Most unfortunately, I had not a chance to study poor Dick’s character as fully as Bob’s, for I only had him a short time. Both he and Bob, instead of mounting to perches at night, would go to sleep on the windowsills, where I was afraid my pet rats would disturb them, as they ran about in their search for food. Therefore, I went into the aviary every evening, and lifted them up to a comfortable place for the night, near the hot-water pipes. I would not put robins in a warm place now. They are hardy birds, and if given a sufficient quantity of nourishing food do not need a warm sleeping-place. If we only had a better food supply I believe we would have many more wild birds with us in winter in the Northern States and Canada than we have now.
Late one evening I went into the aviary to put my robins to bed. I could only find Bob—Dick was nowhere to be seen. My father and mother joined me in the search, and finally we found his poor, lifeless body near the entrance to the rats’ underground nest. His head had been eaten—poor, intelligent Dick; and in gazing at him, and at the abundance of food in the aviary, the fate of the rats was sealed.
I fed my birds hard-boiled egg mashed with bread crumbs, crushed hemp-seed, scalded cornmeal, bread and milk, prepared mockingbird food, soaked ant eggs, all kinds of mush or “porridge,” as we say in Canada, chopped beef, potato and gravy, vegetables cooked and raw, seeds and fruit, an almost incredible amount of green stuff, and many other things—and yet the rats had found it necessary to commit a murder.
Well, they must leave the aviary, and they did, and for a time Bob reigned alone. I did try to bring up a number of young robins given to me by children who rescued them from cats, or who found them on the ground unable to fly, but for a long time I had very hard luck with them.
Either the birds were diseased or I did not feed them properly. I have a fancy that I half starved them. Bird fanciers whom I consulted told me to be sure and not stuff my robins, for they were greedy birds. As long as I took their advice my young robins died. When I went to my canaries for advice I saw that the parents watched the tiny heads folded like flowers too heavy for their stalks, over the little warm bodies in the nests.
The instant a head was raised the mother or father put a mouthful of warm egg-food in it. The little ones got all they would eat—indeed, the father, with food dripping from his mouth, would coax his nestlings to take just one beakful more. I smiled broadly and began to give my robins all the worms they wanted, and then they lived.
The bringing up of young birds is intensely interesting. I found that one reason why early summer is the favorite time for nest-making is because one has the short nights then. Parents can feed their young quite late in the evening and be up by early daylight to fill the little crops again. Robins are birds that like to sit up late, and are always the last to go to bed in the aviary.
I solved the difficulty of rising at daylight to feed any young birds I was bringing up by giving them a stuffing at eleven o’clock at night. Then I did not have to rise till nearly eight.
This, of course, was for healthy birds. If I had a sick guineapig, rabbit, or bird, I never hesitated to get up many times during the night, for I have a theory that men and women who cannot or will not undertake the moral responsibility of bringing up children, should at least assist in the rearing of some created thing, if it is only a bird. Otherwise they become egotistical and absorbed in self.
