The building I work in has a glass automatic door with windows on each side, a wall of glass. It’s underneath an aluminum awning. Every once in a while a bird will fly under the awning and if it’s angled just right will splat itself against the door or one of the windows. This happened about 12:30 this afternoon. Poor bird! I donned latex gloves, picked it up and put it out in the little garden area just beyond the entrance. I figured it was a goner because it hit pretty hard. Usually that’s the case when a bird does that.
A few minutes ago, it stood up, shook itself off and flew up into the holly tree in the garden and started munching on little berries. The birdbath in the garden is full thanks to the rain today so if it gets thirsty it can go drink too. It’s sitting in the tree looking a little groggy still but maybe none the worse for wear.
I was once walking into a public building and saw what I thought was a tiny dead hummingbird on the sidewalk. I leaned over to look at it and noticed it was pulsing, so I picked it up. It had probably flown straight into the building’s reflective, mirror-like window to beat up on what it thought was a rival male hummingbird. He was out like a light, but was literally “humming” or buzzing with life in my hand, like his little motor was idling.
I put him gently in the shade of an azalea out of sight of passersby, and when I came out of the building just a couple of minutes later, he was gone. Hopefully he came to and flew off.
Ever so often we’ll be sitting in the living room and we’ll hear a loud “Thwack!”. I’ll walk over to the picture window and there’ll be some bird layed out on the patio, either dead or quite, quite stunned. Why this happens I’ve no idea, seing as how my wife hasn’t a clue as to how to clean a window. A clear reflection they’ll not see and I can thus only assume they’re all Dusty Warblers.
We have a sizable holly tree and, as far as I can tell, the birds ignore the berries until they’ve started to ferment. Then they descend en masse. It’s rather strange watching a flock of clearly tipsy birds zooming around your yard, flying into windows & walls, missing their attempted landings on the edge of the roof gutter, … Luckily, as their flight gets erratic, they also slow down, so most of the collisions seem to do little harm. (Or maybe they’re just anaesthetized.)
We had a hummingbird knock itself out on our window, also.
I picked it up and put it on the sill to protect it from the area cats, then the kids and I watched it. I was so glad it recovered! First, it just lay there for a bit, then sat up. It wobbled and stuck its tongue out. Shortly, it began to unruffle its feathers, and then finally opened its eyes. After about 10 minutes, it made a full recovery and flew away.
