This is the first time I’ve had a bird strike at this door. The front door has a little archway around it, so it seems like an unlikely site for strikes. I didn’t want to stress the little guy out too much so I emptied a box and gently helped him in. [Notice: I’m using the male gender because this is likely a reckless male adolescent we’re dealing with here…girls are too smart to crash into a glass door!]
I let Mr. Ovenbird chill out for an hour or so before checking up on him. He had some blood in his mouth and nasal area, but he wasn’t shaking nearly as much.
Generally birds just need some time to recover and then you can let them go. Obviously, if they have a broken wing then you need to take other action. In the case of a little bird like this, I can’t imagine there is much that a rehabilitator could do for them – hopefully one of your rehab people will tell me if I did the right thing…
Anyway after a couple of hours the little dude looked a little better and I wanted to see whether he would fly off if I took him outside. Initially he was just sitting hunched over, but after a couple of minutes he looked more alert. Within 20 minutes he was jumping around and looking more Ovenbird-like. He hopped off and as soon as I came a little closer he flew off into some shrubbery. When I walked closer to the shrubs he flew into a larger tree. I was unable to relocate him which made me feel pretty good.
