I got to dread the sound of young Virginians chirping in the nest. They were rarely allowed to live more than a few days, and it was painful to find the plump, dead bodies, well-shaped and looking well-nourished. What killed them? I shut up one suspect after another. The gallinules, the mockingbird and Ruby himself. Red-top would not dare to go near his enemy’s nest. Not until two years ago did I discover that Virginia herself lifted them out.
This was a blow to the mother-love theory, but I gave her the credit of thinking that the young ones died in the nest, and not being able to endure the sight, she took them out. They were rarely mutilated. They had been carefully carried in her powerful beak.
One day I was shocked to find three young ones about ten days or a fortnight old squirming on the window-ledge. This was downright murder. I revived one, kept him for part of the day, then he died. These were fine young birds with feathers starting.
I puzzled more and more. There was plenty of food in the aviary, and Virginia herself was in fine condition, for she would make three or four, or even five nests a year. This last summer she murdered four sets of young ones. I took a fifth lot from her, but they died on my hands. I had one theory after another to account for this slaughter but none of them was satisfactory. Feeling that another bird-lover might be more successful with her in the nesting season, I sent her this autumn, with Ruby, to a skilled curator of birds, and next summer I shall await results with interest.
I shall miss her and Ruby immensely for, strange to say, the Virginian female possesses a song almost equal to that of the male bird. When she was upstairs and Ruby down below, and they sang to each other, I often sat in my study listening to them and thinking of Mary McGowan’s lines with regard to the red cardinal:
No slumber songster he, with vesper warblings low,
But bold his every note, and full and strong:
In his clear ringing pledge, hear him unstop the flow,
Then gurgle forth the red wine of his song.
Virginia never became very tame, but Ruby reminded me of a dog, in his ways. One night I shut him in the furnace-room for some reason or other, but he fretted to get back to Virginia, and after dark I went downstairs with my small candle lantern, for I had to be careful what sort of a light I carried among the dry spruces and firs of the aviary. Ruby was pressed against the wire door. He spoke to me, and I held the lantern close to him and guided his feet back to Virginia. Too impatient to wait he hopped on ahead, and I followed quickly, trying to keep the swinging light steady.