She stepped very carefully over the little bird—it is wonderful to see the pains a mother bird takes not to injure little ones—she settled down over it. It was adopted. I was delighted. Now I would see what kind of a mother she would make. She sat on it steadily day after day, but to my amusement, for I had not reckoned on this, she started to feed it whole seeds from her crop.
She knew how to take its little beak in her own, this pigeon that had never associated with her kind; but of course she would have killed it with her whole seeds, so, as a punishment for the trick I had played on her, I had the task of feeding Sukey before she fed the squab. This I did by slipping pills of bread and rolled oats down her throat. To my further amusement the role of motherhood soon bored her. She did not really love birds, and she got tired of this squab as soon as he left the nest.
She is a slight creature, and this stout young homer with his big flapping wings, and his hoarse and piercing cries for food worried her and upset her usual calm. She ran from him, and we were often convulsed with laughter at the sight of Sukey fleeing from her adopted baby. I always had to catch him and feed him, and then he would go and squat down beside her and behave himself.
We called him Whistler, from his shrill cries after Sukey, and after a few weeks I again visited Tweedledum’s nest and took out of it the squab I had left. I wanted to compare it with Whistler, to see the difference between the one I had brought up and the one the mother had raised.
I found that mine was slightly smaller than hers, but was much more mature—it had a wiser eye, and acted more like a grown-up bird. Hers was more fluffy and was, of course, very shy. It snapped its bill at us and kept in a corner. Sukey began to beat it, so I hurried it back to Tweedledum.
When Whistler grew older he made his way out to the front and side of the house, where we had hammocks and tables, and always afternoon tea. Sukey, of course, came with him, and it was amusing to see these two birds perched on the hammock ropes while the four dogs lay underneath and the family sat about, reading and talking. In the distance were cats, hens, pigeons, sparrows, wild birds, calves, and pigs wandering about the farmyard and orchard.
If we all went into the house or disappeared about the farm, Sukey and Whistler would either follow us, or would go to the doors and wait for some one to let them in. I have often smiled to see baby Whistler all alone—such a tiny pigeon—standing patiently by the big hall door. Sukey would trot after us away down to the river, but he did not care as much for walking as she did.
They were never supposed to be left a minute alone out of doors, on account of the hawks, but sometimes we forgot them. One day we had been interested in the packing of some fine Siberian crabapples from a tree down by the road. All the family, including Sukey, had been there. When the dinner-bell rang we came back to the house, and not until we were at the table did I remember Sukey. I sprang up and rushed to the crabapple tree. She was not there. She had been sitting on a post, an easy mark for a keen-eyed hawk.
I ran back to the house, intending to ask the family to join me in a search for our especial pet, but it was not necessary. There, on the kitchen veranda, sat the little hooded creature patiently waiting for the door to be opened. After we left her she had trotted up the short avenue after us, and had taken her station there.
“Sukey,” I said, as I caught her up, “I was afraid that the hawks had caught you.”