IT HAD TAKEN a little while for birds to come back to my feeders, but now they are busy enough that it is taking a noticeable chunk of change to keep the feeders filled. I put out mealworms, black oil sunflower seed, thistle seed, and suet. Almost everyone has come back — goldfinches, cardinals, bluebirds, titmice, blue jays, mourning doves, hairy and downy and red-bellied woodpeckers.
I say almost everyone because I have not seen either a chickadee or a white-breasted nuthatch at the feeders even though I hear chickadees all the time. Newcomers are visiting. There is apparently an irruption (a burst of birds not typically regular visitors) of pine siskins this year and they literally flock to the feeders.
Dark-eyed juncos (which some people refer to as snowbirds) have been hanging out here since late fall, both pecking in the dirt driveway and now all around the property anywhere there is not snow cover. And they spend a lot of time around the feeders; I always throw some sunflower and thistle seed on the ground for the juncos, who tend to be ground feeders. And there have been lots of them.
Sparrows and juncos occasionally go into our barn when the large front doors are wide open. They peck around at seed from hay on the aisle floor. Sometimes, they end up high up at the transom windows above both front and back doorways, but eventually, if the doors are open all day, they figure their way out.
The other day I walked into the barn to hear fluttering to my right, in a little room at the front corner of the barn that has served as a grain and tack room for 30 years. The room has feed bunks and stanchions with wood tie rings which run straight east to west on the right side of the aisle of the barn, a structure built in 1834 (the date is written on a beam in this room) partly to house dairy cows. The perpendicular wall, going from the aisle to the south outside wall, that makes this a room was likely constructed to separate sick cows or for weaning calves or maybe just as a milking room — and likely many other things as well but there are the same stanchions with tie rings as the rest of the length of the aisle, so cows definitely spent time here.
I like to think of those historic cows who, during the grazing season, would have been unhitched after being milked, herded into the aisle and out the back doors to a double stone wall (still present) known as a cattle chute into the back pasture, now mostly taken over by the forest.
The room has a south-facing six-pane window. And what I heard fluttering against the window that recent day was a dark-eyed junco. One side of the large sliding front doors had been open all morning, and the door to the tack room is only a half door. Wherever the junco started out when it went into the barn, it likely was attracted to the light of the window. And now could not understand the barrier between it and the wide world it was accustomed to being free in.
I stepped to the left of the room and walked toward the window with the intention of encouraging the junco to fly off to the right and turn to go back out the half door. It did not understand my intention, but just battered itself against the window more. The tired little thing was now just fluttering near the window sill. I decided the quickest way for the bird to be relieved of its dilemma was for me to catch it and bring it outside. If it would let me do that easily, I would.
I did catch the bird easily with my bare hands (yes, I washed my hands immediately after). It was clearly tired. The pretty little thing — a bold bird in its natural habitat but a very vulnerable creature in my hand — was breathing heavily. I had caught it with two hands and then supported it underneath with one and cupped my other hand over its back, its head sticking out. I let the bird rest perfectly still in my hand for a couple of minutes. It did not struggle but just relaxed. I did not try to pet it — despite our best instincts, I knew this was not comforting to a wild bird.
The tiny soft delicate bird started to breathe more normally. I slowly walked out of the grain room to the wide-open front doorway. I lifted my top hand, and it immediately flew off. The bird landed on the top of the horse fence (something juncos rarely do, more of a bluebird move) and seemed to regain some strength before flying off to live the rest of its life.
And I was left with the distinct privilege of having held a little bird in my hand.
