birds – Old Soul Medicine Crow

Spring has been showing off this year, authentically owning herself in all her glory. Enough warm days to coax me outside, enough cool days to curtail a full-on summer. A slow and appropriate transition from my hibernation and an ally for my body’s reset. Rather than a Boomer or Gen X, I categorize myself as a Perennial. No matter how hard the winter, it’s time for me to come back to life.

For several months, I’ve been recovering from minor issues that caused major disruptions to my daily digestive functioning. Between brain fog and fatigue, I’ve struggled to complete tasks. Everywhere I look—inside and outside the house—is a job that needs to be done…or is half-done and waiting to be completed. Finally, I feel enough energy and gumption to tackle a real project.

I check my growing list. I am torn between painting the other half of my office and cleaning out more raised beds, both are works in progress. Seventy degrees and sunny with a slight breeze tips the scales toward gardening. On my way to retrieve the tiller, I pass a birdhouse that fell off its post this winter during a heavy snow storm. I make a mental note to add it to my list. I’ve watched bluebirds come and go from this three-compartment complex every spring since I moved in (2012) but now it lies upside down beneath the carport. I’ve been planning its repair since January. I chastise myself for not having the condos move-in ready before spring.

As the day progresses, I successfully transition 4 raised beds from hard-packed weed infested patches to powdery rich soil ready for planting. It feels good to play in dirt and actually energizes me a bit. From another bed, I rescue strawberries from an overgrowth of mint that was never meant to happen. Luckily, strawberries leaf out earlier than mint with roots close to the surface. If it weren’t for the aggressive spreading, mint would make a good companion for strawberries because it helps to repel insects. But once the spearmint emerges, it grows tall and I can’t find the strawberries. This mint has taken over two beds and is threatening the whole garden.

In spite of my frustration with the invader, I hate killing healthy plants. Spearmint is beautiful, aromatic, medicinal and tasty which is why I let it get a stronghold before doing something about it. I love it in iced tea but never again will I plant it in the ground…anywhere. Rookie mistake. This sweet green interloper wasn’t even planted in my garden, on purpose. It was a sleeper cell lying dormant in some rich black topsoil I absentmindedly borrowed from my flower beds against the house.

Mint is almost impossible to kill, especially without commercial poisons. The roots are thick, insidious cords that snake beneath ground surface and create a mat that smothers out all other plants. Before my eradication efforts, which will include digging, removing, and smothering with salt, vinegar and dish detergent, I transplant some pieces into a big pot. Hopefully I can contain it this time. I fill three black garbage bags—33 gallons each—with knotted roots. This year, these beds will sleep beneath a man-made cocoon of thick black plastic, fed with vinegar and salt.

By late afternoon, I find myself energetically surprised and feeling pretty good about my accomplishments. I decide to tackle the birdhouse. Living on land handed down through generations means I am always following the footsteps of my ancestors (and sometimes feel them following me). My father made this tri-plex aluminum condo on a base of plywood. After thirty plus years, the underneath side rotted despite the fact that he wrapped the topside in metal. When he built the house, he placed it on a metal rod in the front yard and planted a small lilac bush at its base. I found an old picture of his proud new installation. Now, the lilac has grown to heights above the house and the birds fly in and out of the middle of the bush. We sometimes trim the bush back but I imagine the birds like the clandestine approach. My job is to chip out the old plywood so Gregg, my companion, can replace it. I move the box to a sidewalk so I can easily sweep up the mess. It looks like broken pieces of shredded wheat.

I look around for a container in which to carry the pieces to our backyard fire pit. As many Amazon deliveries as we get, there is usually a cardboard box lying around somewhere but not today. Under the carport is a recycling bin, practically empty. I lift out two random items and find a butterfly lying open winged at the bottom. I presume it’s dead.

