CHAPTER XIXRAISING YOUNG BIRDS
My canaries with their bites, and nips, and blows, reminded me of naughty children. However, it does not do for a bird to be too meek in an aviary. The bird that, when struck on one cheek, turns another, must say good-bye to happiness. The bird that keeps out of the way and is never attacked, gets on very well, but the bird that is not afraid to stand up to a bully, has the best time of all.
I was amused with a hen bird one day that was attacked by a larger bird. She had no time to fly, but she opened her beak and spread her wings, and made such a horrible and such a determined facethat her assailant yielded her the perch and flew away.
I saw many singing contests, especially when there were two males anxious to please one female. The first canary would do his prettiest, then would deliberately stop and listen to his rival. I have often seen this first canary hitch up to his rival, and peer down his distended throat as if to say, “Where does all that noise come from?”
My canaries were the most industrious birds I had. I have never yet had a canary in health, that when spring began, was not immediately seized with a rage for nest-making that lasted till late in the autumn.
They like a new nest for every clutch of eggs, and a canary whose ancestors have been kept in cages for generations, will go right back to his wild habit of building in trees if you do not give him a nest-box. Even if there is a nest-box, some prefer the trees. I used a great many traveling-cages for nests, and hung them on trees and walls where the little birds could find them and build inside. These tiny cages, made of fir, whittled during the long winter evenings in Germany by miners and woodcutters, and sold for two and a half cents a cage, were for the canaries what the cracker boxes were for the pigeons. They were protected at the backs and sides, and the father birds could sit on the top. From the fronts of the cages I removed a few bars so the parents could go in and out.
It was wonderful to see the little canaries at work, flying to and fro with their beaks full of nesting materials. Fibrous roots should be given them, long, fine dry grass, cow or dog hair, rabbit down and feathers, though my canaries got enough of the latter in the aviary. Cotton wool and long lengths of twine should not be provided lest they entangle their feet.
When I found that my canaries liked soft white string better than anything else, I cut it in short bits for them. They discarded any bright-colored material, except for the interior of the nest, and I supposed this was because they did not wish to attract attention. It was amusing to see two birds tugging at one piece of twine, neither not in the least inclined to yield. The hen canaries used to shriek and scream at each other, and then their mates would interfere, and there would be a general fight.
In addition to singing when angry, birds sing when sad. One sunny day last March, when I let my birds out in the elevator, one bird sang so exquisitely that I could not help saying to myself, “Any one going by this house would say, ‘What a happy bird!’—whereas I know he is singing because his little heart is nearly breaking.” I had just found his mate dead in the aviary. She was a bird I had only had for a short time, and I think was very delicate. She never got to know me well, and was not fond of me, and when she for severaldays detached herself from other birds, and came about me, I was afraid I was going to lose her.
I have noticed again and again, without exactly understanding it, that an ailing bird that is doomed, will follow me about and watch me, as if seeking the help I cannot give. Any bird is tamer when sick than when well. A beautiful bullfinch, that I once had, became so tame before he died that he would go to any member of the family. One day my mother called me and, pointing to this pretty creature in his shining hood of black and his crimson breast, she said, “Who is this little negro? He is sitting on my comb, and he just now dipped his beak in that mug. What does he want?”
“He is ill,” I said, “and thirsty, and I am going to lose him,” and I filled the mug with water, whereupon he drank with evident pleasure.
To come back to the matter of birds singing from unhappiness. I have had persons say to me, “My canary is perfectly happy, he sings all the time.”
If it is the springtime, I say, “I am sorry for your bird; he is lonely. Why do you not give him a large cage and get another canary to be company for him? He might not sing so much, but he would be happier.”
“Oh, I don’t want a large cage—it would be in the way. I think he is all right.”
Later on birdie often dies, and my friend buys another.
The traffic in canaries is simply enormous. InGermany, France, England, and Belgium, bird-keepers are hard at work raising young canaries for the American trade. American bird-importing houses employ a large number of men who go from one breeding-house to another in Europe and select the birds to be brought to New York, which is the distributing depot for the United States and Canada.
