This last summer the Brazilian cardinals built another nest on the roof-veranda. I had a thick, leafy screen in front of it, and did not go near it. Weeks went by, and one fine June day I heard the well-known Brazilian baby-cry in the nest.
I would scarcely allow my family to look at the tree. The birds did not mind the noise of the children in the near-by gardens, the street cars, and guns, whistles, and military music of our garrison and maritime town, but they did not want us to go near them. Our self-denial was soon rewarded, and one day I had the long-waited-for pleasure of seeing a fully fledged young Brazilian step from his nest.
He was a little beauty, gray and white, and with a golden brown, not scarlet crest. I looked forward with interest to his baby moult and acquisition of the cardinal’s red hat. His hoarse cries for food were very amusing, and both parents fed him devotedly for some time after he left the nest. He was inclined to be shy, but after a time came out from the shelter of the trees, advanced toward the tempting food-dishes, explored the bathtubs, and had a good dip, flew all about the roof-veranda, and altogether was a very happy little bird until one unfortunate day when I took it into my head to examine one of his claws. It was twisted, and I thought possibly I might do something to straighten it. I caught him, examined it, found I could do nothing to help him, and then placed him on the veranda.
To my dismay, almost to my horror, he could barely move. He hobbled to a corner. He could neither walk nor fly, and crouching in one spot seemed as if he would die. I soon discovered that though I might possibly have hurt his claw in trying to straighten it, the real injury was in the shock to his nerves. I put food and water within his reach and let him alone. Every night I watched him to see that he got under shelter, and in a few weeks he managed to hitch himself up to the higher branches of the trees.
I had waited for four years for a young Brazilian bird, and this was the result. To add to my distress, Touzle, who had built another nest—she started by building an addition to the old one, but fearing vermin I tore it to pieces and she made another—this gentle, amiable Touzle had just before the baby’s sad experience with me, begun to show herself in an altogether different light. From being motherly and amiable she became unmotherly and hateful, until I sometimes wanted to shake her.
When the poor cardinal baby, so sorely in need of consolation would, with a nervous and distrustful eye on me, drag himself toward his lovely-looking mother as she sat on her nest in her shady nook, Touzle would daintily step off.
With a look at Red-top she would bow her head, spread her tail and begin to talk to him. Over and over again, whenever the baby came near them, she did the same thing. She urged Red-top on to beat the young one, and drive him away from the nest.
I never saw her look so handsome and so attractive as when she would exhort her mate, and then with him, approach their nestling and drive him out from the shady corner where the nest was.
I suppose this poor afflicted baby did not suffer as much as I thought he did. I hope he did not. I could not help imagining him in the depths of bird despair because his parents had disowned him and I had forfeited his confidence.
Whatever his feelings were, he did what is a very sensible thing for any afflicted mortal to do—he ate and drank, and fought. It did me good to see him lock beaks with his father and stand up to his mother. Many a thrashing he would have got if he had not squared up to the vicious old parents and looked and acted as ugly as they did. He never attacked them, he only defended himself, when to have turned tail might have meant annihilation.