I stare at it, admiring the colors, wondering how it came to die at the bottom of the recycling bin. It moves. “Oh, are you stuck?” I asked. I reach down and lift it out of the bin. It does not try to flutter away from me. A portion of its right forewing has been chewed off, along with a third of its right antennae. “I know how you feel,” I say. “I’ve been feeling a little chewed up myself.” Yes, I talk out loud to creatures great and small, visible and invisible. I decide the butterfly has probably sought refuge from one of the relentless mockingbirds. Could she not muster the strength for a 2 feet vertical lift? Is it chance that I found her? Or divine intervention? I had no idea I would actually get to the birdhouse today after months of seeing it in disrepair. I have never emptied or looked inside the recycling bin as long as it’s been here. That has always been Gregg’s job, but had he emptied it he was not likely to pay attention to a butterfly.

I hold her in the open palm of my hand. She turns to face me, an acknowledgment of our connection. I am always grateful for close encounters with nature and for the random nudges that push me toward them. It lifts my spirit to witness miracles, especially when I can be a part of someone else’s.

My new companion is in no rush to leave my hand. I still don’t know if she can fly or if this is indeed the end for her. I plan to lower her to the ground beneath blades of tiger lilies for a more restful refuge, but first I want to study her. It looks as if someone has taken a tiny spray can of iridescent blue glitter paint and arched a half-moon line across the top of her tail wings. Falling glitter sprinkled like stardust across her remaining black canvas. On her underneath side the artist was simply showing off with splashes of orange dots lining her wings. I gently lower her beneath the canopy, thinking at the very least she can capture an insect for her last supper. Before touching her feet to the earth, she turns one more time to face me, then promptly takes flight and lands in a tree thirty feet away. Such tenacity! Even with a half-chewed wing, she flies! Immediately I feel it. This! This is the message I needed to receive today. The push to come back to life after a backset. Today, I have something in common with a spicebush butterfly, she lifts my spirit and reminds me how to push forward. We are each other’s miracle and I am grateful.

Once, in a philosophic moment, a dear friend posited that maybe the best we can hope for in our otherwise mundane existence is to experience intermittent “gasps of joy” to propel us forward. We need only be alert and grateful when a “gasp of joy” arrives. Helping this butterfly out of the recycling bin brought me joy. Having her sit in my hand, seemingly unafraid, brought me joy. Realizing that our encounter was perfectly timed for each of us brought wonder and awe. It was a late afternoon last minute decision to work on the birdhouse. I could have used a regular trash can for the debris, or a box, or simply swept up the pieces and carried them to the back yard fire pit but I chose the recycling bin where it just so happened an injured butterfly was stranded. Random or guided? I think maybe our lives can be measured by the string of joyful experiences we hold in our hearts. I choose to believe my spirit team is vast and enjoys this playfulness as much as I do.

On Monday as I was leaving the office I found, at the bottom of the steps outside our back door, a mother and her teenage daughter mulling over what to do about an injured bird. As our steps lead almost directly to the street, the bird had possibly been hit by a car. It was stunned with one wing oddly askew like it might be broken. I stopped to assess the damage. It was as if we all knew, the mother, the daughter, me and maybe even the bird that I was the one taking it home.

The mother and daughter wouldn’t know this but I had once successfully raised a baby crow who lived voluntarily in our trees for quite a while after it fledged. I could come outside and yell its name and down it flew to land on my arm for a snack. After I thought it was grown and gone it twice returned injured for a safe place to recover. But that was a baby I’d once fed mashed up worms. It remembered it’s mama Crow. Crows have long memories. This bird, which I first thought was a swallow and later proved to be a chimney swift, hadn’t intentionally sought me out…or had it. Injured animals seem to gravitate toward me. I used to take evening walks to the local courthouse to watch the swifts come in. We called them “sweeps”. My work office is less than one block from that same courthouse. The bird had been injured and landed in the path I take every day. Unbeknownst to me a co-worker had seen it four hours earlier and had decided to leave it but check on it later. Then, the mother/daughter duo worried over it but had no intentions of touching or moving it. I am no stranger to animal rescue. I immediately picked it up. Because of Covid I still had plastic gloves readily available. Thanks to the Beverly Hillbillies there is probably a whole slew of women my age who grew up with the nickname Ellie May for their propensity to capture injured animals and try to nurse them back to health. That’s what Mom called me but I was rarely successful. Nature is a great teacher.

