Chapter XVI
I HAVE heard crying in the nursery; it is the most babyish and plaintive repetition of the old birds’ note, but it grows daily stronger, more importunate. The parent birds utter six notes, dwelling on the fourth in long musical appeal, the babies have learned only the fourth, the one that really tells when you are hungry; it is a little pipe, ridiculous to tears. The pretty little warbler pursues his gambols more energetically than ever before the door of our Eastern bungalow now, his wife comes with him and they are more punctual than we are at meals, always in the verandah, on the impatient hop, for breakfast and lunch and tea, though dinner-time finds them reluctantly in bed. I will go so far as to say that if I am late in the morning the father bird comes to my window and asks whether I am aware that I am keepingtwo families waiting—if that is not his idea why does he so markedly whistle there? Further I expect to be believed when I say that I whistle him my apologies and he replies, and we frequently have quite long conversations through the window before I actually appear. They are such a young couple and so absorbed in their domestic affairs that we take a great interest in them. It is a delight to find out a bird’s doings and plans, and his nest is the only clue. At other times how private they are, the birds! We know that they are about, and that is all.
One real service I have been able to render the robins—in throwing stones at the crows. The crow has a sleek and clerical exterior, but inside he is as black-hearted a villain as wears feathers. He is a killer and eater of other people’s offspring. Early in the season he marks the nest, but eggs are not good enough for him, he waits until hatching time is well over and then descends upon it with his great sharp jaws ravaging and devouring. The other day a youngbird took refuge from a crow in my bath-room. It was huddled up in a corner and I thought it a rat, but closer approach revealed it a baby mina, and through the open door I saw the enemy’s impudent black head peering in. He sailed away with imprecations on his beak and the mina was restored to its family; Atma fortunately knew where they lived. Two crows have marked our robins for their next dinner, and I am much interrupted by the necessity for disappointing them. I must say one is not disposed by such a circumstance as a nest to an over-confident belief in those disguising arrangements of nature that are so much vaunted in books of popular science. What could betray a nestful to the marauder more quickly than this perpetual treble chorus? Nothing, I am sure, unless the valiant declamation of its papa, who sometimes takes an exposed perch and tells the world exactly what he would do to a crow, if he could only catch him. Why are not young birds taught the wisdom of silence and old ones the folly of vaunting? Because birds and lizards and insects andthings are not taught half as much as we imagine, and as to the protective colour of a robin I believe it only happens to be brown. In this Thisbe agrees with me; the amount of popular science which is not in Thisbe’s possession would make many a humble home happy. The small events of a garden, as I must apologize for pointing out once more, become important to any one who lies all day, warm or cold, awake or sleepy there, and I went in to tea lately bursting with the information that the tits had come. “The Titts,” said Thisbe meditatively. “Did we know them last year?” “I rather think we did,” I replied, “Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Titt. I saw them this morning, but they didn’t leave cards.” At which I was obliged to dodge a suddenly illumined, perfectly undeserved sofa-cushion.
The garden is full of birds just now; they are for ever wanting to make new introductions, it is almost impossible to pursue the simplest train of thought. None of them are very constant except the robins and the woodpeckers and a pair of minas that havebuilt in a disused chimney and squeal defiance at the crows all day long from the eavestrough,—no crow was ever yet bold enough to go down a chimney after his prey. The rest come and go, I never know what they are at, or even, to tell the truth, how to address them. They appear suddenly out of nowhere and fly in companies from tree to tree, or settle down to an industrious meal all together under the rose-bushes, as if by common consent they had decided to picnic there; perhaps I shall not see them again for two or three days. Among the branches they take one direction, the tiny tree-climbers with yellow-green breasts are like young leaves flying. They add to life a charming note of the unexpected, these sudden flights of little birds; I wish I knew them to speak to....
It must be explained that this is the following day, and that an event of a very disturbing kind has taken place in the mean time. The rain was coming down in sheets this morning as Tiglath-Pileser and I stood by the window after breakfast. From thenest in the banksia came the most keen and mournful protest. For an instant it would stop when the old birds came and filled the little throats; then the plaint against life and circumstances, quite heartbreaking in accents so youthful, would begin again, and go on until it seemed to us too grievous to be borne. Heavily and heavily fell the rain. “I wonder the little beasts aren’t drowned out,” said Tiglath-Pileser. The close-cut roof of the banksia seemed a very poor protection to persons standing in the house.
