Naming a bird was a very exciting event in
the bird-room and always caused a great deal of talk.
Green-Top was furious. His name sounded quite short and of no account, compared with Richard the Lion-Hearted. To show his displeasure he dashed across the room and brushed our Mary’s ears with his wings. That was a favorite trick of the birds—to brush the hair or the ears of Miss Mary, or to light on her head, and the way they did it showed the state of their feelings toward her.
“Naughty boy!” she said, shaking her head at him. “Hemp seed for every bird in the room except Green-Top,” and she fed us an extra portion of this seed we liked best while he, knowing better than to come forward, sat in a corner and sulked.
She was just like a mother to us all, so good and indulgent, but she would not have any bullies in her bird home, and if a bird got too bad she gave him away.
After a while she went out of the room, and Green-Top flew at me, beat me, and was beginning to chase me most wickedly, when our father called us to have a singing lesson.
By this time we were six weeks old, and had
been driven out of our nest three weeks ago. My mother was now getting ready for a second family. Miss Mary had given her a fresh box with a new nest in it, and my mother was lining it with soft cow hair, moss, dry grass, and short lengths of soft, white string. Our Mary never gave her birds long bits of anything, for they would have caught on their claws and tripped them up.
We young ones watched her jealously. We had cried bitterly when we were put out of the nest. Our mother did not beat us, but our father did.
“Don’t you understand, babies,” she said, as she turned herself round and round in the nest to shape it with her breast, “that I must get ready for this second family? I could not have you hanging about your old home. You would step on the nestlings. You must go out in the room and get acquainted with some of the young birds, for a year hence you will be choosing mates of your own.”