Small Bird, Big Problem

A small bird crashes headlong into a pane of glass, nearly killing himself. He flutters to a perch up off the ground and then sits quietly in a daze, his senses gradually clearing. That's when I see him. I am with two others, and we are all alarmed at his appearance. He is panting slowly with his beak agape, and his eyes are closed. He looks like a little wreck, feathers askew and call silenced.

A house finch is a very small bird, almost ordinary as birds go, except for their courting songs in springtime. Then, very few birds are as lyrical and sweet to hear. They call and sing as if doing so sets their very souls a-flight. I've listened for finches ever since I first noticed them as a child. While dour and stern scientists hesitate to apply terms such as "merry" and "happy" to mere birds, these are the exact words that always come to mind when I hear their warbling trills. They sing with wild abandon, as if throwing themselves into the effort like feathered rock-star flutists. It's just beautiful.

The bird's head, shoulders and chest have a blush of red, as if an artist has just dusted him with red ochre. He has a short stout beak and bright black eyes. The rest of his feathers are barred, medium brown and pale duff, easily providing camouflage when he's hunting for seeds in the dry grasses in this area.

The stunned bird perches with his feet gripping the iron bar beneath him. He seems to be maintaining his balance and I am relieved the air is still; a stiff breeze might send him reeling.  Many birds die by hitting window panes; the rude shock of a full-force slam nearly always breaks necks or crushes bones. We watch the finch for a while and wonder what to do next. I've found juvenile birds grounded by such crashes before and helped them briefly to recover and then let them go. This little male is already up out of harm's way and appears to be marginally functional already; it would stress him further to be captured, so we just watch and wait, we three observers gathered below.

Once again the weird intrusion of man's inventions on the patterns of natural life is shown to harmful effect. A bird in flight has been brought down by something it had no defense or preparation for:  A pane of glass. For all intents and purposes, the very air had become solid and impenetrable and the bird was nearly ruined. Pure luck of positioning on impact was all that allowed him to live on.

If I were to experience a similarly deadly and terrifying event, I would get out of bed in the morning and find no floor to stand on, or find that all the items in my car had turned to water or evaporated in a puff of dust when I touched them.  It would make no sense to my brain just as the glass made no sense to the bird. If he could make sense of things before, I doubt he can now. Such a sudden impact against an immovable object has surely caused some internal damage, most likely his brain and internal organs.

Creatures in the natural world are paying a big price so that we can be comfortable and maintain a luxurious lifestyle. Even our pets create havoc even as they seem benign and cute. An example:  Songbirds are consumed in the millions every year by our fluffy, dear house cats. Who knows how many animals become road kill or drown in leftover nets and fishing line.

What's remarkable is that other living species have been able to live somehow as we have spread and multiplied year after year all over the globe.  The little finch seems to have survived, but just barely. He may be killed in some other way soon enough, his capacity to flee predators perhaps diminished by his concussion.

We leave him to his fate eventually. Wild things are better off most of the time without us intervening and imposing our sense of order on them. I just wish his crash wasn't such a perfect metaphor for our day and age and the natural world.