“Couldn’t we do something?” I suggested “An umbrella?” but Tiglath-Pileser thought an umbrella would be too difficult to fix. He went away, however, and out of his own wisdom and understanding he produced a mackintosh. This with a walking-stick and infinite pains and precautions he spread over the banksia, the rain descending upon his devoted head, I admonishing from the window. The crying ceased instantly, and though we waited for some minutes it did not recommence. Evidentlythe little things were more comfortable, perhaps they had gone to sleep. “That,” said I to Tiglath-Pileser as he turned away, “was a real kindness.”
Half an hour later I was still at the window. No sound from the nest. At a little distance the mother bird hopped about anxiously, something evidently on her mind. I watched her for a long time and she did not go up to the nest. “The old birds,” thought I, “are afraid of the mackintosh. It is better to drown than to starve,” and I picked my way out among the puddles with a chair in one hand and an umbrella in the other and managed to get the thing off. And there at the foot of the trellis sat a little helpless bunch of feathers with round bright eyes and a heart beating inside,—a baby robin tumbled out.
I picked the adventurer up and took him into the house. He regarded me without distrust, comfortable in the warmth of my hand, but when I put him down he sent out no uncertain sound to say that he was unfriended. I have often tried to feed fledgelings,it is an impossible charge; and my advice as to this one was to put him on the window-ledge where his mother might do it. There he sat up with his back to the world and, looking at me with confidence, unexpectedly opened wide his preposterous futile yellow beak. It was as if a gnome had suddenly spoken—before the gaping demand I was helpless, full of consternation. “You pathetic little idiot,” I reflected aloud, “what canIdo for you!” and of course by the time bread and water arrived the beak was hermetically sealed, as usual. I sat down with confidence, however, to await events, and presently the small brown mother, saying all sorts of things in an undertone, came slipping in and out among the rose-stems below; and with much relief I saw the wanderer drop over the sill and join her. They made off together very quietly, and again I watched, uneasily, the nest. No sound, no parent birds, and as time went on still silence and abandonment. I decided that the young ones had been drowned or chilled to death before we thought of protectingthem, that the friendly mackintosh had come too late; and in some depression I went out to see. By standing on a chair I could just reach, and thrusting my hand through the wet leaves I felt for the little corpses. The nest was empty!
It is a novel and rather a laughable sensation to be taken in—completely sold—by a bird. How she managed it I cannot imagine, for it all happened under my eyes and I saw nothing, but one by one she must have enticed her family out into a most unattractive world some days before their time, alarmed at the shrouding mackintosh. The last had got only as far as the foot of the trellis when I found it. She had out-witted Providence. I sent for Atma and together we prowled and searched about the garden in the lessening rain. Presently he paused beside the closest tangles of the potato-creeper, “Chupsie!”[3]said he—the word was half a whisper, half a soft whistle—and bent down. I looked too, and therethey sat in a row, three soft, surprised, obedient little feather-balls, well hidden, and waiting no doubt to see what in this astonishing wilderness would happen next. I got back to the window in time to receive the parent birds’ opinion of me, full-throated, unabridged. They poured it out from perches commanding the banksia, from which they could see the Thing removed and their premature flitting quite foolish and futile. Plainly they connected me with the horrid dream that for an hour had cloaked all their horizon, and itwasa murderous scolding. Ten days of steady rain and then this misfortune! Every other bird was silent in shelter, only these two poured forth their tale of dolorous injustice. What weather to be obliged to fledge in—pretty accommodation for a young family in a potato-creeper! Was I not aware that they had been brought up in the rains themselves, hatched exactly this time last year? Could I not conceive that they might be able to mind their own business? “When you have quite finished,”I whistled humbly, “I’ll explain,” but I couldn’t get a word in, as the saying is, edgeways, and finally I fled, leaving them still expressing their opinion of well-intentioned people.