"They'll lay about three eggs a day between them," he said, "these five birds."
"Why between them?" I enquired. But I consented to buy his birds, and he said if I liked he would run round to my garden at once and run up a hen-house and a hen-run for me. "Run" seemed rather a word with him.
I said, "Yes, by all means."
He came round that evening and hewed down an apple-tree under the light of the moon to make room for the maybird-run, and in the morning he brought a large roll of wire-netting, and the next day he built a wooden house, and the day after that he brought his five maybirds, and the day after that he came round and asked for some cinders. He sprinkled these all over the enclosure, and I watched him while he worked.
"What is that for?" I asked.
"They want something to scratch in when they run about," he explained. "Exercise is what they need."
"They seem to be scratching already, but they don't seem to be running," I said. "Wouldn't it have been better to put a cinder-track all round the edge and train them to run races round it?"
He said that he hadn't thought of that, but I could try it if I liked. Then he gave me a bag of food, which he said was particularly efficacious for maybirds, and produced his bill.
All this happened about a month ago, and for the last four weeks the principal preoccupation of my household has been the feeding of these five birds. I have had to lay a gravel-path from the aviary to the back premises in order to sustain the weight of the traffic. Huge bowls of hot food are constantly being mixed and carried to them, without any apparent consciousness on their part of their reciprocal responsibilities. What I mean to say is that there are no eggs. The food which they eat resembles Christmas-pudding at the time when it is stirred, and I have suggested that a sixpence should be concealed in it every now and then—sixpence being apparently the current price of an egg—in order to indicate the nature of our hopes.
I have made other valuable suggestions. I have suggested putting an anthracite stove in their sitting-room, and papering the walls with illustrations representing various methods of mass production, ordinary methods having failed. I notice that cabbages are suspended by a string across the top of the parade-ground in order that the birds may obtain exercise by springing at them. The cabbages are eaten, but I do not believe that the birds jump. I believe that they clamber up the wire with their claws, walk along the tight-rope and bite the cabbage off with their teeth.