I woke up this morning and checked: my little finch was still up there. Her feathers were fluffed way out against the foggy chill, her soft gray down showing, but she was alive and she was there.
For about the first hour all the other birds, all species, kept well clear of her feeder. The other was getting low, though, and the morning was getting on, so I leaned my head out the door as if to ask her if she would mind my opening the storage can of seed on the ground near her. I wasn’t going to touch her feeder but neither did I want to scare her into anything.
Her eyes met mine and from there I felt comfortable going on ahead. She watched me at work, still barely moving, no sign of eating, and I wondered how long she could last. I marveled at her determination to survive.
I filled the seed above all the portholes on the one over there;Â the flying circus noticed. Soon I had quite the flock settling in: fledgling finches mostly hopping around gleaning, more of them up on the feeders, jockeying for position. My injured one turned her head this way and that to watch them, and finally one flew over by her. And then another and another, coming and going, one bumping right into her. She ignored him but startled at the next one, spreading a wing wide and pulling it back in quickly. Hey! I did not know she could do that!
I was just wondering where all the squirrels were when a black one showed up and took over ground control. At his sudden incoming, all the little ones took off in a fright immediately followed by half the ones that had been clinging above them.
I had just turned for a moment to watch that sudden flurry happen, turned back, and–she was gone!
I checked the patio. I checked the amaryllis table. I looked about and around and over and under, and again, but no, she really had, she had flown too, much though I wanted to have seen it happen.
Was it one of her babies that had flown off in a fright? Was it simply the call of her flock? I don’t know. But this I do know: a small wild thing trusted me night and day till she was able to care for herself again.
Later, I found myself looking at the anonymous random others of her species that came and went, and wondered, Are you my finch? Too much white in the bar on the wings. Are you the one?
And realized that she who had so claimed me had made all of them mine now.