Recovery

I was kicking around the house one morning about a week-and-a-half ago, before leaving for work, when I heard a clunk at the front door and looked in time to see a bird flutter away from the storm-door window. I looked out the door and saw a little bird, resting splay-winged in a holly bush that sits next to our front step. It recovered somewhat and pulled itself together so that it was not all akimbo, but it was definitely dazed. I watched it move through stages of recovery, thought that it might die when it started slow blinking and, then watched it as it began chirping.

I managed to snap a few decent shots of the concussed bird and pulled out a couple of my bird books and identified it as a Yellow-bellied Fly Catcher. It's not native to my neck of the woods but must have been passing through on its migration south. Before I left for work the Flycatcher had flown into the holly bush and I thought that might be a bad sign, until I heard him chirping more and more as I walked around the bush. As I moved around the front of the holly I noticed that he was sitting on a branch, up high towards the front hanging onto a swaying branch. He was long gone by the time I came home.