Little lovely balls of life and sad endings

This afternoon, as we were heading out the door yet again, a little bird flew into our kitchen window and knocked itself out. I heard a clunk, saw a flurry of feathers, and the poor thing was on top of our trash can. I've had this happen a couple of times. Each time I have placed the little creature in a safe spot, a nearby bush or something similar, and come back an hour or so later to find it gone. I can only hope that in these cases the bird came back to it's senses and flew away. This time I held the little bird, a female yellow-rump warbler, and wasn't so sure. So tiny it easily fit in the palm of my hand, it had put a noticeable kink in it's bill. It also kept opening and closing it's bill and eyes periodically. I couldn't be sure it had regained consciousness or that it's wasn't severely damaged. Torn between knowing my handling could be stressing it, and wanting to keep it warm, I held it for a little while. We had to leave though, so my daughter made a little nest for it in the bushes between some branches, I put the warm bundle in them, and we went off to our class.

An hour and a half later we returned and it was dark. My daughter went out to check on it and reported that she believed it had died. It was still there and not moving. I know this is something that happens all of the time, birds flying into windows, but I felt so sad that such a beautiful little thing had ended it's life in such a random way.

I realized that the light had been at just the right angle to cause a reflection of the trees in our yard, and must have confused her. A head-on collision at full speed can be devistating. You can be sure, that now that I've take down my hummingbird feeder, I'll be finding something else to put up on the window to disrupt the illusion. Apparently a good half of birds colliding with windows in this fashion don't make it.

You may have had something like this happen to you. A good article on the topic, by the people at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, can be found here. Here is what they say you should do if this happens:

If you find a bird dazed from a window collision, examine it for external injuries. If the wings are both held properly, neither dangling, and the eyes seem normal, see if it can perch in a branch unassisted. If so, leave it to recover on its own.

If the bird has a noticeable injury, get it to a rehabber as quickly as possible. Broken bones usually need proper attention within minutes or hours to heal properly without surgery. Use this online directory to find a rehabber near you.

Meanwhile, place it in a dark container such as a shoebox, and leave it somewhere quiet, out of reach of pets and other predators, for 15-minutes. If the weather is extremely cold, you may need to take it inside, but don’t keep the bird too warm. Do not try to give it food and water, and resist handling it. The darkness will calm the bird while it revives, which should occur within a few minutes unless it is seriously injured. But do not open the box indoors to check on it! Take it outside every 15-minutes or so and open the box—if it flies off, that’s that! If it doesn't recover in a couple of hours, take it to a wildlife rehabilitator. Remember that, technically, it is illegal to handle a migratory bird without a permit. Few state or federal officials are concerned with keeping a bird for a few minutes or hours in the process of bringing it to a licensed facility, but in the United States it is absolutely illegal, as well as cruel and unethical, to keep in captivity any bird protected by the Migratory Bird Act.