Sunday, August 25

Irma gets a message from the zoo in the morning. The bird has recovered. It never had a broken wing. Instead it seems to have suffered a shock or a concussion and had temporarily forgotten how to fly. Today we have the job of releasing the woodpecker!

We go to collect it and it arrives in a sturdy plastic and cardboard box with a towel over it to keep it calm in the dark.

We drive home with it and set the box down exactly where we found the woodpecker on Friday. I take a photograph through one of the breathing holes in the lid of the box. Then I open it.

The bird sits there for a minute or so and then flies straight up and over the next house into the woods. It doesn’t pause to see which way to go. It looks as though it worked out what to do and where to go before it left the box.

Its speed and lack of doubt surprise me as I fail to photograph it in flight.