Partly to mostly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph..

Partly to mostly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph.

The true hero, a female pine warbler. Hopefully someday, Fred will realize the stress he caused Mom.

The true hero, a female pine warbler. Hopefully someday, Fred will realize the stress he caused Mom.

I love to walk quietly in the woods. Picking my way around crunchy leaves, each footstep searching for the soft cushion of dirt or moss, lets me listen, to be immersed in the solitude of trees and swamp. Maybe it’s reminiscent of still-hunting a buck in October or getting close to a gobbler in spring — neither of which can be done by bumbling through the bush — but any time I enter the woods, I simply move as quietly as possible. And it’s how I met Fred.

One evening seven days ago, in an effort to relieve a little stress in an aging back that’s spent too many years hunched over an easel, I snuck along a worn path behind my house, on a piney hill overlooking a long, thick swamp. Had I been loud, I would have missed the barely audible trills of a baby pine warbler, a few days old and smaller than a half dollar, wedged in the needles beneath the very tree where he must have fallen. Pine warblers are named for the trees they inhabit, but nesting takes place at the tops, not the bottoms. This fellow either was overzealous for adventure or the product of enough wind to knock the whole nest overboard. At any rate, there he was.

A tiny gray chick could be one of many species, but regardless, any mom or dad worth their salt as woodland parents would be nearby, assessing the situation and doing their best to keep junior safe and fed. So I backed off and waited.

Within minutes, a male and female pine warbler cautiously approached, then frantically fed and tended to their wayward boy. While relieving, it was clear this young lad would need several days of growth to achieve even semi flight status, at least enough to avoid ground predators. Those initial flights are never pretty, just enough to reach the safety of low branches. Hawks and owls, of course, present another problem, but first things first: get off the ground.

Enter yours truly. I shot my first bird, a rooster pheasant, at the age of 10, and have been chasing anything with feathers ever since, devoting a good portion of my life and career to wingshooting and bird dogs. But on this July evening, all I wanted to do was save Fred.

Getting him high and dry was priority one, and a simple Tupperware did the trick, filled with dirt and pine needles and placed on a step ladder leaning against a tree, with a few broken limbs acting as perching posts for the parents.

With my daughter’s help, in no time we were scooping up Fred and placing him in his new home. Before long, his “cheeps” alerted the folks who were returning with insects in their beaks, shoving them down his throat and going back for more. It was so cool.

Pine warbler chicks fledge within a couple of weeks, so we had a few hurdles to overcome, mainly high winds and rain. But Fred had a backbone — evidently falling from 50 feet had toughened him up right quick.

On day six, however, I cautiously strolled out with a cup of coffee to observe the morning feeding but Fred was nowhere to be found — he’d bolted. I sadly backed out though happily chalked it up to nature plodding along as it should.

Then today, he returned, in my front yard, nearly between the paws of my 12-year-old Lab, Mabel, who tracked him into the day lilies. Praying it wasn’t a baby skunk from across the orchard, I rushed out to see Fred scampering through my lawn on his way to thicker ground cover by the shed, and trailing the ever-agitated mom and dad, no doubt worn ragged by their adventurous son.

It seems that Fred is nothing more than a drifter, a man in search of the open road, looking to hitch a ride on some biker’s Harley and zoom off into the desert sunset. He’d base jumped from my homemade nest and scampered south overnight the equivalent — at his size — of taking a bus to Chicago. I last saw him in the cover of a small spruce on the edge of the yard, protected by thick leaves and grass under the trunk, with a nervous mom doing all the heavy lifting. From my front steps, I watched her carry bug after bug down the limbs to the soft, dark earth below, hearing their chirps and greetings and noting their movements by shuttering branches and leaves.

And all of this because I walked quietly in the woods. You won a place in my heart, Fred. Good luck, I’ll look for your exploits in the tabloids, and will leave the ladder out for you next spring.

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