If the little bird singing in your window is insignificant in appearance, but has an exquisite song, he probably came from the Hartz Mountains. Very likely the principal income of the inhabitants of the village in which he was hatched, is derived from canary-raising.
They have bird schoolrooms with a school-teacher’s box in which will be found an old bird, trained by a lark or a nightingale. When the time comes the cover is raised from the teacher’s box. As he sees the light he bursts into a sweet, beautiful song, in long, low trills, deep rolls, flutes, turns, bells, bubbles, and other exquisite technicalities. The young birds stop feeding to listen, and in time, they too become perfect. The Germans educate their birds as thoroughly as they do their human singers, and they command excellent prices for them.
When the little birds are fully trained, some of the best are kept at home, and the others come in immense and valuable shipments to America in the tiny wicker cages. There is often great suffering among them. The voyage may be rough or disease may break out. The bird-dealers are said to doall they can to protect them, and only send experienced men with them, but the birds have many enemies, notably rats. Their attendants must watch day and night to protect their tiny charges.
It seems as if there might be American schools for canaries, if they must still be sold for cage-birds. A bird hates travel, and one shudders to think of the sufferings of our little feathered friends on the long journeys.
One day I found in Halifax one of these little German birds. He had just come from New York, and I bought him, took him home, and called him St. Andreasberg and Andy for a nickname. His only blemish was a pair of very scaly legs. That meant either old age or disease. However, they soon improved, though he has never had really smooth legs and claws.
He was a tiny fellow, pale yellow with a suspicion of black over one eye. He was not a first-class singer, but he had long, rippling notes, and when I heard him sing for the first time I was enraptured. I had never heard a lark sing, nor a nightingale. Andy’s notes gave me some idea of what their song would be, for he was evidently a trained singer.
I got another little German bird for him, and the two have been model parents, raising one set of young Germans after another, until now I have their descendants to the third and fourth generations. They don’t all sing as well as he does. If I had shut them up in a room with him, they mighthave done so, but I let them all go in the aviary, and mixing with Norwich’s family, they soon learned to sing partly in the English way.
It is very amusing to hear one of these German birds begin his father’s strain then break off and sing in Norwich’s style. Only one German bird—Andy’s first young one—sings almost the same song that his father does.
I am delighted with the flight of these birds—the offspring of caged birds. Norwich never learned to fly well. He had a kind of scalloping flight, but all his young ones fly like wild birds. Andy’s are just as swift, and I find that these birds raised in an aviary are invariably stronger and larger than their parents. Greater variety of food and more exercise account for this.
Though I gave Norwich his liberty, I kept Andy in a cage for years. His eldest son hated him, and that brings me to one of the mysteries of bird life. The father and mother are devotion itself while bringing up a set of nestlings. They really seem to love the tiny creatures so dependent on them that they would perish if left to themselves. However, when the time comes for young birds to leave the nest or, rather, when the time comes for them to feed themselves—for most parents feed them for some days after they have stepped out, or have been pushed out of their home—the parents are either indifferent to them or are apparently cruel to their formerly beloved offspring. They fly away fromthem, they often push and beat them, they usually seem to have no affection for them. Andy fed his little son until he was old enough to feed himself, then he turned against him and did not want him in the big cage with him.
I thought this was quite natural, as Andy wished to make another nest, so I turned the young one into the aviary. He did not forget his father. Oh no, he remembered him only too well, and whether prompted by feelings of revenge or not, I cannot tell, but for years when he could elude me he would follow his father’s cage and fight with him through the bars until he had plucked out all the short feathers about Andy’s beak, and made the place raw and bleeding.
