Near the window wild birds fly.
Trees are waving round;
Fair things everywhere you spy
Through the glass pane's mystery.
Your small life's small bound;
Nothing hinders your desire
But a little gilded wire.
Mrs. Craik.
He didn't look very much like a bird, being mostly a big little stomach, as bare of feathers as a beechnut just out of the burr, with here and there on the head and back a tuft of down. His eyelids bulged prominently, but did not open, sight being unnecessary in consideration of the needs of his large stomach. Said needs were partially satisfied every few minutes with the nursing-bottle.
And a very primitive nursing-bottle it was, being no other than the beak of the parent bird thrust far down the little throat, as is the family custom of the rest of the finches.
From somewhere in the breast of the mother a supply was always forthcoming, and found its way down the tiny throat of the baby and into the depths of its pudgy being. This food, which was moist and smooth, was very nourishing indeed, and sweet as well, for it tasted good, and left such a relish in the mouth that said mouth always opened of itself when the mother bird came near. But no more than its own share of the victuals did Dicky get, though he did his very best to have it all. There were other babies in the same cradle to be looked after and fed. And they all five were as much alike as five peas, excepting that Dicky was the smallest of all and was kept pushed well down in the bottom of the nest. This did not prevent his mother from noticing his open mouth when it came his turn to be fed.
Canary mothers have sharp eyes; so have canary fathers, as will be seen.
Now, when this particular pair of birds began to look about the cage for a good place to fix upon for family affairs, some kind hand from outside fastened a little round basket in one corner, exactly of the right sort to stimulate nesting business. It was an old-fashioned basket, with open-work sides and bottom, airy and clean. Now, had this basket been a box instead, we should have had no tragedy to record; or had the mesh been closely woven, no fatal mistake (though well meant) would have darkened the sky of this domestic affair. But alas! the truth must be told, since the biography we are writing admits of no reservations.
It all came about by the interference of the father bird, whose presence in the nursery should have been forbidden at the start. The mother was more than once alarmed by his activity and misapplied zeal about the nest, and she had scolded him away with emphatic tones.
CANARY.