FEW people know how different one bird is from another of the same kind. Of course we can see when one canary is green and one yellow and one crested; but few people know that some canaries have blue eyes, some brown, and some grey; or how different one canary is in intelligence and character from another.
Jack was a remarkably intelligent canary; one always felt him to be immensely superior to oneself. When he consented to sit on his swing and allow me to swing him, he always seemed to say, “This is a very childish game, but it appears to amuse you, and I am by nature indulgent.” He was often very angry with me and pecked me, but I was sure I deserved it. The only blemish I ever found in him was that he was rather unscrupulous and ill-tempered, but then hewas so exceedingly superior that he had to find fault with the canaries and me sometimes.
Jack was very bright yellow, with a slim, trim figure. When he was about two years old a little wife was given to him. She was almost white, and they looked very pretty together. Her name was Thyrsis. We tried to call them Corydon and Thyrsis, but “Jack” suited him so well that we were not able to change it, so they remained rather inharmoniously “Jack and Thyrsis” to the end of their lives.
I always used to turn Jack and Thyrsis out of their cage when I was cleaning it. One morning I did not see that the window of the room opposite was open. They flew round the room together, then coming to the open door they darted out of it, into the next room and straight to the window. One instant they rested on the window-sill, then like a flash of sunlight and moonlight they were out into the sunny garden and trees beyond. All that day I haunted the garden, too anxious to cry, carrying their cages about, in the vain hope that they might be hungry or thirsty and want to come back; once I thought I saw a flash of gold, but night fell and still the birds were out. The next day we sent the town-crier round shouting out areward of five shillings for them, and the day following Thyrsis was brought back to me in a paper bag, much exhausted but not materially worse.
I did not hear of Jack for five months.
Then a boy who lived near and kept canaries heard for the first time of my loss, and he sent me a canary which some months ago had come through the open window and settled on his own bird’s cage. Of course it was Jack. He had not forgotten his way of coming towards me with wings outspread, uttering the funny scolding noise from which he got his name.
Now by this time Jack and Thyrsis were come to years of discretion, and it was thought that they ought to build and have young. So they were provided plentifully with horsehair and cottonwool, and given a small round basket in one of the cages, and we put their two cages together, opening the door between.
They were very much delighted with the wool, and played with it a great deal, but they seemed to have no idea of the proper use of it; if we put it into the nest for them, they merely pulled it out again.
This became so hopeless, and I was so anxiousto try to rear little canaries, that a friend promised me another hen. She, however, forgot what our circumstances were, and sent us a pair, who were promptly named Jock and Mummy. I would not have Jack defrauded of his wife after all, so Mummy was taken away from Jock and given to Jack instead. There is not much to tell about poor Jock. He was a middle-aged gentleman, subject to chronic asthma, and could never in that state of health have undertaken the cares and responsibility of a young family. His cage was always hung up near the fire, and when he was worse than usual I gave him a tiny drop of sal-volatile in his water. He was a contented, cheerful bird, and lived as long as with his age and asthma one could expect.
Mummy was a crested bird, pale yellow with a green crest, rather pretty, but in mind utterly vulgar. Of course she was far more effective than the refined Thyrsis had ever been. She knew all about nest building, and began at once; while the cynical and gentlemanly Jack looked on. The pair always reminded one of an aristocratic philosopher who had married his cook.
But one must give Mummy the whole credit of the nest; she put the moss and hair and wool intoit, she squatted herself down in it, turned round, fluffed herself out to make it hard and round and compact; and at intervals went to keep up her strength by taking her “dishing-up beer” in the shape of hempseed.
Then she laid eggs quite satisfactorily, and they came out quite satisfactorily, and one by one all the nestlings died—notsatisfactorily. On examining the little corpses, we found that they had died of starvation. Jack was found guilty at the inquest, for a first principle of domestic life among canaries is that the father feeds the birds while they are very young. What was the reason, then, that he had so disgracefully neglected his duty of feeding them, while his devoted wife sat on the nest to keep them warm? There must be something more than grandeur and cynicism to make a gentleman allow his children to die of starvation.
