Have you ever seen a Starling and heard one talk? If not you have missed a treat, for this bird has fine powers of speech. He can whistle, croak and talk and is one of the choice delights of many a cottage home in Europe. He has lately been imported into this country.
The common starling is a very pretty creature, clad in brown, with purple and green hues, and a buff-colored tip to each feather which gives the bird a fine speckled appearance. In its wild state it has a soft and sweet song, and in a cage is a pert and friendly house pet, one that mocks the songs of others, learns to whistle tunes, and can talk as clearly as many of its keepers. I must tell the story of a pair of very cute and lively starlings, as it is told us by the gentleman in whose house these birds were born and brought up.
Dick and his wife lived in a large cage, with all the things needed to make than enjoy life. Once a day the cage door was opened and they took a bath on the kitchen floor, Dick first and his wife afterwards, for he was a little household tyrant, cuffing his mate soundly when she tried to be first in anything.
The Starling. One of the Talking Birds
Dick's first lesson was in imitating the rumble of carts in the street. Of this he was very proud and soon learned to speak his own name, always with the prefix "Pretty." He was always "Pretty Dick." As for his wife, he gave her the strange name of "Hezekiah." How he learned this no one knew, but he always used it.
Thus if his wife tried to join him in a song, he would stop and call out angrily, "Hezekiah! Hezekiah!" Then he would start again, and if she forgot his scolding and joined in again he was apt to chase her around the cage and give her a sound thrashing. At their meals Dick showed the same spirit. His wife was not allowed to touch a morsel till his lordship was done. If she dared to hop down and snatch a meal while he was singing it was a sad time for her if he caught her at it.
But though Dick was a tyrant to his wife, to those who cared for him he was a loving little pet. He was very quick at learning new words, and soon knew a large number, which he never grew tired of using. He grew so tame that he was given full freedom of the house and garden, and would spend hours in the grounds, catching flies, singing, and talking to himself as if repeating his lessons. He and the cat and kittens were the warmest friends, but he would play with the dogs also and often went to sleep on their backs.
"Doctor" was his name for his teacher, and if in singing an air he forgot part of it he would cry "Doctor, doctor," and repeat the last note once or twice, as if to say, "What comes next?" In this way he learned to pipe the tunes of—Duncan Grey and The Sprig of Shillelah, without a single wrong note. When a tune was played on the fiddle, he would listen with close attention, and when it was done would say "Bravo" in three distinct tones, thus: "Bravo! doctor; br-r-ravo! bravo!"
He got somehow into the fashion of starting a sentence with the verb "Is," spoken loudly.