At dusk I returned home, and on going upstairs was surprised to hear a loud robin-chirp near me. I followed the sound, and there, sitting in the middle of the upstairs bathroom floor, stoical no longer, but clamorous, now that no cats were near, was my robin baby of the morning.
“You blessed thing!” I exclaimed, catching him up. “However did you get in here?”
I looked at the window. It was screened, as were all the windows in the house, to keep the birds in, and the cats out. The little fellow, when night came on, had been warned by his instinct to get up high. He had flown or scrambled up the side of the house, perhaps by means of an ash tree trained against the wall, and had gone up the screen, and then down, where it did not quite fit against the sash.
I had never had a bird perform such a feat, and I said soberly to him, “Providence has delivered you into my hands.”
He looked distrustfully at me. He did not care much for me in those days, but in his hunger he soon forgot his shyness. His poor little crop was quite empty. I fed him all he would eat, and in a few days he had forgotten his parents, and fluttered his little wings, and called for food whenever he saw me coming.
I called him Dixie, and put him in a cage with a young sparrow that a boy had brought me a few days before, saying that a painter had sent it. The man had been at work on a house, and this young one had fallen out of its nest. He was so young that he soon forgot his parents, and, like the robin, shook his wings when he saw me coming, and called for food.
Amusing to relate, the little sparrow took a violent fancy to the robin, and looking upon him as a second parent, followed him all about the cage begging for food. The young robin was dreadfully embarrassed. He could not feed himself—how could he feed another bird? Sometimes when the sparrow’s pursuit grew too hot, he would stop running, and turning, would face the smaller bird with wide-open bill, as if to say, “Look for yourself—there is no food in there.”
The sparrow was not to be reasoned with. He never stopped his pursuit of the robin, except to rest. At first I permitted it, for it gave them both exercise. Then, when the exercise increased till it became over-exertion, I took them both out of the cage and put them on the roof-veranda. By this time the sparrow could feed himself, but the robin could not. With strange inconsistency, the smaller bird would stuff himself with bread and milk, or egg-food, then he would run after the robin with his cry of, “More, more!”
The poor robin would run from one side of the veranda to the other, skipping over food and water dishes, and occasionally stopping short, and turning on the sparrow with wide-open bill.
The sparrow never gave up the chase until Dixie eluded him by slipping into some hiding-place. Then he would go all about, peering into corners with his sharp little eyes till he found him.