Birds Blue-Headed Vireo rescue - Panasonic ZS40

I've seen it happen a number of times with our fine, feathered friends. How did he take to your rescue?

This bird is very tiny - I thought it was a leaf when I saw it, and I carefully picked it up - it weighed less than one ounce. The bird stayed very still in my hand, no doubt due to being in shock. But I have birds at home, and I know it calms them to be spoken to in a non-threatening way, so after holding the bird for 10-12 minutes, I sat it down on the railing we see here and continued talking to it. When it looked like the bird was never going to move, I put one finger under its chest and pushed up slightly, and after a few gentle pushes the bird took off and flew to a tree about 75 feet away. The flight looked pretty good, so it may survive long-term. When I first picked it up, I saw another one a few feet away, feet pointing at the sky, and rigor mortis had already set in. So some of them survive the window-bash and some don't. The building with the windows already had some treatments to prevent birds hitting the windows - mostly stickers and other colorful markings, but it didn't stop these two.
 
I can't believe that is from a ZS40

Many times my ZS40 images are poor quality when the handheld exposure is marginal, or any of several things go wrong. But just as a comparison to previous pocket cameras, the ZS40 clearly has the best JPEG engine I've seen in a 1/2.33 sensor camera, and combined with the 'Leica' lens and reach of 720 mm (135 effective) - it's a good deal at $450 even. Reviews usually describe detail as soft (at best) at the long end of digicam zooms, but if the light and exposure are really good and contrast etc. is such that the image doesn't show excessive noise at 100 percent view, the details from the ZS40 are very good at the 720 mm effective focal length. Of course, all of that depends on not having atmospheric disturbances in long-distance shots. Between the excellent image stabilization and fast burst shooting, I can usually get a sharp enough image in a few bursts as low as 1/10 to 1/15 second shutter speed.
 
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