As I stirred the coffee this morning, I looked out of the kitchen window. After yesterday’s brief respite it seemed we were in for another uncomfortably hot day; not hot by tropical standards, maybe, but too humid for feeble English people like us. Today, I thought, we shall not be gardening as we had previously planned. Today, we shall be expending as little energy as possible — unlike the two small birds I had just spotted, who had, at that very moment, swooped down from the roof a few feet above our kitchen window. They appeared to be circling each other even as they sped away from our house. They’re always doing that; they seem to come out of nowhere, instantly at Mach 2, like fighter jets launching from an aircraft carrier.

Why do they circle each other? Probably some sort of courtship dance, I thought. That, or perhaps a battle over airspace.

Then I heard a thud as the birds crashed into the side window of a parked car.

One of the birds fell straight to the ground. The other, a sparrow, hopped up to it, saw it wasn’t moving, and flew off.

I rushed to grab the binoculars; the bird was still not moving. Stunned, most likely. We took a small cardboard box and went to see if we could help. Lying by the edge of the pavement, the bird would have been easy prey for cats; there are several cats in our area and some definitely have the stalking instinct.

The bird was still conscious, looking around but still immobile, so Shana put it in the box for safety and we brought it upstairs and indoors.

Usually, if you find a bird on the ground, say the RSPB and RSPCA, its parents will not be far away. The best thing to do, according to their advice, is to leave it where it is. As keen — well, occasional — BBC Springwatch viewers, both Shana and I had heard all this before. After phoning the RSPCA helpline and following the long-winded instructions to press a series of automatic switchboard option numbers, Shana now heard it all again, only from a robot voice this time instead of  TV birdman, Bill Oddie.

“Well that was a lot of help!” said Shana.

The RSPCA hotline turned out to be irrelevant in any case, because at that moment the bird, no doubt doubly grateful at being able to enjoy the warmth and comfort of our kitchen, as well as having been rescued from likely annihilation by cat, sprang back to life and burst forth from the cardboard box, heading straight for the top of the kitchen cupboard. I opened the front door to give the bird an easy way out, Shana stood at the foot of the stairs to discourage it from flying up to look for a nesting site in the bedroom, and I reached up to the top of the cupboard and moved the box of cereal next to the one the bird was standing on. Faced with a six-foot giant intent on reaching for a box of weeti-flakes, you’d probably take flight too, and that’s just what the bird did. See? Avian psychology isn’t so hard really, is it?

Here’s a strange thing. This year, we’ve managed to learn a few of the more common bird songs, so we know who’s around even if they’re hiding under hedges or in trees. One of the songs that amused us was that of the great tit — Parus major — whose two note call sounds a lot like a bicycle pump. Between ourselves, we even refer to the great tit as ‘the bike pump bird’, and just a few days ago we agreed that we hadn’t heard this bird for a while. And what was the little bird we helped out this morning?

You guessed right. None other than the bike pump bird.

I wonder if he now has a special name for us?