A beautiful male red cardinal lay on it's side outside the kitchen window on our deck.  The thump I had heard moments earlier proved what had hit the side of the house.  After quickly looking out the window and seeing the bird still breathing, I immediately called Jonathan.  He has become our in-house resident-in-training veterinarian.  He knew what to do...put on gloves, gently pick-up the bird and put him in the poultry infirmary...an old Avon box with wood shavings, complete with chicken feed and chicken waterer in Papa's nice, warm, quiet office.  The bird will spend a few hours there, recovering from his shock and when doing better, he'll release him.  UPDATE:  After less than an hour, the Cardinal was ready to be released.  Jonathan took him outside and in less than a minute, he was up and away.

This isn't the first time Jonathan has found birds that needed assistance (in his mind ).  A few weeks ago, he found one of our laying hens, a Barred Rock, with a feather-bare chest and scabs.  After showing me the hen, he put some coconut oil on the bare spot and put her in the infirmary for the next 24 hours.  We decided to release her back to the flock since the wounds didn't look fresh and let nature take it's course.  We're still not sure what happened, but figured she had survived an attack. 

Prior to this, Jonathan found his 2 chicks shivering and huddling in the cold frigid December air.  They were almost as big as Sally, the mom (who is a Bantam hen and is in the middle of the set of 3 birds), so she apparantly had decided they could be on their own.  But oh, what a cold part of the month to let them fend for themselves.  Jonathan brought them into the infirmary for the night.  For the next couple of days, we released them but kept them close to the house.  We also brought Sally (& Gloria, our other Bantam hen) from the henhouse to be with them and oh what fun they had scratching in the mulch underneath the pecan tree.  They pretty much stayed outside the kitchen window and door so we could watch them easily.  However, our cats also found them very appealing, so after warding off several sneak attacks from Sherbet (our King mouser), we decided they would be better off back at the henhouse.  Soon after this, Jonathan told me that the little chicks were learning to get on the roost, so even though they are on the bottom rung (somebody's got to be at the bottom!), it certainly is better than being on the floor.  Oh, to be the littlest and at the bottom of the totem pole, as they say.