When I approached one of the bird feeders yesterday morning, there were two small finches sitting on perches on either side of it.
They allowed me to get within about ten feet without flying away. I stopped and talked to them awhile, then took another step or two closer, at which point one of the birds flew away.
The remaining bird stayed perched on the feeder as I moved closer. I noticed it was making strange movements with its head, as if it was trying to cough something up. I began to suspect that it was sick or injured.
I got to within an arm's length of the little bird, talking to it all the while, and still it did not fly away. It acted as if it didn't know I was there.
Unsure what to do, I stood still and watched it. I noticed then that something was wrong with its eyes. On closer inspection, I saw that it did not have a right eye, and the left eye looked damaged.
It wasn't until I reached my hand out slowly, wondering if I could capture the bird, that it finally realized I was there and flew up into the air, chirping in alarm. It flew in fits and starts up into the trees, doing its best to hover like a hummingbird, clearly unable to see well enough to fly directly to a particular branch. It did finally land on a branch and stayed there awhile. Later I saw it using the same hovering flight pattern to fly to a different branch.
I'm sure I've seen that little bird before, because I recognized the unusual flight pattern. The bird is obviously either blind or nearly blind, and it's a wonder a hawk hasn't gotten it--we have regular hawk visitors to our yard. Maybe a hawk encounter caused the blindness in the first place, and the little bird somehow escaped. Or maybe the bird was blind from birth and injured its eye flying into something.
In any case, it's an inspiration to see how the little bird has managed to survive in spite of a serious handicap. Nature can often appear to be cruel, providing for the elimination of sick, injured, and weak animals.
A friend told me about a friend of hers who raises chickens. One of the peeps was blind at birth. Mama hen rejected it, but my friend's friend kept putting the peep back under the hen's wings with the rest of the peeps.
Before long, the friend was hearing the peep down in the woods, crying for help. After rescuing it several times, she watched one morning and saw the mother hen carry the peep down into the woods and leave it there. Mama was helping nature eliminate the weak. Eventually, not knowing what else to do, the friend left the peep in the woods, allowing nature to take its natural course. But it's hard for some of us humans to let nature be nature.
In any case, it is good to know that sometimes the weak do survive, in spite of nature's attempts to eliminate them. I do not know how long the little blind bird might be able to beat the odds, but for the moment, he or she has somehow managed to adapt.
Bravo, little bird.
