Back to the nest with you little bird!

This morning when I let my dogs out into the yard, they found a little baby bird that had fallen from a nest. It was alive and didn't seem to be injured (it was just still way too little and un-fully-featherd so there was no way it was going to fly on its own yet, so I hurried the dogs away from it and got them back inside to see if hopefully the mama bird would come rescue it.

But after a short time I checked again. It was still there and I got too worried to just do nothing. When I was a kid, there were all kinds of stories about how if you touch a baby bird the mama bird won't take care of it anymore because it somehow smells like a human... But a quick google search pretty much debunked that story for me so I decided to take action and at least try to save this chick the best way I could, by getting it back where it belonged.

Luckily for me (and for the bird too) the nest it fell from was in a large bush, not a tall tree. I was able to find it pretty easily (located quite logically pretty close to "right above where the bird ended up on the ground") and it didn't seem too far if I stood on my tiptoes. So after putting on my heavy gardening gloves I gingerly picked the little one up and was thankfully able to reach in far enough to get it back into the nest. I went back in the house for my camera and got a kinda blurry shot of its head barely peeking out of the top edge of the little nest.

And guess what? He (or she) is going to grow up to be a cardinal! I know because now the mama cardinal has come back and is sitting on the nest protecting him (or her) from the rain that has started to fall this afternoon. Don't you just love a happy ending?