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Thursday, October 25, 2007

Great story, no picture

blackbird
[Edited, at long last, to add in the missing picture!]
My camera is (temporarily, I hope) missing, hence no photos for the last few days. In it, is a picture to illustrate the following story. On Rick's suggestion, my daughter and I went to visit the Sharon Pheasant Farm - less than a mile from my house, I drive by it every day but have never noticed it before. We drove up and parked by a very large enclosure - it seemed to be the size of a couple of soccer fields and had an entire corn field inside. Oh, and what looked like a thousand pheasants.

The house looked dark, and I didn't see a car there, so I wasn't sure whether I wanted to explore very far. We walked just a few steps closer and all the birds set up a huge squawk and started flying away down to the other end. I was about to leave, for fear of upsetting the birds while the owner was away, but I noticed a red-winged blackbird was stuck in the fence - it was a wide chicken-wire, and the bird's head and neck had gone all the way through the hole. I would have had to go inside the enclosure to rescue it, so I ran over to the house and knocked just in case someone was there. No luck.

Ella and I had a quick conference: trespass and save the bird? or leave it there? She and I agreed: save the blackbird, save the world! I went through the first door, past an outer enclosure, and through another - lucky it was unlocked!

I felt around the bird's body to see if the wire was embedded in its flesh, but it wasn't - I thought it probably hadn't been there very long. The bird tried to bite me when I wrapped my hand around it, but couldn't get its head around. Its feet were gripping the mesh, and I was pretty sure I couldn't unwind the toes without hurting it. At first I tried to push its head backwards to get it out (though it would still have been stuck inside the enclosure) but it wouldn't go backwards, so then I pushed its shoulders down and through the hold its head was in - bingo - it immediately flew out of the fence, but was still inside the outer part of the cage and was flapping against the fence on the ground. It was simple to corner it and gently grasp it. I brought it out to show Ella, and of course take a few photos. Finally I let it fly away, and it winged up into a nearby tree, seemingly unharmed. And that's the last time I saw my camera! I have another one, and will catch up soon, but I hope I find this one as I like it a lot! And I really wan to show you the photo that will prove my story is true!

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I hope you didn't actually lose the camera by laying it down somewhere?

I did enjoy the story.

7:53 AM  
Blogger Icarus said...

Yes, what happened to the camera? I want to see a red-winged blackbird! Well done both of you for your contribution to animal liberation

And congrats to you too! Now, you tell me, what kind of a coincidence is that? I mean, both of us, in the same couple of days? Outstanding. Wait a bit, mail coming..promise!

4:21 PM  

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