It was a hard lesson to learn but it’s often better to let nature take its course…unless I know there is something I can do. I am quicker to recognize impending death these days. But I still can’t leave the dying to die alone. In this case, my instinct to take the bird might have also been driven by my attempt to relieve the mother’s guilt for disappointing a brooding teenage daughter. I could tell they both needed to think they had done all they could. I could give them that. I took the bird because that’s what I do. I couldn’t let it lay in the gravel and grass until a neighborhood cat decided to make it a toy, or the sun dehydrated it. I thought at the very least, I’d give its death some dignity. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d provided this service. Death Doula to people and animals. Even as I placed it in a cardboard box, I dreaded telling my boyfriend/housemate about our new roomy. He wasn’t around for my dog rescue days so he may not be fully aware of my proclivities to drag in injured animals.

First, I took it to the same veterinarian who helped me with dog rescue to see if its wing was indeed broken. “Looks like it is fractured,” she confirmed. She did not set bird wings but gave me the name of another veterinarian who treated birds. Selfishly I wondered what it might cost and if I was willing to bear that cost. Domestic pets, it turns out, are the only birds veterinarians treat. I called three vets who all said to call wildlife rescue. The only wildlife rescue I could find informed me their Kentucky affiliates had no permit for songbirds which meant the swift and I were on our own. As I write this, it occurs to me, my daughter is attending the latest Taylor Swift Album release in a movie theater. She is decidedly a “swiftie”. I have never listened to Taylor Swift’s music but this little bird has turned me into a “swiftie” as well. Its slim cigar-like torso and pointed wings, the gray top feathers melting into a snowy underside and the sweet way it turned its head to look directly at me when I held it in front of my face or slowly closed its eyes when I stroked its back, made me fall in love. Its beak was as delicate and tiny and black as the tip of a cat’s toenails, but not curved. Looking straight on, its eyes and short bill resembled the face of a turtle, so that’s what I called it. Turtle. It should be said that both sexes look alike in this species and I have no way of knowing whether Turtle was male or female. I deemed her female for no good reason at all.

I hate that we rely on google for so much of our information these days but it is a wealth of knowledge. I did read in my old-fashioned bird books as much as I could about the species, but they don’t tell what to do if you find one with a broken wing. Anyway, google said to keep it still and in a dark place to prevent further injury and then immediately take it to wildlife rescue. Immediately. So much for that advice. I did start it out in a small cardboard box with a makeshift nest of dried grass. The way it climbed up and positioned itself on the side of the box made me research further and realize it was a chimney swift. Whenever I picked it up, its talons clung to my finger like a baby’s first instinct to grasp, another tip that it was a swift. Turns out chimney swifts don’t perch on branches like other birds. They fly for hours or even days at a time, taking their food on the wing. They are aerial acrobats, almost always moving. Most of their diet consists of flying insects so they are extremely beneficial to humans in that way, cleaning up mosquitos and other pests. When they do land for the evening or to make a nest, they cling to the inside of a hollow tree…or a chimney or other tunnel-like structure. Their clinging feet are necessary to adhere to vertical, sometimes slick, surfaces. I anthropomorphized this grasping behavior as if the bird were holding onto me for its very life. That kind of oxytocin release reminded me of all the dog rescue I engaged in during my empty nest years.

Hundreds of dogs I took home from the shelter, bathed and housed. (All dogs come home from the shelter with the same foul odor.) It only took the first bath after leaving the shelter for a dog to follow me faithfully and make me their person. I knew what I was doing while I was doing it—avoiding the pain of my daughter’s impending exit, the truth of my dysfunctional marriage—but I ran into all kinds of rescue folk over the years who were unaware of the lonely hole they were desperately trying to fill. It’s easy to believe an animal loves you when you’ve intervened on their behalf. For the most part, I kept my head about me. The veterinarians I worked with liked my ability to be realistic. Once I knew a dog’s personality, I ran a match-making service with local families to place it in a forever home. I became addicted to learning each personality and it’s true the feel-good sensation of unconditional love is immeasurable. Rescue work is rewarding, but dirty and filled with harsh realities.

