Sometimes I teased her by going up to the nest and telling her that she might as well give up—her eggs would amount to nothing. She would fly into a rage and take my fingers in her bill and scold, and sometimes scream at me.
However, a companion was on his way to her. A year later I had sent to me a fine mockingbird—“the bird of four hundred tongues,” as the Mexicans call him. He was a beauty, and quite an acrobat, for he would go to the top of the elevator and turn over and over in the air, flirting wings and tail as if to show the pretty white feathers in them. Bob took quite a fancy to this new bird, whom I named Dan, and soon a peculiar, querulous, uncomfortable sort of affection sprang up between them.
Dan used to sing a most fantastic song to her that sounded like “Git bang, git bang, cheer up, cheer up, meow, meow, meow!” varying it by imitations of the songs of other birds in the aviary, and also by the squealing of the guineapigs.
One day he got behind me and mimicked a guineapig in distress so cleverly that I turned round to aid it, but found only Dan with his mocking, inscrutable eye fixed on me.
Writes a sweet singer:
List to that bird, his song, what poet pens it?
Brigand of birds, he’s stolen every note.
Prince though of thieves—look how the rascal spends it—
Pours the whole forest from one tiny throat.
Dan’s affection for Bob was somewhat fitful. He flew about with her sometimes, and sometimes he took no notice of her beyond lowering his head and giving a spiteful hiss when she went near him. However, he would not allow any bird to disturb her in her nestmaking, and once when she deserted a nest and began to build a new one, he sat on the deserted one until two ringdoves drove him away and took possession of it themselves.