This Year’s Nest

Recently I experienced the most amazing dilemma; to attempt to save a life or let Nature take its course.  In the end, I followed my heart.

Each February, after I finally take down my Christmas wreath, I hang a spring wreath in its place to bring a pop of color to my door during the last dull days of winter.  And, each year, no matter how diligent we are about checking, a pair of house finches manages to thwart our efforts and builds and populates a nest with eggs before we are able to remove it.  Once the eggs are there, there is no turning back for us because we respect the potential lives inside.

With a nursery attached to our front door, we try to restrict our comings and goings through that portal as to avoid upsetting the tiny parents.  The other day I may have pulled the door open a little too quickly because as I began to step through the door, a tiny bit of fluff on the doormat caught my eye.  At first I thought it might be a dandelion top but as I got closer, I saw it was a very tiny chick, his yolk sack larger than his head.

I thought it was dead but then I saw its miniature beak open.  Without stopping to consider my options, I ran to the kitchen to get my step stool.  Then, I reached down and as gently as I could, picked the tiny chick up.

In hindsight, I probably should have gotten a spoon and gently scooped up the little creature because my fingers looked like those of clumsy giant hands trying to collect it without harm.  Instead, I did my best to gather it up and lay it among the unhatched eggs in its nest, a process that was much less graceful than I would have liked.

Since then I have checked on my chick and the others that have followed but I still can’t tell whether my chick survived.  My height prevents me from directly seeing them and I’m afraid to drag the stool out to the door every day, so I just raise my camera above them and snap a photo of them.

All I see is a mass of downy feathers and fluff without even a good vision of where one chick ends and another begins.  I know I need to be patient, until they get a little bigger when I can count beaks to see if there are four or five.

I’ll never know whether my rescue was the right thing to do.  I have to admit,   he  was substantially smaller than the other recent hatchlings and it’s entirely possible that his parents dropped him from the nest intentionally.  In which case, I had nothing to do with his being on the mat in the first place.

The reality is that my responsibility for this little life came not in how he was lost, but in that I found him.  And, from this responsibility came my response to assist and comfort in the only way I could think of, to return him home safely.

It occurs to me that this is what we are called to do as God’s people, to respond to the needs of others.  No matter how small or insignificant, no matter what the circumstances, we are called to accept the responsibility for the world around us and to provide help and comfort in the very least.