I was right about my boyfriend’s response. Gregg was mostly concerned about diseases and insisted I disinfect every place I’d even set the box. I explained that the bird was in a small box which was inside a bigger box so there were two layers between it and any surface. He didn’t buy it. I googled again to find that chimney swifts aren’t known for carrying diseases and are no threat to humans. Sometimes their nests attract mites but I had no nest. Histoplasmosis is a fungus that can grow in bird poop once it has composted but it doesn’t exist in the poop itself as it comes from the bird. I hoped this might waylay Gregg’s fears but I doubted he’d be any happier. He insisted I leave the bird and its box outside.

I wondered how I was going to feed “Turtle”. They prefer to catch insects in the air but that was not likely from inside a box. Although I did catch a couple of spiders and a fly for her. She was either not impressed or still in shock from the jolt that upended her carefree existence. The book said when insects were scarce swifts would eat seeds or berries so I placed both in a shallow dish alongside a saucer of water. I knew not to force feed with a dropper for fear of setting up pneumonia but I did offer a droplet near her mouth and it opened for two swallows of water.

After the first night, I thought the tiny bird needed some daylight to inspire its recovery. I didn’t have a bird cage but I exchanged its dark box for a small cat carrier. I attached hardware cloth on the door’s grid to prevent escape or the patient’s cock-eyed wing from getting stuck through the openings. The new space brought new movement. That screened door became her favorite roosting spot since it was easy to hold onto. I still couldn’t tell if she was eating but the food got dispersed as she moved about the cage so at least she knew it was there. Gregg knew I was concerned and joked that I could tie its feet to a string and swing it in the air to catch insects. He thinks he’s funny. But then he did have an interesting idea of putting a piece of fruit in the cage to attract insects, which I tried.

I didn’t have any real expectation that the bird would live. I thought at most it wouldn’t die by predator. But as one day turned to two and then three with more activity each day, I started to think of possibilities. I decided I’d give it a couple more days in the cat carrier and graduate it to a dog crate. I have a large one left from my humane society days because with me, you never know. I would create a chimney in one corner so it could roost properly and if I saw it gliding down from there, even for two wing flutters, I would find a safe place to open the cage and see if it could take flight. Then, I worried that it would live but not fly. Was I prepared for long-term care? What kind of life would it be to go from aerial freedom to living in a cage? Neither of us wanted that. I envisioned building a greenhouse, something I’d been wanting anyway, so it could have some semblance of an outdoor life. It was curious to me how many images google had of chimney swifts sitting in the palm of someone’s hand. I had taken that picture myself. Most bird pictures aren’t featured in someone’s hand. Do people make pets of them? I read that some swifts have been known to live as long as 12 years in the right conditions, yet the average lifespan is about two years. I had no idea how old this bird was. She looked so young and delicate to me yet she was the size of a full grown swift.

Then, on Thursday night, she died. It had been her most active morning and I’d seen her climbing the wire door in the middle of the day but by nightfall, she lay face down on the bottom of the cage. She could have starved but she pooped every day so I thought not. Maybe her body couldn’t take the shock. My guess after the fact is that she had an infection which I had not known to treat. I know she would have died anyway, without my intervention. Still, I wish I could have done better by her. I really don’t know how I would have administered antibiotics but I will think about it next time…because…there will be a next time.

I am grateful to Turtle for bringing me a whole new awareness and appreciation for chimney swifts. They are amazing creatures with a soft heart and a gentle soul. I don’t know if I made what was left of her life better or worse, but I know this: Death is a sacred act. I have witnessed it many times, with humans and with animals. It is sad to say goodbye, but it is an honor and a privilege to hold space in those last holy moments. At least she didn’t die alone. Fly away, little Turtle, fly away.

Category: birds

Lessons from a Spicebush Butterfly

Turtle the Chimney “Sweep”