“The pleasure of a vertical fall,” remarked Jules, “accompanied by a somersault, must carry some fear with it. Perhaps that is what gives zest to this exercise.”
“But the pigeon pulls up in time?” queried Emile.
“Whenever it wishes to,” his uncle replied, “it brings to an end its downward hurtling from these airy heights, ordinary flying is resumed, and presently the tumbles begin again finer than ever. Here let us pause, without exhausting the list of varieties, amounting to twenty-four, counting only the principal ones. These few examples show you sufficiently what diversity pigeon-house life has stamped on the form, habits, and plumage of the primitive bird.
“All pigeons, wild as well as tame, lay never more than two eggs to a hatching, from which generally spring brother and sister. The cares of brooding [[145]]are shared by the father and mother alike, a practice found in no other tame bird. In the morning, when hunger makes itself felt, the female calls the male by a peculiar cooing and invites him to come and take her place on the eggs, which he does with alacrity. About three or four o’clock in the afternoon the rôles change. If the pigeon which until then has remained on the nest does not see its mate coming, there follows an anxious search, with admonitory cooings and, in case of need, admonitory peckings; and the laggard is brought back to the serious business of brooding. But as a rule the mother is irreproachably punctual; she returns to the nest at the hour agreed upon and does not leave it again until the next morning. Incubation takes seventeen or eighteen days.
“The little ones are born naked, blind, ungraceful. The father and mother, sometimes one, sometimes the other, feed them from the beak. This beak-feeding method of the pigeons is exceptional and deserves special consideration. I need not tell you how other birds feed their brood; any one that has ever raised a sparrow will know that.”
“The little sparrow,” Jules hastened to explain, “opens its beak as wide as it can and the parents put into it the food they have brought, just as I put a grasshopper into it, or a piece of a cherry, or a soaked bread-crumb.”
“Jules forgets,” said Emile, “that it is well to tap the little bird on the tail to excite its appetite and make it open its beak.” [[146]]
“Emile’s improvement is not indispensable,” Uncle Paul replied. “If it is hungry the bird will open its beak without being asked. Into this beak that gapes so wide the parents put the point of theirs and drop whatever prize they have found; but if the little bird is very young the father and mother begin by half-digesting in their own stomach the food destined for the little one. Then they put their beak into the little one’s and disgorge the nutritious pap that they have prepared.
“Well, pigeons do exactly the reverse: it is the father and mother that gape, and the little ones that plunge their beak deep down into the throat of the parent bird. The latter is then seized with a convulsion of the stomach accompanied by a rapid trembling of the wings and body. Little plaintive cries denote that the operation is perhaps not quite painless. From the crop thus done violence to, the half-digested nutritive matter comes up in a jet that passes into the half-open beak of the nursling. Twice a day the little pigeons receive their food in this way; twice a day, but no more, so painful to the nurses seems this mode of feeding from beak to beak.”
“I should think,” said Jules, “that the parents would feel rather uncomfortable when the young pigeon tickles their throat, deep down, with its beak. If we can judge by what would happen to us, the stomach would rebel and would throw up its contents painfully.”