When I see memes poking fun at how people suddenly start noticing birds more as they age, I can’t help but laugh along because I have noticed my growing predilection for birds.

I haven’t gone full tilt into identifying them or arranging my life around ’em. But I do like watching them from my own perch in my home office, a small finished building with two big windows as well as one in the door. It’s in my backyard, in which we have planted a lilac, serviceberry, two aspens, a currant and two maples, to name some of the plants.

It’s a bit of a draw for birds, where the richer soil of our former compost big and adjacent garden bed still boast a population of earthworms.

On Thursday morning, I was wrapping up writing my Explore article on Bend nature writer Marina Richie, whose new book “Halcyon Journey: In Search of the Belted Kingfisher” just earned a National Outdoor Book Award that same day.

My work was disturbed when I heard a familiar thud.

Occasionally, a bird will fly into a window and stun itself, yet this time it was a little more solid. I hopped up and looked down out the door’s window at a small bird shuddering, then still, on the step outside.

I hoped against hope that it would come to, but it lay still in the cold, dismal conditions of yesterday.

It was a junco, my wife later informed me. I told Richie of the unfortunate incident, and I plan to follow her advice to drape parachute lines a few inches apart outside the windows. 

I owe the junco that much.

—David Jasper, reporter and editor