Hi,
Last night about 1:00 am I was working at my computer in a somewhat
dimly lit room - in addition to the monitor there was a single light on,
about 15 feet from the window and directed downward. I heard a
scampering/skrittering noise on the roof,* sounded like maybe a tree
branch had fallen and was tumbling down the slope, but it persisted, and
then it started skittering and bumping against the large window I was
facing. Its fluttery flight against the window was bat-like, but when I
turned off the monitor & the light and got out a flashlight, I found a
song sparrow that had quieted and was perched just on the other side of
the window, on the sill. Pinned in the beam of the flashlight, it
didn't move much, just turned its head and then shifted slightly. It
was not visibly injured. I turned off the flashlight and waited a
couple of minutes for it to leave, then turned the lights back on - it
apparently was still on the window sill and commenced fluttering up and
down against the window again. At that point I gave up, turned the
lights off, and went to sleep.
Apparently it was trying to get into a space that where it could see
better, but why was it up and about at all? Wouldn't it have done
better just to hunker down somewhere? (FWIW, the light that had been on
was a Stella LED light which is supposed to mimic daylight wavelengths
but, as noted, that light was across the room and pointed downward.)
Thanks for any insight you can give!
Alicia
* As I wrote this, it occurred to me that maybe the noise came not from
anything on the roof but from the sparrow flying against the screen of
the small high window just under the eaves, and that's why I heard it so
clearly? But at the time at least it sounded like something skittering
down the roof.
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