Bird Boy

After moving to our new house six months ago, I've become sort of a bird nerd. We live on the edge of some woods and routinely see birds that I haven't seen my entire lifetime living in the city.

Today, my daughter found an injured bird on the side of our house. It was lying upside down with its beak open and looked dead. After looking a bit closer we discovered that the bird was alive.

I picked it up, and it was limp. It offered no resistance as I turned over to look for any signs of injury. It seemed as if it had been paralyzed somehow. I assumed it had been hit by a car--maybe on a nearby highway, and had managed to fly a mile to our home.I assumed that the bird was a blue bird because, um, it was blue. After looking it up, we decided that it was an Indigo Bunting. We brought the bird inside and I got a pipette that my daughters use to feed their tadpoles and filled it with water. The bird couldn't move its head so I let a little bit of water dribble onto its beak. It quickly slurped up the water and looked a lot more alert. We took it back outside incase it wanted to get airborne.

I continued to feed it water and after a few minutes the bird got back on its feet. Surprisingly, it stayed put in my hand and made no indication that it was frightened as I continued to let it drink. My other daughter came out of the back yard to see what was going on and my wife came outside with the camera and took a few shots.
After about 10 more minutes the bird suddenly looked around--like he had just come out of some sort of daze. I released his bowels into my hand (how nice) and took off into the trees.