The coolest thing happened today.
Hubs came in from the garage and said, “There’s a bird in the garage!” So I stopped what I was doing, and went to see what was up.
Sure enough, there was a Bewick’s Wren sitting on the far side of the garage from the door. It was behind a few things, and had clearly exhausted itself trying to figure out how to get back outside. (He later told me that he had found it by the door, but when he tried to open it to let the poor thing out, it had freaked out and flown into the mirror on the opposite wall. I found it sitting beneath the mirror.)
Not really have any idea what else to do, I approached it slowly and quietly moved some things out of my way. I talked softly to it the whole time, and veeery slowly moved my left hand beneath the bird. It was just watching me, with its beak open, but it didn’t even move when I got my hand underneath and picked it up, except to shift its right foot onto my hand in a better position.
Still moving super slowly, I walked back towards the door, but I didn’t cover it with my other hand because I thought that would be too scary for the poor thing. Surprisingly, it stayed perched on my hand, while I walked and talked to it. Never tried to get away at all, just chilled on my hand. I figured it was probably exhausted and scared, and once we stepped outside it would be GONE.
Hubs snuck around me and got the door open, and I took it outside and put my hand up to the fence to let it hop up.
It stayed. No interest in leaving. So I moved towards the backyard, still talking softly, and was even able to stroke its back very gently. There’s a tree back there which I figured would be more welcoming. As we got to the side patio, it hopped up my forearm, and then onto my shoulder just long enough to me to say to Hubs, “Dude. It’s on my shoulder…” before it hopped up to the fence behind me.
At that point we were sure it would fly off, but it sat there for another 5 minutes, just watching us. I wondered if it might come back to my hand if I put it back up, but it didn’t. Neither did it seem at all concerned with me getting close.
It eventually hopped up into the tree and was gone, and this is now what we’ve been talking about for much of the afternoon.