A close-up view of how bird-window crashes happen

Want to reduce bird impacts with your window glass during migration periods? Consider removing any feeders that might encourage flight paths near your house. Avoid feeders close to the house, particularly if your yard has large trees.

That's standard advice from professionals concerned about bird safety, and my advice from personal experience.

The ongoing discussions about stadium glass and glass-related bird deaths is impersonal in a way. We're talking about birds in general. It's different if the bird falls at your feet.

We spent a few days this summer in a home on the Lake Superior shore at Lutsen, a shore lined with tall spruce. Warbler migration was underway. Our warbler passage was heavy with Cape Mays.

Warblers, which eat insects and larvae, don't visit seed feeders. But warblers must, however, see the activity other species provide as they come and go at feeders. Warblers forage near the feeders, attracted by the activity. That's my theory.

The regular feeder birds at the house did not seem to have issues with the window, but the warblers were a different story.

Warblers were in the trees that surrounded the feeders we were watching. When something spooked the feeder birds, all the birds would flee, helter skelter, warblers included. For some reason, it was the fleeing warblers that flew into windows.

In the spruce trees surrounding me, warblers foraged for worms, then moved on down shore, leisurely migrants.

Something startled the birds, sending them flying. One Cape May chose an unfortunate direction. Look at the photo accompanying this column. This is the reflection in the window it hit. I could crop out the window frame and fool you, too.

The sound made by the Cape May warbler when it hit the window was not proportionate to its size. Such a loud thump for a weight in grams.

The bird lay awkward on the deck. It didn't move. When I picked it up it was gaping, mouth wide, eyes half shut.

Birds like this collide with windows every day, wherever birds and glass are mixed. No one really knows how many. We can try to describe these accumulated events, give them battlefield terms, but there is no emotion in a battlefield word unless you are stepping over bodies.

The wounded warbler in my hand? Very personal.

The bird was quiet there. It continued to gape. The eye I watched struggled to stay open. After several minutes Cape May moved its legs. Good sign, everything considered.

Then it curled its toes around one of my fingers. This is when it got very personal. We were attached. Now the misfortune became very near, not distant.

The bird stopped gaping. Its eyes were open. It held onto me. I opened my hand now and again to see if the bird wanted to fly. It sat there, grip tight. Eventually, given the chance, it stood. It looked around. I could feel it flex its toes.

I decided it could sit out of the wind in the sun on a branch as well as in my hand. Coaxed from my finger, it moved onto a stick in a brush pile. It hopped up the branch, disappearing into long grass. I don't know if it flew again or not.

The next morning, I was back out on the deck, with the feeder stashed in a corner of the kitchen. Only herring gulls and some itinerant Canada geese were in sight of the deck, now a collision-free zone.