He called to me thrice from his perch on the outside of the fence before making his dilemma clear.
A fat, bright robin clasped the wide wire mesh with his anisodactyl feet just below the wood railing. His hallux – the backward-facing digit – was toward me; the other three digits wrapped the wire and faced the inside of the corral.
I had seen him from my own perch in my upstairs office as I booted up my computer to start the workday. I wondered if he was part of the exuberant songfest I had heard a few hours earlier over the din of the heating kettle.
But when I glanced at him a second time a minute or two later, I wondered why he was still perched on that fence where there was not a scrap of food nor a good vantage point for robiny doings.
I opened the whateveritwas on my screen and began to type. Then my peripheral vision caught some wingbeat that I thought must be the robin taking flight. When I looked directly at him through the office window, I realized that he was flapping his wings and going nowhere.
He was somehow stuck to the fence.
And I instantly took flight myself, in a wondrously fast effort to get outside to help Robin. (Later, I marveled at how I didn’t trip or fall descending the stairs to the first floor, and how I remembered to grab and don my garden gloves as I tossed aside indoor slippers for the garden slip-ons near the front door.) It was one efficient movement to get outside to him.
As soon as I approached and looked at Robin, I could see that his head was jammed between the wide wire mesh and the wooden railing: a vice grip that puzzled and frightened him.
Though I’m not accustomed to touching living birds (as the bulk of those I have handled were deceased), I instinctively reached out and cupped his body in my palms. As always, I was in awe of how lightweight birds are. And this one - a bird whose size dwarfs most of the other songbirds in our yard - ought to feel heavy and substantial, I thought.
I did not pull Robin out of his trap. I simply held him gently and steadily for a moment until he figured out how to rotate his head back out through the opening to release himself. I carried him two paces, faced away from the fence, and opened my palms so that he could find a perch on them. As soon as his feet were stable, he took flight toward the red alders where I suspect he and all my neighbor robins are tending nests. That is the grove of trees from which their song emanates every morning.
Buoyant, I walked back inside. I said aloud, “If I do nothing else today, something significant has already taken place.”
Nature presents in glorious and stuck ways, reminding us of how we demonstrate our own need for steadying support until we too take flight, flourish, and thrive.
Coda:
The robins’ song has continued to robustly emanate from the grove of red alder trees. Two mornings after participating in Robin’s release from the fence, I sat on the damp deck, barefoot and winter-jammies clad. I cupped my hands around a steaming cup of coffee and closed my eyes to swim in the early morning chorus.
Suddenly I saw him – Robin – singing behind my shut eyes! More importantly, I heard him – that particular male robin – with a voice that stood out among the other avian choir members.
And in those few measures of birdsong, I knew I had heard a greeting directly from Robin.
