Less harrowing was the incident of a robin who, on one occasion, came inside, in order to get more than his share of provender if possible, when he was suddenly startled by the dog running into the room. Instead of flying through the window that was open, he made for a closed one, banging his head with such force against the glass that the blow stunned him, and he fell senseless to the ground.
I picked him up, and tried all the restoratives I could think of, a drop of water on his beak, a cold splash on his head, but to no purpose; he lay, just a tiny handful of beautiful feathers, in my hand; so light, so helpless, so altogether pathetic—it hurt me badly to gaze at the small mite that only the minute before had been talking to me, and cheeking me, and liking me (yes, I am sure he did), and I unable now to do a thing to bring back the gaiety and life and sparkle to the poor still body.
I felt sure he was dead, yet to give him every chance, I placed him in a nest of soft flannel out on the window-ledge; the day was warm, but there was a breeze that might perhaps revive him. And as a last offering—one does so try to do all one can!—I put a tempting piece of suet near his inanimate beak. And how unnatural it seemed to see that suet remain untouched in his vicinity!
I took my work and sat where I could see if he so much as stirred a claw. But for a quarter of an hour there wasn’t the slightest sign of movement, except when the wind gently ruffled his feathers—and how exquisite they were, the blue so unlike the ordinary blue, the red much more red than the London robins, and the bronze-brown so glinting.
At last I decided it was useless to watch any longer, for his eyelids had never so much as flickered.
I was folding up my work, when a big yellow tit flew on to the window ledge, hopped over inquiringly to the suet, and started to sample it. In an instant up jumped the corpse, and with an angry “Chit! chit!” hurled himself at the interloper; and the last I saw of him was chasing the yellow tit all across the garden.
Don’t ask me to explain; I am only telling you what happened under my own eyes.
Yes, robin père can be a villain; he also can be the extreme reverse. Like the majority of the rest of us, he shows to the most amiable advantage when there is no rival to distract public admiration. So long as he is the centre, as well as the beginning and the end, of the bird universe, he is sweetness itself.
No other bird is so keenly alive to all my comings and goings. It doesn’t matter how fully occupied he may be with the settlement of every other bird’s affairs, I have but to go up the garden with fork or spade or broom, and before I have turned half-a-dozen clods, or pulled out a handful of weeds, I am conscious of a soft streak through the air, though I hardly see it; there he sits on a low branch of a currant bush close to my hand, or stands motionless on an edging stone at my very feet. If I take no notice of him, in all probability he starts a Whisper Song to call attention to himself.