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Thursday, May 2, 2019

A Bird Falling From the Sky in Macau

A few days ago while walking down a pedestrian lane off of Largo Maia de Magalhães in Macau's Taipa Village, I froze when I unexpectedly saw something small fall straight down from above 15 feet directly in front me. The object landed with a clearly audible thud and cracking sound.

I continued forward, and to my surprise found a small bird — I believe a sparrow.

dead sparrow on the ground


Although there were some high ledges on a nearby building, straight above was only sky. Perhaps the bird had experienced a heart attack while flying. On closer inspection, one of the bird's legs slowly moved and it slowly opened and closed its eyes a couple of times. I am not an expert on birds, but given how it had hit the ground and its current condition I felt confident I was witnessing its final moments of life or postmortem reflexes.

In either case, it felt wrong to just leave the bird in the middle of an area where there were many pedestrians who could unwittingly step on it. So I picked up the bird. It didn't react. I then looked for the most fitting nearby location.

After relocating the bird and noticing similar birds flying around, I went to a nearby public restroom that I knew had soap and washed my hands. I then returned to the quieter side of a tree to take one last photo of the bird that I had seen come out of the sky for its last time.

dead sparrow next to a tree

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