What a Little Bird Told Me

Last summer my employer bought a new, much larger building which we moved into and, as a group, are still settling into these many months later. Late Wednesday afternoon we had a little freebie shoot for a relative of the company owner and, while preparing for that, while the large overhead roll-up cargo door was open, a bird flew into the warehouse/studio. My initial worry was that the bird would be chirping and flying around and freaking people out while we were trying to get good takes for the camera. That worry was not realized, as the bird was quiet the entire time. After the shoot it became my goal to get the bird out of the building.

The warehouse/studio section of the building has a 20-foot or more bare structure ceiling with a bank of vertical, sealed skylights at the very top, facing south. Upon entry to the building, this bird had flown up toward these windows and had crashed into the glass. Half expecting it to be dead from the impact, I was mildly surprised to see it walking along the ledge as it tried to find a way through.

Persistence
As I had learned from ts2bx Mrs. Farrago and our birds, I knew that this little bird knew only three things in its predicament: first, that outside was where it wanted to be, needed to be, and that something unseen (the window) was preventing it from getting there; second, that it only felt safe as long as it was as high up from the ground below as it could get; and, third, that the beasts from below could only mean it harm as they used apparatuses to climb up close to it, and as they kept throwing small objects at it.

Our arms and backs were tired, my co-worker and me, and we had already stayed very late in order to complete the shoot. The extension ladder I used was tall enough to get me within reach of the bird, but only if the bird would have been co-operative and let me capture it. Of course, such thought was not possible. After about 40 minutes of moving the ladder to and fro, throwing clothespins (a tool of my trade) at it and crashing the ladder against HVAC ducts near the bird to get it to move, and, hopefully, to get it to fly down and see the big open doorway leading to the outside and freedom and safety, and, also hopefully, to make it tired enough to stop flying so I could capture it (something else I learned from my short-lived bird ownership), I had to give up. I resigned myself to the reality that this bird was doomed to die on the ledge at the top of our warehouse. And I went home.

Wednesday night all I could think about was that bird and how I fully understood his predicament. No matter how gingerly I climbed the ladder, no matter how altruistic my intentions, the bird only knew to flee, for it is programmed with the instinct to suspect that any creature – other than fellow birds sharing his food sources – wants to eat him.

Thursday promised to be a busy day, as well, as the company owner had another freebie shoot scheduled for late in the day, but with VIPs this time, and we had to clean out the studio in preparation for the new carpeting that was coming in, and I had to shoot a couple of pickup shots for a video we had shot a couple weeks ago. And then there was my preoccupation with that bird. Expecting him to have died of starvation/dehydration/stress shock overnight, I was happy to see him still pacing the windows in the morning. Several times over I told myself – and the bird – that he was going to die, but every time I looked up there and saw that pathetic thing bumping the windows in futility, I just knew I had to keep trying to catch it. Several of my other co-workers suggested pellet guns, shotguns, insecticide, ad nauseam, but I couldn't let it die without giving it my best shot. Every last one couldn't figure out why the bird wouldn't just fly down to the open cargo door, but those people all transferred human reason to an animal with the brain the size of a peanut that only acts on instinct, and then called it stupid when it couldn't find its way to freedom.

At lunch, on a run for some props for the pickup shots, I also went to a sporting goods store and bought a fishing net, under the premise that if it can happen once, it'll happen again, so it's good to have a net on hand for future blundering birds.

While I was occupied with the pickup shot, one of my co-workers – one of the "pellet gun solution" sect – took up the net and actually had the bird in it, but, due to the ceiling structure and its various obstacles, he couldn't reach the net to secure the bird in it. When he pulled the net free of the obstacles, the bird escaped.

We did the late afternoon shoot, and I cleaned up and put away the gear. I looked up at the skylights and said to myself that if I couldn't get the bird down after one more try, he would indeed die up there. I scanned the ledge from below and I did not see the bird pacing. I had opened the cargo door again and left the warehouse for several minutes. I hoped against hope that he had blundered his way back out the door, but suspecting that was not the case, I hauled out the extension ladder and climbed up to the skylight again. There, off to my left some ten feet away sat the forlorn – and exhausted – bird. He was grey of feather and looked somewhat like a dove, perhaps a fledgling. He had not flinched when my head popped up at his level, so I knew he had given up. After 28 hours of repeatedly hitting an all but invisible barrier, with no food and no water, he had no energy to even care that one of the beasts from below had climbed once again to the level of his perch.

I moved the ladder closer to where I had seen him. My perspective at his level didn't translate too well at ground-level, so when I placed the ladder based on my judgment of distance, I had put myself almost directly in front of where he sat. Again, when I poked my head up over his ledge – now a mere foot away from him, he didn't move. The fishing net in hand, now, I raised it to within view. He didn't move until the net approached him. Fortunately he flapped himself right into a corner of window and frame. I placed the net over him and he flew up into it, and then fell over the ledge and into the deepest part of the net, weighing it down against the edge of the net-hoop. With my free hand I cinched the net closed over the bird, which still had enough energy to peck at my fingers. I called to the co-worker who had helped me the prior evening to let her know I had him. Then, just in case this bird truly did have a death wish, I closed the cargo door(!) and took him outside to the grass behind our building. I released my hold on the net and dumped him out onto the grass, where he…stayed. I reached a hand out to him and he reacted by flapping and moving away from me, but only a few feet. I moved toward him again, this time a little faster, and he flew into a low bush.

I don't know if he made it. I checked the bush a few minutes later and he was gone. He was definitely not on the ground next to the bush, but I don't know if that means he flew away somewhere safer, or if something came along and ate him.

I don't know what this experience says about me. It was just a little bird whose cousins die by the thousands every day, little deaths in the grilles and under the wheels of cars, into the jaws of cats and dogs and foxes… Why did I care so much about this bird? Was it that I felt I could help it? I actually risked injury by climbing to the highest reach of an extension ladder several times to try to catch him. What drove me? His freedom? My aversion to retrieving his corpse a couple days later?

That little bird told me something about persistence…the persistence of instinct and the persistence of compassion. It just seemed to me that, as long as he kept trying to fly through that invisible barrier to freedom, I had to keep trying to help him get there. He told me that even though such a little life lost is inconsequential, that little life still living is worth some effort to save.

Or I'm just a sentimental idiot.