CHAPTER XXCANARY CHARACTERISTICS
Among my canaries were two hybrids, who were half-goldfinch and half-canary. They were fine, dark birds, more like their wild parent than their domesticated one.
While I had my farm I let all my wild birds fly away, except old Bob, the robin. I deliberated about the hybrids, and finally decided to let them take their choice, so after keeping them on the farm for a year I one day opened the door and told one of them that he might fly away with the goldfinches, purple finches, and other birds I had just released.
He went happily, and I heard later that he had called at a farmhouse farther down the road. Ihope that he found his wild kindred and migrated with them. I did not know whether to let the other one go or not. He was a fierce little creature, with a beautifully marked goldfinch back, but his spirit was Norwich’s—that is, the nervous part of it was. Norwich was never cruel. He had in addition to this mental excitability, inherited Norwich’s peculiar leg feathering, and he was the only one of Norwich’s descendants that had done this. There was the little, dark fluffy skirt above the clean goldfinch legs, and he also danced while he sang his exquisite and constant song. A bird-dealer once coveted him, for hybrids are valuable, but I decided that nothing would induce me to imprison in a cage this little, wild, free spirit.
One day I found him beating a canary so severely that I said to him, “You are too bad for a house, go and play with your goldfinch brothers.” It was the Fourth of July I remember and, opening the door, I pointed to the tall maples about us. He went out with no apparent reluctance, but he would not leave the farm, and for the rest of the day he flew about the house, striking the aviary windows and calling to the birds inside.
When night came he flew to one of the trees. The next morning he resumed his siege of the house, and I had to give in. “Come back,” I said, opening the hall door, “if you are as fond of your half-brothers and sisters as that, rejoin them. I will never put you out again.”
He came in like a feathered streak, and I have him to-day—nervous, lively, in fine physical condition, and improved in his conduct, as I have never seen him strike a bird since.
This change of temper I have often observed in birds. In the case of this hybrid it was very striking, for, in the days of his youth, he would violently beat an inoffensive bird, and when he grew older I have seen him put up with every insult from another canary who coveted his mate, and who persecuted him from morning till night. Possibly birds, like human beings, gain wisdom with age. He and his mate build nest after nest that I never interfere with, for the eggs of hybrids are said never to hatch.
I have referred to the weak strain in the canary Minnie’s constitution and, strange to say, several of her nestlings succumbed before I lost her. I was in a measure prepared for her death, but when I at last found her little dead body I mourned sincerely and a long time, for a stouter-hearted, braver spirit never existed in a fragile body. She always reminded me of a little, plain-featured, delicate woman in a household, who with iron will sways every one to her wishes.
My nervous Norwich sang at the top of his voice on the day that he was made a widower. At the time I thought him heartless. Now I think he was probably mourning in his excitable way. It is as easy to misjudge birds as human beings.
A recent writer says that the Japanese often giggle when a funeral procession passes by. In reality, they are as sympathetic as we are, but they have a different mode of expressing themselves.
After Minnie died, Norwich devoted himself principally to a canary called Pussy’s Baby—her mother having been a good-sized yellow bird, with the reputation of a murderess of other canaries. Pussy’s Baby never had the influence over Norwich that Minnie had, and he became fussy and meddlesome. He interfered with other birds in their nest-making, and often received rebukes and hard blows. One evening I noticed that he was particularly excited about a new canary that I had put on the roof-veranda. The hybrid led her to his corner, and Norwich followed. The hybrid showed signs of terrible impatience, but as I have stated before, he was a reformed bird, and I did not think he would strike Norwich unless he was cunning enough to wait till I had left them for the night. However, I was shocked to find Norwich’s dead body on the floor the next morning, close by the hybrid’s perch. He was far from his own nest. Pussy’s Baby was sitting on a nestful of eggs in Sukey’s room. Norwich should have spent the night near her. He had either fallen dead in one of his fits of frantic singing and dancing, or the hybrid had struck him a fatal blow.
We should not criticize Norwich too harshly. His death was a real grief to the family, and mymother mourned for him as she has mourned for no other bird. He knew her, and when she spoke to him he always put his handsome head on one side, peeped from under his crest, and answered her with an intelligence she could not mistake.