Ishavasyam idam sarvam
yat kincit jagatyam jagat

The Veda is not saying that there is one God;
it says there is only God.
Swami Dayananda Saraswati*

 

One morning as he waited for the bus outside the house, I heard Jason yelling to me.  "Mom, there is a baby bird out here and another bird is attacking him."  I grabbed a bowl and some paper towels prepared to place the baby inside.  When I got there I saw a little baby bluejay, just old enough to be hopping around but not yet able to fly.  He would hop and skip along the road, but could not seem to get into the air.  Since Jason had thought he was being attacked, I decided to "rescue" him.   He was very easy to catch since all he could do was hop around a little bit. after he opened his little beak and screamed a bit for his mama, He was surprisingly calm about the whole thing and did not shake , which my own birds  sometimes do, especially if a new person tries to handle them. I had to go out so I took him  inside and put him into an empty  bird cage for his protection while I figured out what to do with him.

After making a few phone calls, I realized that I should not
keep him in the house, as I had been warned that he could
carry outdoor diseases which he could pass to my indoor birds.
And, someone at the local nature center suggested that I
should put him back out near where I found him, and he
and his parents would probably communicate.  He told
me that his parents were probably even looking for him
now, and that they would not abandon him just because
he fell out of the nest.  In fact, he was probably a fledgling.

I decided it made sense to return him to his habitat.
Being that all of his flight wings were in, it seemed to me
that he was on the verge of flying soon.  So, even though
I would have loved to nurse him and then fledge him myself,
I put him out as instructed...but not without following him
around a bit and taking photos of him.  He is so cute, and ugly.
Look at that mug :-)  And you can see his tail feathers still
have not come in, so he is sort of half done at this point.
He knows me well enough now to perch on my finger. In fact,
he likes it there. I have to nudge him off onto the tree trunk in front of me. 
 he spends some time there before he lands on the ground, and begins calling his parents.

 

He stops and looks at me frequently, as if to wonder whether he really wants to go back into the street alone or back with me to the nice little house where he gets his head rubbed.  He chooses his nature and continues his little trek across the yard. I finally decide I have enough photos of him.  The last I look he is hiding under the hosta leaves in my neighbor's front yard.  I check the spot twice later  in the day, and he is still there.  I am concerned and am hoping that his parents will come and get him.  The next morning he is gone from the spot. I find myself wondering if he is OK and got back to his parents.   A few days later, while I was in my yard, I spotted him again, still on the ground, but alive and well.  I pick him up again this time, because he goes under my fence into my back yard where my dogs are.  My smallest dog, Snuggles, thinks birds are play toys, so I scoop him up to get him out of the yard. He screeches a bit, his mouth open wide, and then calms down again, lulled by that soft head rub he likes so much.  While his parents fly around above, they do not dive bomb me, as he has stopped putting out his distress calls. He is in safe hands. We are all in safe Hands.