“Pigeons and starlings and sparrows don’t often hit buildings. I’ve seen a sparrow fly right toward a window, pick off a bug, and fly off in the other direction. The ones that collide with buildings are mostly small migratory birds. In Chicago, we’re on a major flyway. We get indigo buntings, American woodcocks, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, white-throated sparrows, brown creepers.
“Picking up a bird that’s injured mostly entails having an appropriately sized paper bag. The most important part is to clip the bag shut, so they don’t escape with an injured eye or something else that needs to be cared for. Once you get that bird in the bag, never open it. The less time you handle it, the better, because it’s freaking out that you’re holding it—that’s what a predator would be doing. Once it’s in the bag, it can’t see anybody; it thinks nobody can see it. It thinks, ‘Okay, I got away from that scary hand. I’m just gonna hang out in this bag and get over what happened.’
