If you follow this blog, you know I make it a point to offer assistance to stray dogs I encounter on my bikings around town. Birds? Not so much. Not for lack of compassion as for lack of opportunities.
But I had one this morning. Biking in to work along the Ballona Creek Bikeway beneath the Overland Avenue bridge, I didn’t even see the fledgling pigeon standing on the path until after I past it — with about a foot between us. If it had freaked and dodged left, it would’ve gotten churned up in my spokes. But instead it stood completely still as I rolled by it at speed, with me immediately afterward thinking “was that a bird?”
I turned and verified that indeed it was.
So I turned around, dismounted and managed to get the seemingly unflappably fearless and healthy bird to flap and scamper up atop the steeply angled concrete-coated embankment hoping it would be better able to get back up into the underside of the overpass where I guessed its nest was. But instead it just stood there entirely not comprehending my intentions or its surroundings so I sighed and made my way up atop the bank where I crouched and scrambled and did my best not to lose my footing (which in bike shoes is a pretty easy thing to do) and instead succeeded in chasing the bird out into the open, which had not been my intention in the slightest.
So after quickly snapping the above shot of the wayward bird I went after it and got out from under the bridge, somewhat miraculously managing to catch it up with minimal drama and delay. Then it was just a matter of squeezing back in the tight space between the embankment’s top and the bridge’s bottom, now with the added bonus of doing so while carefully holding a frightened feathered-friend in my paws. Again I succeeded.
Wasting no time finding a spot where I could stand up without hitting my head I carefully released the little fella on some pipes that extended out with the bridge over the creek — upon which were full-grown pigeons watching carefully that I hoped were mom and dad.
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