The Chickadee

It began with a soft thump at the door wall, one slow Saturday afternoon. I knew what it was right away. Doorwalls are like open sky and air to birds, just a sheet of space and nothing. And with a feeder on the porch, the glass looks like just another direction to fly.

I peered through the doorwall to the green artificial grass carpet on the tiny porch, from my apartment that is suspended between forest and lake. Home to swans, sandhill cranes, Canadian geese, and a myriad of perching birds that serenade me most melodiously, from dawn till last fair blush of sunset. Cooing doves, warbling happy robins, cardinals and finches, jousting jays and blackbirds, raucous crows, and chickadees, singing eponymously...chickadee-dee-dee.

Onomatopoeia. Chickadee-dee-dee.

Huddled down against the plastic grass, the tiny bundle of black and gray, wings folded in rest, eyes half closed in a daze. A black capped chickadee. I huddled down against the drab carpet of my livingroom, with only the glass separating us. And watched him.

Tiny barely visible expansions of his chest showed he still breathed. And his eyes flickered, once twice, three times. My daughter left her perch on the couch, that being a lazy Saturday place to sit, book in hand, and came to cuddle against me, head to my shoulder.

“Oh, poor thing.” she whispers. “Can we pick him up?”

“We better not. Might scare him more.”

So we sat, by the glass and watched his fluttering eyes, the barely visible pulsations of his chest, sat and watched and prayed. I am a nurse for people with brain injuries. Now, I think, I am watching a bird with a concussion, from flying headlong, perhaps panicked, into my door wall.

Minute by minute we watched, and I prayed silently, knowing that God counted the very hairs on my balding head, and knew the fall of every sparrow, and the concussions of every chickadee.
Others came to the feeder, one by one. Chickadees, finches, a blackbird. From minute to minute, this little one, so tiny, so still, fluttered an eyelid or opened its beak a degree or two. Another chickadee came to the feeder, calling its name.

Chickadee-dee-dee.

Chickadee-dee-dee.

And the little one on the grass carpet stirred and its eyes opened a bit more.

More minutes passed, crawled, while Jennifer’s head grew heavy on my shoulder.

Chickadee-dee-dee.

And the little one opened its eyes all the way, gave a tiny shake to its wings, peeped a tiny peep.

More minutes. I prayed. Jennifer sighed.

“Will he be okay?”

“I don’t know. I hope so. Let’s wait and see.”

Chickadee-dee-dee. From his kin at the feeder.

His eyes startle open, wings flutter and stretch. Matchstick legs flex and raise him.

Chickadee-dee-dee, he responds, and looks around, up at the feeder.

Minutes more, just a few. His kin flutter away, startled by a dove on the railing.

Chickadee-dee-dee. And then they are back at the feeder. His wings flutter hard several times, he calls back, Chickadee-dee-dee. And suddenly takes flight.

A minuscule explosion of wings. Up to the feeder. He hangs from the peg on the feeder, helps himself to a sunflower seed, gripped between tiny claws, tap tap tapping it open for the kernel. And another. Then is gone.

Chickadee-dee-dee.

I like to think that there is a lesson for all of us, in the life of this tiny bird. Not for people with one disability or another only, but for any of us who have run headlong into life and fallen kersplat, stunned and shaken.

Take a few minutes. Dust yourself off. Listen to your friends. And take wing again.

Chickadee-dee-dee.