I never saw him or any other father bird deliberately try to give the young ones a lesson. The young ones certainly acquired something from the father’s song, but they also took up the notes of other birds. No two birds sang alike. There was always a slight variation.
As time went by and I got other canaries, there was a great deal of quarreling. Canary fights consist of shrieks and screams of anger, a flying together high up in the air, with a great fluttering of wings and striking of beaks, then a coming down again. It is all fuss and feathers with no bloodletting.
Norwich, with his long feathering, was perfectly ludicrous when he quarreled. He would tremble with rage, and from under his crest which, by the way, I had shortened when he went into the aviary, he would dart furious glances at any canary that happened to be meddling with him. Then, when his rage was over, or not quite over, he would dance and sing as if his little throat would burst.
CHAPTER XIX
RAISING YOUNG BIRDS
My canaries with their bites, and nips, and blows, reminded me of naughty children. However, it does not do for a bird to be too meek in an aviary. The bird that, when struck on one cheek, turns another, must say good-bye to happiness. The bird that keeps out of the way and is never attacked, gets on very well, but the bird that is not afraid to stand up to a bully, has the best time of all.
I was amused with a hen bird one day that was attacked by a larger bird. She had no time to fly, but she opened her beak and spread her wings, and made such a horrible and such a determined face that her assailant yielded her the perch and flew away.
I saw many singing contests, especially when there were two males anxious to please one female. The first canary would do his prettiest, then would deliberately stop and listen to his rival. I have often seen this first canary hitch up to his rival, and peer down his distended throat as if to say, “Where does all that noise come from?”
My canaries were the most industrious birds I had. I have never yet had a canary in health, that when spring began, was not immediately seized with a rage for nest-making that lasted till late in the autumn.
They like a new nest for every clutch of eggs, and a canary whose ancestors have been kept in cages for generations, will go right back to his wild habit of building in trees if you do not give him a nest-box. Even if there is a nest-box, some prefer the trees. I used a great many traveling-cages for nests, and hung them on trees and walls where the little birds could find them and build inside. These tiny cages, made of fir, whittled during the long winter evenings in Germany by miners and woodcutters, and sold for two and a half cents a cage, were for the canaries what the cracker boxes were for the pigeons. They were protected at the backs and sides, and the father birds could sit on the top. From the fronts of the cages I removed a few bars so the parents could go in and out.