Outside looking in

As you may have noticed more than a few of my blog posts have been and will continue to be about some of the birds I see out the window. As I have spent many hours casually observing the barn swallows flitting around, the hawks soaring high overhead and the ravens ‘squaking’ about I never imagined that they might also be looking in at me. Perhaps that is a story line missed in Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Didn’t anybody notice this man with the telephoto lens spying in on everyone? In any case, I believe that at least one little bird was curious as to what I was doing nested up inside this apartment because a few days ago he came to pay me a visit. I was bringing my bike, a folding table and chairs down to my car as I have been using them to survey park visitors for my thesis research. So, I left the front door wide open so I could move them more easily. As I rushed out the door for the last of the items I noticed something move out of the corner of my eye and I saw this little brown bird, almost camouflaged sitting on the couch.

Not the best photo but that's him (center) on the arm of the couch looking right at the camera.
I wanted to get him out of there before he left anything behind.

It was 7:30 am, I was already stressed and a little frazzled about the surveys and this was the last thing I wanted or expected to see. After some girlish screaming I quickly closed the doors to the other rooms of the house and tried to whistle and wave a hand towel to ‘push’ him toward the door. But he kept flying towards the window where he could see the electrical wires that are his usual perch. Like many a US President past and present, he had made it deep behind enemy lines but had failed to plan a proper exit strategy. I closed all the blinds, snapped a quick photo and then hoped he would figure out the front door was his only escape. He finally darted out and up the fire escape to the roof and beyond. I wonder if he tweeted or blogged about his experience, telling the other birds what he found out about that man inside who’s always looking out.