Giving Goose the Bird

We assumed the bird would be gone in the morning. The previous night we had watched it hopping around in the artificial rain, drinking from the puddles and generally acting as if hadn’t hung from the jaws of a predatory cat just minutes earlier. It looked young. It was hard to tell from its intermittent attempts at flight whether it was still a fledgeling and had not yet learned, or whether it was suffering from a damaged wing. Still, I hesitated to go out and help it since everything told me that if I touched it, the mother wouldn’t allow it back in the nest. Admittedly, if I didn’t help, it was unlikely to find the nest, but I didn’t feel qualified to intervene and I didn’t feel like climbing a tree, clutching a baby bird and hoping I’d find a collection of twigs and knotted leaves amongst its branches.

Certainly, as we patrolled the garden before breakfast, both in dressing gowns, the cat flap firmly locked behind us, the bird was nowhere to be seen. Satisfied, we let Goose out and went to search for coffee and corn flakes.

This time the squawking was loud enough to be heard inside the house. Not just a lone voice either. It seemed that Goose had alerted the local avian neighbourhood watch.

We ran outside to see Goose being dive-bombed by multiple adult blackbirds. Not just the parents, but presumably the avian aunty, uncle and community support officer as well. Despite their efforts, Goose hung grimly on to his prize. In fact, not so grimly. He was delighted. He’d been really grumpy when we’d taken it away from him the previous night, so he was presumably over the moon when he realised we’d just been saving it for later. We all ran into the garden, in pyjamas and crocs. Bethan brought a bowlful of Dreamies. For some reason, Goose didn’t see these are the prime motivator Bethan thought they were. I considered turning on the sprinkler but it was completely the wrong time of day according to my online gardening schedule. Instead, I braved the blackbirds, grabbed Goose and hauled him inside, sans baby bird.

We waited several hours. Then, with cat flap locked and door shut behind us, we went out for another garden patrol. It didn’t take us long to realise that, if we wanted to find the bird we had only one option. We needed Goose.

Cautiously, we fetched our feline starling detector and released him into the undergrowth, ready to dart in if he found anything.

He darted in and out of the undergrowth. We darted in and out of the flowerbed trying to keep up with him. He ducked under trees, darted across the patio… then trotted onto the lawn, rolled over and stretched out in the sunshine.

We haven’t seen the bird since. I’m putting it down to the scarecrow.