Déjà vu struck me earlier this week when a flying bird, a yellow-bellied Cassin’s Kingbird is my guess, struck the same window in my home with the exact same unfolding scene afterward as happened in the first half of this column from my archives nine summers ago, and so I share it again now…

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I love birds.

I love listening to morning birdsong when I first awaken. I like to spy them outside my window as I write during the day. And I like watching them soar in flight, especially floating on updrafts like a kite, no wing flapping required.

Sadly, I saw the opposite occur just the other day. A bird fell from the sky and crash-landed in my backyard.

In truth, I did not see it happen – I heard it.

BAM!

I knew instantly what had happened. Our home has two large picture windows on the second story, eastward facing, and a bird traveling westward had flown smack into one of them like in an old Windex TV commercial from my youth.

Hurrying outside, I found the victim lying on the grass directly below a window. I knelt and looked for signs of life, but saw none.

Funny, but my next thought was remembering a cartoon from The New Yorker magazine, although it was not humorous at this moment. A bird in heaven asks a winged angel: “You run into a window, too?”

I love birds, but I am no birder. My uneducated identification was a common sparrow. Common or not, its fate saddened me greatly and I went to retrieve a small gardening trowel to bury it.

Upon returning, my heart soared for the bird had only been knocked unconscious. Perhaps feeling a little cuckoo, the bird got to its feet, pirouetted, staggered like a drunk for a few steps – in a cartoon, stars would have orbited its birdbrain – then took flight, likely with a headache and sore beak.

Meanwhile, another bird story has been turning its pages at my house. For the past month or so, every time I have taken out the trash to the garbage cans at the side of Casa Woodburn, a bird has appeared out of thin air like a dove from of a magician’s hat.

In truth, the bird appears out of the thick ivy growing on a brick wall opposite the big bins.

Again, I am only guessing that this is also a common house sparrow – scientific name Passer domesticus. However, even a birding expert would have difficulty making an accurate identification of this blur flying past his ear.

 The first few times this Hitchcock-ian attack happened, the Blurry domesticus made me jump out of my flip-flops. Eventually, I remembered to expect the feathery flyby and tried sneaking past the bird’s hidden nest. Perhaps it had a Ring doorbell camera, for it still flushed from cover, its natural instinct being to draw approaching prey away from its nest.

The very day after its fellow bird of a feather flew into the window, mishap befell again. When I took out the trash, this second bird flushed and somehow the nest was dislodged and fell onto the cement walkway.

Worse, there were eggs in the nest – four, upon closer inspection. Happily, upon even closer scrutiny, none appeared broken.

And yet the unscrambled eggs were of small consolation because I remember being warned in grade school that if a person touches a nest the mother bird will abandon it. If true, I now hoped this is due to human scent being left behind. Thus, I put on gardening gloves and carefully nestled the nest securely back in the ivy.

Then I hoped against hope for the best because I not only love birds, I had come to be especially fond of this domesticus nemesis.

The best happened. The next time I took out the kitchen trash my feathers were happily ruffled anew.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.