“All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
Julian of Norwich

It is sad. But it happens around our hillside house. We have large windows. With magnificent views from within our comfy inside, we can see many of our small-winged friends flying in and out our Guardian Oak and other trees around our forest garden. Most of our friends are tits, finches, and sparrows. They chase and dive around the house, and speed through narrow openings between tree branches. It can happen that one of them bumps against a window glass, blinded by the reflection. Such an unexpected collision can be deadly, but not always.

So, this time I heard a loud thud followed by a shout for help: “O, he has broken his neck!”. I rushed outside, and saw him sitting on the backyard stones. Head turned aside. Beak half open. Dizzy and out of breath. Carefully I took him – it was a kind of Greenfinch – in my folded hands. To give a dark, warm protecting shelter. After a while of holding him, I raised my thumb, opening my right upper hand. He looked blinking into the daylight and was apparently still out of breath. So I closed the warm hand-capsule again. After a while, I felt some slight motion. A touch of feathers? I looked again. Saw the other looking back and removed carefully my upper hand. “Could you bring me some water on a saucer?” I asked. I had put my left hand on the garden soil to prevent another fall on the pavement. After softly caressing his head, back and feathers, I stroked in his neck. I dipped my finger in the dish with water and put a drop on his beak, still half open. The drop rolled down and disappeared in his mouth. I sprinkled his head and neck and put him on the garden soil, waiting for what would come next.

He did not move. Just sat on his feet, and looked with great dark-brown eyes at me. Eyes full of wonder. In this eternal moment of interlocking eyes, I could only feel awe, respectfulness, gratitude, and love. He kept on looking at me – as if to say: “What is this?” Then I stepped back. He flew up and speeded away into the hill forest.

I still don’t know what happened during this amazing encounter. We have now stuck some colorful butterflies on the windows to break the blinding reflection. Sometimes I step outside, looking for a Greenfinch, wondering where he is…