“Very curious, Nat,” said my uncle. “The male bird evidently shuts his wife up after she has laid an egg, to protect her from other birds and perhaps monkeys till she has hatched, and then he goes on feeding her and her young one.”
“And well too, uncle; he is as fat as butter.”
“Feeding both well till the young one is fit to fly.”
“Which won’t be yet, uncle, for he hasn’t a feather.”
“No, my boy. Well, what shall we do with them?” said my uncle, still holding the screeching mother, while I nursed the soft warm bird baby, her daughter or son.
“Let’s put the little—no, I mean the big one back, uncle,” I said, laughing.
“Just what I was thinking. Climb up and do it.”
I easily climbed to the nest and was glad to get the young bird in again without cracking its skin, which seemed so tender; and no sooner had I rolled it softly in and climbed down than my uncle let the mother go, and so strong was her love of her young that she immediately flew to the hole and crept in, croaking and screaming in an uneasy, angry way, as if she was scolding us for interfering with her little one, while from a distance amongst the trees the cock bird kept on answering her with the noisiest and most discordant cries.
Every now and then it came into sight, flying heavily across the openings between the trees, its great cream-coloured, clumsy-looking bill shining and looking bright in the sun, while the cries it uttered tempted one to put one’s fingers into one’s ears.
And all the time the hen bird inside the tree kept answering it peevishly, as much as to say, Look here: what a shame it is! Why don’t you come and drive these people away?