One spring morning several years ago I was startled by a thwack at the kitchen window, near our backyard bird feeder. Kamikaze birds are not infrequent at our house, which is more glass than wall. The birds usually shake off the blow after a few seconds and fly away. But not this time. I went to the window and saw a red-bellied woodpecker splayed on the grass and our dog, Allie, racing toward it.
I rushed outside, but not fast enough to intercept Allie, a fleet-footed border collie mix. She took the bird in her mouth and headed for the hemlock hedge. When I caught up to her she looked at me reproachfully. “Give it up,” I said. She allowed me to pry open her jaws and extract the saliva-slicked bird.
I was amazed at the strength of the woodpecker’s wings throbbing against the cage of my cupped hands. I leaned over the fence and set the quivering body down in a patch of myrtle, out of Allie’s reach. I recognized the bird as the male of a pair of woodpeckers who come to our feeder. I hoped he would fly away, but he only twitched and fluttered.
I crouched down and studied him feather by feather. His red-capped head was askew. His needlelike beak pointed toward his left shoulder, which was hunched up, Quasimodo-like. I could see the reddish belly feathers that inspired his name, like a bloody red thumbprint on his abdomen. His wings, white with black stripes like rows of newsprint, flapped pitifully as he hopped a few steps and tried to become airborne. He fixed his eye on me, shiny and liquid as a drop of black paint. He emitted a gravelly, indignant cry.
I couldn’t bear to think of the injured bird becoming supper for one of the coyotes or hawks that live in our neighborhood. I enfolded him in a dishtowel and put him in a cardboard box in the garage with a handful of birdseed and a small dish of water.
I called our veterinarian, who said that a stunned bird can take as long as two or three hours to recover from such a collision. He suggested I leave the bird alone and check on him around lunch time. Ten o’clock. I went to the grocery store. I swept the kitchen floor. Periodically I heard the bird scratching against the sides of the box. I agonized. Birds lead perilous lives, I told myself. Maybe I was foolish not to just let nature take its course. But it was my window and my feeder and my dog that had caused the bird’s injury.
At noon, I went out to check on the bird. I set him out on the grass, expecting him to fly away. He shrieked and flapped but could not get off the ground. I was distraught. I called my husband, Chris, at work. He knows that I prefer animals to most people. I grew up with dogs, cats, horses, and cows and I had rescued two Thoroughbreds from the racetrack and trained them for alternative careers. He assured me I was doing everything I could and suggested I do some research online about rescuing wild birds.
I found several websites relating to wildlife rescue in New England, and left messages on answering machines. In my hunt for information, I discovered that downy woodpeckers mate for life; I surmised that their red-bellied cousins probably did, too. I wondered what my injured bird’s mate was doing in his absence. Was she puzzled? Worried? Did birds, like people, go off on rambles and sprees and return later as if nothing had happened?
The next morning I carried the box out to the driveway again. Condition unchanged. No joyous ascending farewell. He squawked at me — accusingly, I thought. My feeder. My window. My dog.
One of the wildlife people I’d left a message for called me back. She suggested that I take the bird to the wildlife clinic at the Tufts veterinary hospital near Worcester. Of course, I said, I’d be happy to do that. I had made the 60-mile trip to Tufts several times with injured dogs and horses. The woman cautioned me not to play the radio in the car or talk, because loud noises can shock birds literally to death. I drove in silence, spooked occasionally by the scrabblings of the bird in the back seat. I imagined what would happen if he managed to escape: “Woman killed in freak car accident; unlikely passenger, a woodpecker, also injured.”
The receptionist at Tufts handed me an intake form and asked if I’d be willing to make a contribution. Because the bird didn’t belong to me, I wasn’t under any obligation to pay for its care. I gave her 50 dollars and filled out the form. At the bottom was a box to check if I’d be willing to fetch the recovered bird and release it in its own territory. I checked “yes.”
A nurse came to take the bird away. She said they would X-ray him to determine whether he had broken any bones. If he had, they would euthanize him. If he had only soft tissue damage, they would do their best to bring him back to health. She told me I could call any time to check on the bird’s progress.
Driving home, I thought about the process of X-raying a woodpecker. How would they keep the bird still? What sort of apparatus could record the image of such miniscule bones? The following day I called the hospital to find out what the X-ray had revealed. Good news, the nurse told me. The bird’s skeleton was intact and the prognosis for full recovery was good.
Over the next week I called a couple of times to see how he was doing. The nurse reported that he was not yet flying but seemed in good spirits. The news raised my spirits, too.
At the beginning of the third week I called again. The nurse went to check on the bird and said, “He’s still not flying, but he must be feeling better, because the note on his cage says that he’s escaped a few times.”
A few weeks later I came home to find a note my teenage son Tommy had scribbled beside the phone: “Bird ready for pick up.” It took me a few seconds to catch the message’s meaning.
“He’s all yours,” said the young man at the wildlife clinic, handing me a closed cardboard box punched with holes. The bird was quiet for the first part of our drive, and I was relieved when he fluttered his wings as we crossed the railroad tracks at Thorndike.
Chris and Tommy were waiting for us at home. With great solemnity I placed the box near a stand of hickory trees. Chris and I unfolded the cardboard flaps. The bird quivered and looked around but did not move. I tipped the box slightly so he could see the grass. He stepped out, raised his wings, and took off like a rocket for the trees. Another bird swooped down to join him and in a blink they disappeared. We burst into cheers and applause. Surely this was his mate, we agreed, and she was scolding him: “Where the hell have you been?”
Since then I have been putting special woodpecker food in the feeder. A red-bellied woodpecker comes to dine there every spring. I think of him as my special friend, but I’ll never know if he’s the same bird I rescued several years ago. He seems to fly just fine.