Feathered Friend

We had an unexpected visitor hanging around our front porch Wednesday morning. A pigeon looked like she was trying to find some shelter there. I really don't want birds nesting on the front porch again, as it was rather messy last time that happened. So I went out to chase her from the porch.

When she chose to walk from me rather than fly I suspected something was amiss. Sure enough, she had a leg band, meaning she belonged to somebody, and that somebody would soon be wondering what happened to her. I tried to catch up to her, but her walk changed to a run and I ended up chasing her into the neighbor's garage. Oops.

Appointments kept me from doing anything more about it at the time. But I wondered if she would still be there when we got home.

Around noon we returned home, but we didn't see our feathered friend around, and the neighbor's garage door was now closed. As I was getting organized for lunch I heard a car horn beeping. My neighbor was arriving home and honking at the bird to get it out of her car's path. I went out to help. Soon, the Artist, my neighbor's two preschoolers, and we two ladies were all chasing around this poor confused flightless pigeon. She was not too crazy about closing it back into her garage.

Finally the poor dear was cornered and she turned to bravely face me as I reached for her as gently as I could. My neighbor retrieved the pet carrier I had left inside my back door, and we slipped the pigeon inside it with some water and popcorn kernels. I washed my hands for several minutes with lots of soap.
Now she would be safe from cats and other predators around while I tried to contact the owner. Oh rats! To begin that search I'll need her band information. With all that hand washing for naught, I reached back into the cage and read off the band while the Artist recorded the information for me. My first call was to the pastor who had given a talk and demonstration to our home school group last year. He took the band number and told me he would try to contact the owner's club's secretary, who would in turn call the owner.

In the interim I found my way to the corner drug store for some bird seed and found some websites that gave me some information about how to locate owners as well. For the rest of the day we took frequent breaks to go check on the pigeon. We were pleased to see she had eaten a bit. And I believe she drank some water too, or at least threw some food into the water dish.

It started to rain, so I brought the pet carrier onto the back screened porch. every time the phone rang all afternoon I thought it may be news of the bird's owner, but no luck with that. Until around eight in the evening.

When the phone rang I introduced myself to a retired police man who had released her one full week earlier and wondered what had happened to her. He came to pick up a few minutes later. He looked at her wings and guessed she had probably had an encounter with a hawk, but he thought she would heal and fly again fairly soon. You can see in the picture above her wings don't fold back over her body symmetrically, the right is a little droopy.

It turns out the owner is a friend of the pastor who helped me initially with bird-care advice and locating the owner. Small world!

Twice before he left he asked if we wanted to keep her. I politely declined as we're not ready to take on another pet just yet. And the poor thing looked so miserable cooped in the cat carrier. When I removed her and her daddy took her in his hand she settled down and looked proud as a peacock, happy to be "home".