With a huge bang a starling flew into a high window of the neighbours. Through the windowsill the animal fell down a few meters, bounced up from the roof of an extension and then fell with a new blow on the stones in our garden, after which the body bounced for a while, with the sound of a chicken breast, something drier maybe.
The starling lay half on its back, one wing shoulder drawn high, its bill wide open. The heart was beating tremendously, the animal was breathing very fast. Were these his last breaths? What should I do? What could I do? No saucer of water helped or a membership of the Bird Protection.
I like starlings, they are my favorite birds. They make those beautiful shapes in the air, swirling and spiraling. I thought they would have new feathers by now, in preparation for the trip to warmer areas, but maybe this one had just arrived from colder regions, as it was still speckled all white from the wear on the feathers.
The swarms are getting smaller. It strikes me when I cycle or drive through the province, recently also during a longer trip to the east of Germany – small swarms everywhere, radically thinned out, no longer worth the name swarm, no longer capable of a decent air show. What is going on? Is it the bird flu? Is it the manure, the poison, is it the farmers again?
Behind our house, two hundred meters away, is a tall pine tree, the permanent resting place of a swarm. When we moved here eight years ago, you could hear the tree from afar. When the swarm plunged into the garden, the plants and shrubs were bare in three seconds. But every year there are fewer, out of sheer poverty we eat the grapes ourselves these days.
The woman from the Animal Ambulance said on the phone that I could protect the starling from other animals and leave him alone. You wouldn’t believe it when you had heard the bang against the window, but after an hour of staring at the door, apparently irreparably affected, a miraculous recovery often followed. The woman spoke in clear, standard sentences, from which I could tell that I was not the first to call with a window starling that day, nor the last.
So it happened a lot more often, I thought as I went to see how my starling was doing – it had risen again and crawled under the ivy. They were still flying into the windows everywhere, everyone called the Animal Ambulance. The starlings are not doing well, but as long as they could give the Animal Ambulance extra work, they might not be lost forever.
A flat thump against a window here and there, a cracked neck – we had to enjoy it while we could.