At last we found out the reason—Jack was flirting with his first love! Thyrsis’ cage was hung in Jack’s sight, and instead of feeding his infant children, or attending to them in any way, he clung to the corner of his cage all day and serenaded Thyrsis. We put Thyrsis out of his sight; Mummy laid a second set of eggs, and Jack attended to them as if he had done it all his life. It is truethat he threw the eldest out of the nest on to the floor of the cage, but there is great excuse for that; a gentleman of refined and fastidious feelings must have had a dreadful shock when he first saw an unfledged canary and realised that that repulsive creature was his progeny. With all his cynicism, he could never have imagined that anything so loathsome existed. I don’t see what else he could have done,—I should have done it myself in his place. From whatever point you look at them, unfledged canaries are altogether and absolutely hideous; their brownish-pink skin is scantily covered with hairs, little bits of flesh wave helplessly about where their wings and legs are going to be, they have two large dark swellings where their eyes are going to be, and the only thing that is defined about them is a huge mouth which is almost always open and yelling. I had to pick the canary up from the bottom of the cage, and I still owe Jack a grudge for it, though I cannot in justice blame him.
Little canaries, when they are fledged, are as pretty as before they are frightful. These three little birds, when they were fledged, were all different and all beautiful. One was like her mother, yellow and green and crested; one like his father, allyellow; and one a sort of mixture, green and yellow and without a crest. Now a curious thing happened: the father chiefly devoted himself to feeding the little hen, who was like her mother; the mother (who begins to feed the birds when they are getting fledged and do not need warmth so much) fed the little cock like the father; and I have sometimes seen these two of their superfluity feeding their neglected brother. He throve well on the little attention he got.
I brought up several nests-ful. We had Tweedledum and Tweedledee,—Tweedledee’s name was subsequently changed to “Jewel” by a little cousin to whom I gave it, and who considered it a priceless treasure,—and Daffodil, the neglected nondescript, and Vicary, and Roumenik, called after the Wallachian country-place of some friendsof ours; and others whose names I forget. Roumenik was the only one I kept, he was the last hatched, and was called “the Baby” until he died at the mature age of eight years.
There was one wonderful chicken who did not live to have a name. He was very precocious, and died young. This was how it happened: the misguided Mummy laid an egg in January, and in consequence, as I have always believed, of the weather being so much too cold when it was hatched, the bird could never get fledged; when it had already begun to be active and of a roving disposition, it still had no feathers on. Even sprouting wing-feathers might have broken its fall a little, on the many occasions when it tried to get out of the nest and fell on its back on the bottom of the cage. One day it had a fall more serious than usual, and till evening it sat on the edge of its waterglass with its head hanging down and its neck apparently dislocated. In the morning I found it dead in the waterglass. So I do not know to this day which accident it died of.
But meanwhile a sudden stirring of domestic instincts came to Thyrsis, and she was stimulated to rival Mummy’s nest-building. I gave her a little basket and materials for a nest, and she set towork and built a very good nest, and sat in it for six weeks, till her claws grew long and her legs grew weak, and there was of course no sign of an egg. Then I took it away from her, for I was afraid she would be ill with sitting, and it would never be the least use. Poor Thyrsis! under other circumstances she might have proved herself, if less vulgar, quite as effective as Mummy in building and breeding. When I had had her about seven or eight years she died quite suddenly. Was it of a broken heart? Had Jack’s too late attentions stirred in her the emotion of love, as he clung to the corner of his cage, singing to her and leaving his babies to starve?
There is just one more canary I must mention, for it had a curious name and history. It was called after one of my relations “Uncle Arthur”; that is to say, it was called so by myself and my brothers; for it was supposed to be called “Arthur” by my mother and “Mr. Sidgwick” by the outside world.
Uncle Arthur was Jack’s brother, but Jack had a monopoly of the intelligence of the family. Uncle Arthur had been half starved when he first came to me, and it had affected his intellect. Perhaps I had better mention that it was not fromany supposed similarity in this respect that he was named after my uncle. He was idiotic in strange ways; for instance, I have known him try to bathe in a draught, from which he got inflammation of the lungs. For a long time, also, I found it was quite safe to take him out of doors without clipping his wings, for he was too foolish to know how to fly. One day, however, he astonished me by suddenly flying up into the top of a tree, which proved that his apparent powerlessness was the result of idiocy; for when he happened, as thus at intervals, to hit upon the right way of using his wings, he could fly quite well, though in a rather curious manner and with a pigeon-like noise. He never seemed to want to build nests, he never even serenaded any of the hen-birds of Jack’s family. He had a very happy, limited life. When he was already getting old I gave him away. I am sorry to say that his death was compassed accidentally by his new mistress; she was so much disgusted with him because he would not wash [he had probably forgotten how to], that she washed him one day herself with soap and flannel. Uncle Arthur died of it.
Jack outlived all the rest. Towards the end of Mummy’s life all illusion about her passed away;he got irritated and used to pull feathers out of her, though he tried to make up by much affection between times. But it was not Mummy’s fault. She was frankly vulgar from the beginning, and Jack, with his keen perception of character, ought to have known it.