40 mourning doves, over 40 American goldfinches, about 14 blue jays and then birds like northern cardinals, black-capped chickadees, tufted titmice, northern juncos and American tree sparrows came to the yard — all very predictable.
This predictability led to a certain restlessness. I hadn’t seen any hawks yet, nor had I seen any “X-factor” species like northern shrikes, or pine siskins. The birds were wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but I had been feeling itchy for something different to happen. So, after filling out my eBird checklist for the 7 to 8 a.m. hour, I was about to abandon the bird watching when something different happened.
I heard a loud “klonk” that could only mean one thing — a bird had crashed into one of the windows. This is a sound that always makes me feel bad because I often walk outside to find a dead bird lying on the deck. So, bracing myself for the worst possible scenario, I opened the inner kitchen door and looked outside. As I had feared, there was a bird lying in the snow, but this one wasn’t dead. The only question was would it live or not?
I stepped out onto the deck and the bird didn’t move. I slowly stepped over to the bird and it didn’t move. I gently closed my hand around the bird and it didn’t move. All of these were bad signs, but the fact that both eyes were open and no wings were out of place gave me a little hope. So, not wanting the poor thing to get picked off by a hawk (because that is just when one would have finally shown up, right?), I brought it inside and sat down at my kitchen desk.
The bird was a white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis). I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that it was probably a young bird in its first winter because it had quite a bit of streaking on its breast feathers and only a mildly yellowed lores area between its eye and its nose. Window strikes aren’t the sorts of accidents exclusively experienced by younger birds, but my observations certainly suggest that they are the majority of victims — at least at my house.
Here in our area, we are in a curious overlap of the summer and winter ranges of the white-throated sparrow. I don’t usually see these birds during the summer, but those of you who live at higher elevations might have them present year-round. The majority of white-throats (as they are affectionately called) are born far to the north in the mountains of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and almost all of southern Canada. As a result, it is quite possible that this little bird was encountering humans for the first time when it arrived in the general area of my home.
The little bird in my hand hatched into the world in a cup-shaped nest that was most likely on the ground in a northern forest. The nest was built by the bird’s mother and it probably contained four pale-blue eggs that were speckled with burgundy-purple blotches. Lined with soft grasses and even some deer hair (if the mother could find any), the nest would have been safely concealed under some overarching vegetation.
The chick was fed an exclusive diet of insects and other invertebrates that the parents found on the forest floor. As is the case with most songbirds, the chicks grew at a phenomenal rate and were ready to fly in under two weeks. The fledglings would still depend on a diet of invertebrates provided by parents, but that diet quickly transitioned to seeds as the summer waned and winter loomed. The urge to move south compelled the sparrow to fly as many as 800 miles to where it eventually encountered my kitchen window.
The good news is that the little bird was okay. I brought it into the house and sat with it for a short while. The warmth of my hand seemed to wake it up a little and I was really impressed by how the bird’s feathers held onto the heat. I couldn’t resist taking a few photos and as the minutes ticked by the sound of the camera had more and more of an effect on the bird. About five minutes after picking it up, the bird kicked with its feet slightly, so I guessed it was time to see if it could fly.
I took the bird outside and opened my hand. The sparrow, still a little sore perhaps, just sat there. After about 30 seconds, I started to gently close my hand around it and that’s when the bird took a very short flight to the bottom of my deck table. This was a wonderful outcome. I took a few photos and watched as the sparrow seemed to shake off the effects of the collision. It stretched a wing, scratched its head and then made another short flight into one of the lilac bushes just beyond the deck. I had been able to hold this beautiful bird in my hand for a short while, but in the end, it was able to return to its life outside.
Bill Danielson has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 22 years. He has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service and the Massachusetts State Parks and currently teaches high school biology and physics. Visit speakingofnature.com for more information, or go to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.