a little visitor

I was in the backyard and heard a 'peep peep' and out of the sky there came a wee visitor.

I ran inside to get my camera and take his picture before he flew away. As I got closer to get a better picture he tried to fly away, and I realized that he couldn't fly yet.

So I tried to pick him up (not sure what I was planning on doing with him yet) and he coasted off my hand and right into the recycling bin. There was no way he would have gotten out of there on his own, so I lifted out all the bottles and got him out of there. By that time he was quite docile, and was quite content to hang out on my hand. I figured I'd show the kids before figuring out what to do with him. There was a lot of cooing and oohing and aahing - "He's so cute!"

Kaelan tried to find some worms for him to eat, but he wasn't much interested. Gratefully it's a myth that all birds abandon their babies if they smell like humans - I didn't really feel much like hand-feeding worms to a baby chickadee indefinitely. The website I went to advised that we put him up in a tree near the place he fell out, and wait for him to call his parents. So I put some fluff in one of our birdfeeders and set him in there. He quickly hopped onto a branch and started scree'screeing for his parents, and within seconds, the Mommy bird had flown over to him and guided him back to their tree.

He coasted over to her and followed her up the woodpile, onto the bike spokes, and onto the treads.

Unfortunately, the baby bird wasn't able to follow Mommy from the bike tire to the fence and then to the tree, so I went over and lifted him from the bike tire onto the fence.

From there he hopped onto the branches and slowly, cautiously, started making his way back up the tree to his nest.

Nature works.

Way. Cool.

Then we bought some encyclopaedias from a Bulgarian door-to-door salesman.

The end.

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