Of course I stopped this by keeping the cage out of his way, and I did not dare to let Andy loose in the aviary until about a year ago. Then I thought I would try the experiment. Andy had two dangers ahead of him. He was an old bird—he was old when I got him, and I had had him several years—and his son would certainly seek his life. However, I let him and his mate out on the roof-veranda. They got on beautifully, this pair of elderly birds. There was no affection for the cage in their tiny breasts. They forsook it, moped if I put them back in it, built nests as high up as birds that had never been in a cage, fought the son and came out even—a little exercise is good for a bird. I believe more caged winged creatures die from monotony thananything else—and they are to-day living happily in the aviary with big and little birds.
It is wonderful how aviary life preserves birds. Last summer there was a number of very fine English birds for sale in a store, and I watched one among them with interest for weeks. All his companions were sold, and he was left.
One day I said to the bird-dealer, “Give him to me to take home. He wants special attention and food.”
“Take him,” he said, “he is dying with asthma.”
I took the bird home, named him the Britisher, and let him loose on the veranda, found he was frightened to death and could not fly, and put him in a large cage. For weeks he had egg-food, bread and milk, crushed hemp, plenty of green stuff, all kinds of seeds, in fact anything he wanted to eat. Then I once more opened his cage door. He sat about for a few days, then sallied forth, learned to fly, and stole a mate from another canary, one of my swift-flying, aviary-hatched birds; then with fearful recklessness he chose the most dangerous corner of the veranda for a nest, close to the spot my Brazil cardinals considered sacred to themselves. I don’t know why they did not drive him away, or kill him. For days he sat complacently near them, guarding himself from the attacks of the swift flyer, whose mate he had stolen.
I put some food and water on a shelf near him, for if he descended on the floor he was at a disadvantage.Finally, I found him with a badly bitten leg, and put him back in his cage. His little mate followed him in, and stayed with him until he was able to go out again. He descended into the aviary with the other birds when the cold weather came, and it used to delight me to see the big, handsome, delicate creature sitting breathing spasmodically, but enjoying himself, watching his little mate.
He did not succumb till a week or two ago. When the maid wrote me that “a big yellow bird had died, and was bearried in the garden, it being a very hard thing to bearry it,” I knew I had lost my bird of short, brief friendship—my pet Britisher.
Two of Andy’s grandchildren, little beauties called Cowlie and Tippet, did a pretty thing last summer that seemed intentional. As the veranda is large, members of the family often sit out among the birds, and this pleases the tamest ones very much. They come sociably about us, perch on our laps or shoulders, peck at our work-baskets and try to run away with threads that we snatch from them. A favorite trick to play on the birds is to let them seize the end of the thread on a spool. Thinking they have a prize they fly away but soon find that their prize is endless and give it up in disgust.
Cowlie one evening, had been hanging about my sister who was reading in the sunset. He was singing his prettiest good-night song, and he was so persistent about it that at last she dropped her book and began to praise him.
He listened with his pretty yellow head on one side, then flew downstairs and came back with his young brother Tippet, who is as fine a singer as he is, and a remarkable little bird. When he was still a baby and being fed by his parents I have seen him fill his beak with the egg-food and feed other babies younger than himself.
Having brought Tippet to my sister, Cowlie began a duet with him, and until it was time for them to fly to their perch for the night, delighted us with an exquisite flow of rippling bird-music. I do not know a prettier sight than a little bird in full song. My young Germans often lift one claw as they sing and distend their little throats till we laugh at them, and tell them they look as if they were trying to raise tiny yellow beards.
One day I got one of these aviary-hatched young ones and put him in a cage. He was not frightened, but he was so puzzled at my action that he did not know what to do. What was the cage anyway, and what were the perches for? It never seemed to occur to him to light on them. He clung uncomfortably to the side of the cage till I at last took pity on him and let him fly out to the trees of the aviary.
The number of nests that the canaries made did not embarrass me, but what should I do with the eggs. I could not treat them as I did the pigeon eggs, and I was not willing to raise young birds and give to friends to put in tiny cages. I at last hit upon the expedient of visiting my canary nests everyfew days, and taking out a certain number of eggs till they were all gone. The canaries did not care much about eating them, but Dan, the mockingbird, was delighted to have fresh eggs for breakfast, and would dart upon them with avidity.