He listened with his pretty yellow head on one side, then flew downstairs and came back with his young brother Tippet, who is as fine a singer as he is, and a remarkable little bird. When he was still a baby and being fed by his parents I have seen him fill his beak with the egg-food and feed other babies younger than himself.
Having brought Tippet to my sister, Cowlie began a duet with him, and until it was time for them to fly to their perch for the night, delighted us with an exquisite flow of rippling bird-music. I do not know a prettier sight than a little bird in full song. My young Germans often lift one claw as they sing and distend their little throats till we laugh at them, and tell them they look as if they were trying to raise tiny yellow beards.
One day I got one of these aviary-hatched young ones and put him in a cage. He was not frightened, but he was so puzzled at my action that he did not know what to do. What was the cage anyway, and what were the perches for? It never seemed to occur to him to light on them. He clung uncomfortably to the side of the cage till I at last took pity on him and let him fly out to the trees of the aviary.
The number of nests that the canaries made did not embarrass me, but what should I do with the eggs. I could not treat them as I did the pigeon eggs, and I was not willing to raise young birds and give to friends to put in tiny cages. I at last hit upon the expedient of visiting my canary nests every few days, and taking out a certain number of eggs till they were all gone. The canaries did not care much about eating them, but Dan, the mockingbird, was delighted to have fresh eggs for breakfast, and would dart upon them with avidity.
CHAPTER XX
CANARY CHARACTERISTICS
Among my canaries were two hybrids, who were half-goldfinch and half-canary. They were fine, dark birds, more like their wild parent than their domesticated one.
While I had my farm I let all my wild birds fly away, except old Bob, the robin. I deliberated about the hybrids, and finally decided to let them take their choice, so after keeping them on the farm for a year I one day opened the door and told one of them that he might fly away with the goldfinches, purple finches, and other birds I had just released.
He went happily, and I heard later that he had called at a farmhouse farther down the road. I hope that he found his wild kindred and migrated with them. I did not know whether to let the other one go or not. He was a fierce little creature, with a beautifully marked goldfinch back, but his spirit was Norwich’s—that is, the nervous part of it was. Norwich was never cruel. He had in addition to this mental excitability, inherited Norwich’s peculiar leg feathering, and he was the only one of Norwich’s descendants that had done this. There was the little, dark fluffy skirt above the clean goldfinch legs, and he also danced while he sang his exquisite and constant song. A bird-dealer once coveted him, for hybrids are valuable, but I decided that nothing would induce me to imprison in a cage this little, wild, free spirit.
One day I found him beating a canary so severely that I said to him, “You are too bad for a house, go and play with your goldfinch brothers.” It was the Fourth of July I remember and, opening the door, I pointed to the tall maples about us. He went out with no apparent reluctance, but he would not leave the farm, and for the rest of the day he flew about the house, striking the aviary windows and calling to the birds inside.