Where is my bird book?

I have a western bird book which has become inconveniently misplaced. For the past week, a little sparrow/finch/chickadee-like bird has been appearing at my office window like clockwork. Birdie hops onto the bench, peers into my office, and then tries vainly to come in. Bump, Birdie hits head and falls back. Flies back up, looks again, tries again. This has been happening for one week now, every day.

At one point I tried to put a black sweater in front of the glass, in the hope that not being able to see a reflection would cause Birdie to stop trying. Nope, Birdie keeps at it. Not hard enough to knock out  Birdie, but today for the first time I saw a lot of puffing and preening and general irritation. It reminded me of the photo of the mad bluebird

This morning I was praying Morning Prayer and my prayer was interspersed with Birdie's head bumps at the window. It occurred to me to ask what spiritual lesson one might take from such effort. That one is attracted so much to something that one continues to passionately try to reach it, no matter how many times failure occurs. That if one does not succeed, one can simply try and try again (a la the Merton quotation I used in my preaching yesterday).Or in the spirit of coming to consciousness in Lent, that one's unconscious (well, in the case of Birdie, mistaken) reflection of oneself is so very attractive as to cause one great frustration at times.

Birdie has much to teach, I think. Hope he/she comes back tomorrow!