Birds of Song and Story

by Elizabeth Grinnell; Joseph Grinnell

Now, it should not seem strange to any one that we chose the lizard people to associate with this yellow-as-gold canary. Were they not one and the same long ages ago? And this is no legend, but fact. Have they not both to this day scales on their legs and a good long backbone? To be sure, the birds now have feathers on most of their bodies, so they may be able to fly; but a long while ago the bird had only scales, and not a single feather. And are not baby lizards hatched from eggs laid by the mother lizard? Ah, it is a long story, this, dating back too far to count. But long stories are quite the accepted fashion in natural science, and from reading them we resolved to make some observations of our own. There is more to be gained sometimes in making observations on one's own account than by adopting those of others.

We captured half a dozen lizards and gave them the names of Lizbeth, Liza, Liz, and Lize. That is, four of them, being of the same order, received these names; there were two little ones besides, with peacock-blue trimmings, which have nothing to do with this story. The four named were about eight inches in length, speckled above and silver beneath. Their other beauties and characteristics will not be discussed except as it becomes necessary in treating of Dicky's further development.

From the day when these five creatures became fellow-captives they were friends. The lizards took to sleeping in the canary's food-box, so that in getting at his meals he was obliged to peck between them, and sometimes to step over them and crowd them with his head after hidden seeds. As the afternoon sunshine slanted across the cage the five took their dry bath all in a heap, bird on top with wings outspread, lizards in a tangle, each and all thankful that there was such a thing as a sun bath or family descent. Later, as the sun was going down and the lizards became drowsy, as lizards will, Dicky sang them a low lullaby, now on the perch above them, now on the rim of the feed-box. At times another comrade joined them, especially at this choral hour.

One of those red and white striped snakes seen in ferns and brakes along watercourses made a home in the cage with the bird and the lizards. This snake had an ear for music; at the first notes he emerged from his lair slowly and cautiously, lifted his graceful head toward the singer, and glided in his direction. If the bird were on the perch the snake would crawl up the end posts, taking hold with his scales, which, of course, were his feet, and lie at length on the perch at Dicky's feet, watching out of its beautiful eyes. At other times it would merely glide toward the bird, lift its head erect some five or six inches, and remain motionless until the song was finished. A big, warty hop-toad, also an inmate of this asylum, was a friend of Dicky's, as indeed was every creature, even to the big grasshopper. This toad and the bird were often seen in the bath together, the toad simply squatting, as is the custom of toads, the bird splashing and spattering the water over everything, including, of course, the toad. The toad blinked and squatted flatter to the bottom of the bath, hopping out when the bird was done, and the two sunning themselves after nature's own way of using a bath-towel.

It would be too long a story were one to tell of the songs Dicky sang to the drone of the drones bumming away against the wire, sorry perhaps that they were to become dinner to lizards before summer was half over. But we must bring the biography to an end, hoping that these few reminiscences will tend to interest people in the "Dickies" that are about them in wire cages, too often neglected and never half comprehended.

But we should by all means give an account of the last we ever saw of this particular Dicky.

During his stay on the balcony he had become acquainted with the finches and linnets and mocking-birds of the yard, holding quiet talks with them in the twilight, and growing more thoughtful at times, even to the extent of watching for opportunities to escape. One evening, just as we lifted the door to set in a fresh pan of water, out darted Dicky. Straight to a tree near by he flew, and called himself over and over again. We cried to him, "Dicky, O Dicky, come back."

Ah, but here was a taste of freedom—the freedom which his ancestral relatives had enjoyed on the low slopes of Teneriffe before ever a foreign ship had carried them away captive. And Dicky had never read a word about his ancestors and their freedom! Therefore, what did he know about it? Scientists call it "instinct." It is a word too hard for us, and we will say "Jerusalem" and let it pass. Away across the street flew Dicky, the bird of prison birth, the bird of only two comrades of his kind and color, and these but shadows in a mirror.

The lizards heard us call, and peeped lazily over the edge of the hammock seed-box, blinking sleepily, and then cuddled down again without sense of their loss.

Running after the bird did not bring him back, as everybody knows to his sorrow who has once tried it. A glint of gold in the pine-tree, a radiance as of lemon streamers in and out of the cypress hedge, and we saw Dicky no more.