“Now that it is up and the birds living in the cote, I don’t see what else you can do except to leave the ladder against the pole and have Sam climb up twice a day to feed them,” remarked Frances.
“Water once a day, and feed night and mornin’,” said Sam, as if learning a lesson by memory.
“We’ll just have to leave it that way until I see Mrs. Tompkins and ask her what can be done,” said Norma resignedly.
“Do they only need corn while they are caged?” asked Janet anxiously of every one.
“Mrs. Tompkins said we had best give them the same sort of food they would get if they were flying about at liberty. They need grit and lime and sand mixed in a dish and placed where they can get all they want of it. We must sprinkle sand and gravel over the floor of the promenade, too, for them to scratch in, all they like. When the hen bird lays her eggs and starts brooding over them, the male bird will feed and care for her. As soon as the little ones are hatched we can remove the wire and let them have their liberty,” said Mrs. James.
“Suppose the pair on one floor of the house start a family, before the other birds think of it, and you remove the wire. They will fly away again, just as they did from the barn,” said Janet.
“We won’t take away the wire from the front of the coops unless all the birds settle down to raising their families. Only one pair of birds will be given their liberty at a time,” said Norma.
Several barrels were secured from Tompkins’ store after that, but the others were small half-barrel sizes which the girls preferred, because they would only have to have two families in one cote, and that would simplify the troubles of a flat owner.
The new cotes were placed upon much lower posts and poles, too, so the problem of feeding the pigeons while they were in captivity was easier to solve.
Sam had found a small American flag in the roadway one day, and this he stuck in the top of Norma’s large cote, where it flew patriotically and made the pigeons sit with heads on one side eyeing this emblem of their native land.