Restoring my faith in nature

So Monday was a holiday and Steve was working from home. All well and good and then we hear a bang and he says "what was that? Did a bird just fly into a window?" And I say "no. Maybe an orange hit the car."

I had one eye on the pictures I was hanging in the hallway (they've been on the floor for two years. I figured it was time) and one eye on Sebastian who has discovered the fun of looking out the window in his room and therefore could not be bothered to investigate.

Steve did. He reported that a bird had, in fact, flown into the window and now appeared to by dying under the back orange tree. This made me very sad. I looked, and confirmed that what we were looking at were likely death throes.

I tore us away from the window with assurances that once he was truly at peace we would bury him in one of the newly dug holes in the backyard.

Steve immediately started instant messaging with my sister. I sent her a picture on my phone (first of the bird and then of the amount of blood.) I chased off the hooligans.

Particularly this one (Helo)

Then I noticed something: the bird (a male woodpecker) was picking up his head. Then he started looking around. I let out a little whoop and informed my sister who gave me instructions on nursing an injured bird back to health. I grabbed a shoebox and some rags and gloves and when I came out again he was sitting up in roughly this position:

Poor little guy probably had a migraine in his entire body. We brought him inside and showed Baz, who thought it was the Best.Thing.EVER. Then we put the box in a spot we were certain could not be reached by the cats and ate lunch - checking on him every few minutes.

There was nothing more to be done at that point. He was either going to recover or he was going to slip away. As long as we kept him safe and warm and away from the cats until he looked well enough to eat we were doing our best.

Luckily, after lunch when we peeked we were greeted with a very confused bird.

Who promptly started to fly:

I donned yet another pair of gloves and carried him outside where he was more than happy to fly as high as possible into the juniper tree at the back of our property.

I haven't seen him since, but I have seen his girlfriend. She was eating seeds out of the few remaining pomegranates on the tree outside the window.

I've set up a feeder for them. Hopefully they'll stick around and become helpful birds who sing and tie ribbons in my hair. That happens, right?