There was the mourning dove when we lived in our old house.
I don’t recall where we found her, but she had an injured leg.
We took her in, feeding her mush of ground seeds until she recovered enough to limp around the concrete floor in the big mudroom, pecking seeds on her own.
She would wait by the door to get out and follow me to the small yard with its lattice fence.
Peering out the gap, one day she hopped through as I hung clothes on the line.
Once on the other side she looked back and thanked me, then flew off.

There was the robin not long after we moved to this house,
Found while taking a walk, not quite a fledgling yet.
Perhaps he had fallen or been pushed from the nest.
We carried him home and made him a comfortable box, feeding him cat food from tweezers.
As his feathers filled in, his cute homeliness evolved into rust-throated grace.
He first flew from his box to the dining room bench to look out the window.
Later we brought him outside where he adeptly found treasures of worms underground, flying to the low branches, but always returning to us.
He learned to fly to your finger when you whistled and we even brought him on our summer camping trip.
By that time he could fly to the utmost branches at the campsite but always returned at your whistle.
Not too long after, back home from our trip, he flew away.
You whistled but he didn’t return.

There was also the starling, sometime between the dove and the robin
He was dull with emerging hints of radiance in his feathers.
He was recovering well but then we left his box in the room with the air conditioner.
The coldness did him in.
Why did we leave him in there?
Maybe we could have successfully rehabilitated him if we didn’t leave him alone in that cold room.
I just remember him gasping for breath in my palm,
By then it was too late.