Cruising into the Sierras on a hot sunny day I had been heading south from Oregon and as I started a long climb up Highway 49 into the mountains I stopped at a lookout point and could see for what seemed like 20 miles out across a valley. I got back on my bike, kicked over the engine and hit the road. Getting towards the end of the climb the road started to wind through forest. The road was cut into the mountain which sloped up on my right, with a drop off towards a valley and a stream far below to my left. I came over a pass while rounding a turn and up from the road flew a flock of 5 or 7 birds from the ground. I was happy to see a flock of lovely creatures begin flapping their wings and rising up from the road. I'm always happy to see birds but within a split second I could see that they weren't all going to clear and suddenly I felt a big thud as one of them hit me right in the chest! It felt like someone threw an orange at me. It hit my right side, and I let out a yell, and reached up to grab and felt a big feathered lump. As I lowered my hand again to grab on to the handle bars to downshift and stop, the bird fell to the roadway. I turned around and looked back to see a crumpled mass of feathers on the asphault. I was in disbelief, and raced back, turning around by the bird on the road. As I parked my bike I could see the bird still moving its wings. Just then a pickup truck I had passed a mile or two back was catching up and getting ready to pass. I looked at the bird and hoped the truck wasn't going to run over it before I could get off the bike to save it. Luckily the truck swerved wide, missing the bird. I ran over and picked it up off the roadway. I could see a little blood and found its knee bleeding. The very tip of its sharp beak had been blunted and its mouth was slightly open. It was blinking its eyes and still breathing. I looked it over trying to tell if there was anything immediately obvious that was wrong. It's tail looked crooked and some of its feathers were ruffled. It flapped its wings sporadically but not enough to fly, and a few feathers were coming out and floating to the ground. When it rested its wings I couldn't quite tell if they were perfectly aligned or not, or if perhaps one was sprained or broken. It began to tilt it's head back, but would sometimes straighten its head out to clear its throat or something, and then put it's head back again. I could see it's tongue and inside it's mouth.

I tried to think of ways to help the poor little bird. All it's friends were long gone. It was gray, brown, black and yellow, larger than a sparrow, but smaller than a pigeon. It could respond to something under its foot by gripping on to my finger or glove. I decided to see if it could drink something. I took out a bottle of water and poured some in to the cap. It took the first two sips of water very well. I stood around holding it for a long time, watching it carefully and examining the response of it's pupils in both eyes to the sun light. They seemed to respond ok. After I tried giving it a third sip of water I could hear a gurgling in its breathing, as if it were slowly choking. I turned it upside down and then back up again and the gurgling stopped. I could hear it breathing and sometimes it would make little noises with each breath. It was blinking it's eyes, except when I pet it it would stop blinking. After about a half hour it was tilting it's head back quite a bit. I didn't know what else I could do, figuring it probably had some kind of internal injury that would slowly kill it. I decided to leave it in a tree near the road, hoping that the ants wouldn't get to it, and that somehow it would miraculously recover by nightfall. It felt odd to be holding onto a wild bird. I was sad thinking that it was probably helpless now and doomed to get weak and tired and fall out of the tree to be eaten by insects or some other predator. I got back on my bike and let the road take me away, wondering what it must be like to have some giant beast cross my flight path at fifty miles and hour.