30 June 2012

Breakfast guest

I was making coffee and toast this morning when I heard some thrashing outside on the balcony. Imagine my surprise when I saw this fellow peering back at me. I'm not sure what drew him to my porch, but he couldn't manage to get back out again. He kept hopping up in the air and trying to flap through the glass at the edge (you can see some smudge marks from previous attempts in the photo).

Initially I wasn't sure whether he was injured or just confused, but eventually I decided (after some remote teleconferencing with Helena) that I needed to mount a rescue operation. I donned a hoodie and some leather gloves and tried to get him to climb onto a roughly 2.5m piece of metal tubing I had handy. After a few evasive hops, he acquiesced to sitting on the end of the pole while I lifted him over the glass. He sat for a moment, swiveled back to look at me (I imagined a silent 'Thank you.') and then flew off.