He says he knew two parrots who had lived together four years, when the female became so ill from gout that she could not get down from her perch to reach her food. For four months the male bird went on carrying the food to her in his beak; and when at last she fell from her perch through weakness, he kept constantly near her, trying to raise her, and showing the greatest care for her.
When she could no longer eat, he tried in vain to open her beak, so as to give her food, uttering sad cries; or stood with his eyes fixed on her, mournful and silent. From the time of her death he pined away, and died a few weeks afterwards.
Such stories are very beautiful, because they show, as a lover of animals once said, "what kindness God has put into the heart of His creatures."
Of the Scratching birds, there is none which you know so well as the hen; indeed this group is often called by a Latin name, which means that all belonging to it are of the hen tribe.
Our fowls come from India, but they have been at home in this country for a long time, and are very common in Palestine. If you have ever seen a mother-hen taking care of her chicks, calling them to her when she fears any danger for them, and hiding them beneath her soft warm wings, you will better understand the words which the Lord Jesus spoke when He beheld Jerusalem, the beloved city, and wept over it. Think of these words when you hear the hen call her chickens, and see them all come running to her, and hiding away under her wings, to be kept in safety from some foe which you cannot see, but which she knows to be lurking near, or perhaps hovering above, ready to pounce upon a stray chick and carry it off.
[Illustration: HARK!]
You may often see the Turkeys, Pheasants, Peacocks, and other birds of this Hen-family, scratching up the gravel; and you know, I daresay, that grain-eating birds have a little mill inside them called a gizzard, which grinds their food for them. Birds of prey have no gizzards, because their food does not need to be ground before they can digest it.
The Wading-birds have long bare legs because they live in marshy places, and long necks and beaks to catch the small animals upon which they feed. Snipe and Woodcock have long tapering bills which are alive to the very points with what are called nerves, so that they may be able to feel for worms as they dig for them in the soft sand and mud, where they cannot see them. Two birds of this family, the Stork and the Crane, are mentioned in the Bible in connection with a wonderful power which God has given to some birds, by means of which they know when the time is come for them to leave a country where their food is over and gone, and where the winter is too cold for them, for a warmer land, where they may find food convenient for them, and from which they will know right well how to come back again when spring returns, with its food and foliage. Such birds are called birds of passage; the Swallow is the one you know best, and it also is mentioned in the verse in which so many migratory birds are grouped together, "The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming." It is God who bids these birds "observe the time of their coming": no one knows why they go south for the winter, nor how they can tell their way over land and sea, and come back again to the very place from whence they took their flight.
The Stork must be to the People in Palestine just such a "guest of summer" as the swallow is with us, for it regularly arrives about the end of March, and flies away in the autumn.
Ships make their long voyages to the other end of the world and back with wonderful regularity, but though the helmsman has a compass to guide him, they do not arrive in port so exactly at their appointed time as the little swallow, who has only the sense which we call "instinct" to guide it; only its own light, strong wings to carry it on its swift way, flying a mile a minute—for even to its little bones and feathers, every part of its body is filled with air, rendering it the most buoyant of winged creatures.