Her death was a tragedy, but it left the hen-pecked finch free, and he soon devoted himself to his best-loved bird—a female finch of his own class. He adored this shy, second mate—the siskin had been a bold little thing. I often opened the door of the veranda-room for him and sat quietly in a corner while he led in the finch so that they could be away from the rougher birds outside.
Picking up a little bit of wool or hair in his beak the finch would elevate his head-feathers till they almost formed a crest, and would extend his reddish wings and shake them till they looked like a hummingbird’s. Then, making a pretty, coaxing noise, he would spin round and round the room in a kind of skirt dance.
The female teased him a good deal by looking the other way and pretending not to see him, but finally he persuaded her to make a nest, where she laid eggs and hatched them, but the young ones only lived a short time—I think because she was shy and easily frightened from them.
She almost fell a victim to another tragedy, for one day, on stepping to the veranda, I found her swinging from a branch by her slender neck. I ran to her, and found that a long hair had become fastened round her neck, and if I had not opportunely appeared she would soon have strangled to death. Fortunately she seemed none the worse for her adventure.
She was a brave little bird, and one habit of hers used to amuse me immensely. She was a great bather, and enjoyed her baths keenly during mild weather. Unlike many of my birds, who absolutely would not bathe when the cold days came, she kept on, but as if urged to her ablutions by a sense of duty she cried all the time she was bathing.
“Wee, wee!” she would exclaim, as she splashed into the water, then rose up tremblingly, “This water is dreadfully cold, but I must bathe. Wee, wee!” and down she would go again. I kept the aviary quite cool in the winter, but any birds that liked could sit near the hot-water pipes.
Very different from our native finches are the little foreigners of the same name. I am informed that there are thousands and thousands of these tiny foreign finches brought to America from Africa, Asia, and Australia. Some are only two and a half inches long, some are four, few are as large as the average canary.
Many of these finches are bred in captivity, but in most cases they are wild, and are caught by natives with more or less cruelty. Some of the African finches are said to be stupefied by the smoke of fires built under their roosting-places. They drop into blankets spread by the cunning Negroes and are given to captains of vessels in exchange for mock jewelry or rum.
On shipboard they are placed in boxes with wire fronts and their little anxious faces rise tier on tier. The voyage is long, and overcrowding and disease do their work. The wonder is that any survive. Fancy the contrast between the splendors of the African forest and the horrors of this crowded ship!
Upon arriving in America the bird-dealers take the tiny captives in hand, open their filthy cages, put them in clean ones, and exhibit them in their windows.