Nature is safe in the hands of our young

ASHEN-FACED, my youngest came in with a tiny bird cradled – gently, if more than a little incongruously – in one of his socks. It’s the time of year when fledglings take to the air and when windows exact a lethal toll. An estimated billion birds a year in the US fall victim.

First casualty for us this summer was a blue tit trying to complete the Great Circle Route between the hedge at the front of our house and the woods to the rear.

Thump – straight into the unyielding double-glazing. It was a goner before it hit the ground.

A short burial ceremony was held just beyond our gate, a few daisies plucked from the back green serving as a wreath.

But Casualty No 2, a chaffinch, was still with us. Just.

One foot bare, my son gazed with anxious eyes. The last time he looked like that involved one of those Christmas must-have toys.

It was a mechanical hamster that revelled in the name ‘Sergeant Serge’.

The thing would tear about the floor before vanishing under the furniture. Serge emerged looking a bit dusty and my boy decided to give him a bath.

Of course, that fried his electronics. Big brown eyes looked at me as the sodden corpse was handed over: ‘You fix him, Daddy.’

In the early hours of that Boxing Day, Serge’s pelt was atop a radiator while his electronic innards were smothered in uncooked rice to soak up moisture.

Battery in, he – against all odds – started to squeak and scuttle, heading back under the very couch where all the trouble had begun.

Could a similar miracle be performed with the chaffinch?

‘Try to find a shoebox!’ I shouted. (We both laughed: With a teenage daughter in the house, they are no rarity round my way.)

Concussed birds in a box – with breathing holes – put somewhere dark, quiet and warm can pull through. The lack of stimulus helps reboot their brain, apparently.

With infinite tenderness, my 11-year-old placed the bird in the box and closed the lid.

I spent the next hour contemplating how we are immersed in nature, yet care so little for its delights.

Our modest garden has (despite the depredations of the neighbours’ cats) resident robins, blackbirds, an occasional thrush. Rooks wheel overhead each evening at dusk before bats hunting insects carve through the gloaming like air superiority fighter jets.

But my maternal grandfather could identify unseen birds by song alone; knew every tree by its silhouette, let alone its leaves; could spot yarrow on road verges and knew it was good for stopping bleeding but toxic for dogs.

Whenever I smell bog-myrtle, I recall blazing summer holidays in Knapdale where he’d rub it on our arms to repel midgies and clegs.

As we become increasingly isolated in our man-made environment, cossetted inside brick and stone and steel and glass, such knowledge slips rapidly away.

BUT there is hope. As long as there are children who care enough to whip off a sock to save a solitary chaffinch, we might yet learn to appreciate nature’s bounty.

With a burst of fluttering wings, my son’s stunned chaffinch was – just like Sergeant Serge – away.

And I was on the internet looking for film to apply to windows that scatters the light back at a frequency birds can see.