Tales of the birds

by W. Warde Fowler

“How can you ask such a question?” answered Twinkle. “I sank to the ground, and got into some long grass under a bit of hedge by the lighthouse. I hadn’t strength left to take wing again; and if I could have done it, I should have been blown against the lighthouse: and what was more, the light had gone out again, and I couldn’t see where it was.”

“But the light came out once more, I suppose?” asked Flip.

“I don’t know,” said the other. “I put my head under my wing and went to sleep under the hedge; which is exactly what you too would have done, if you had been there.”

Flip said no more; but he formed a strong opinion about Twinkle, and felt that he did not care for his company any longer. Watching his opportunity, while the other was at work on a fly, he flitted quietly into the thick of the alders on the other side of the round pond, and taking a perch right down in the roots by the water, began to give vent to his own sorrow by uttering a sad cheep every minute or two. Poor Pipi, the kindest and the cleverest of them all! always helping some one, and always in good humour! never without some little fun of his own, even in the most awkward moments! How could they possibly get back again to Africa, when the summer was over, without Pipi? How indeed would Flip have the heart to sing to his wife during the nesting-time, unless Pipi’s voice was heard from the next tree? Pipi was always singing, and his voice was the best of all: for while the others were always finding their voices go up with a turn at the end of their strain, like those commonplace chaffinches, Pipi almost always brought down his in a perfect cadence, which is the great accomplishment of a willow-warbler. And when the young were fledged, no young father of a brood was so careful or so beloved as Pipi. He did not leave all the work to his wife, as some did; Mrs. Pipi had been hard-worked ever since they built their nest at the foot of the big elm-tree, and now she was sent off every day in the early morning to eat her fill of insects in a neighbouring garden, with a special warning to beware of the old gray cat, who was always creeping about between the pea-rows. Then Pipi used to take the young ones under his own charge, and put off his own breakfast till he had fed them well, popping the food into their gaping beaks as fast as if his wife had been there to help him. What fun he used to make of them! Flip remembered how he was once sitting on a bough, singing to his own wife, who had not yet hatched all her eggs, when he saw Pipi trying to entice his young ones out of the nest. They all came out at last, except Dot the youngest, who sat at the door of the nest, and looked through the buttercup stems into the wide world with fearful and restless eyes. Pipi tried all he could to make her come out; he perched on the bough above her and sang his best, so that her little black eyes twinkled, for she knew that music well; but still she hesitated. Then he picked up a little green caterpillar and put it down just in front of her; her bill opened wide at the sight of such a juicy morsel, but still she did not come. Just then a snail came slowly by, with its shell on its back.

“Dot,” said Pipi, “do you see that creature with his nest on his back? Shall I tell you why he must always carry it? When he was a nestling, he wouldn’t come out of his nest like the others; so at last the nest stuck to him, and he carries it to this day, and always will. So take care the same thing doesn’t happen to you, Dot—I rather think I see your back beginning to stick to that bit of moss; and if you don’t make haste—” But before he could finish the sentence, the horror-stricken Dot was out of the nest; and in another minute she was on a twig beside him.

Recollections like these passed through poor Flip’s clouded mind, as he lurked in the stems of the alder-root. But after a while, as the wind went down, he bestirred himself, and flying up to the top of the alder, began to look about him. There was the sea, and there the little gap, with the stream, where he had landed: and there, right above it, on a headland, was the lighthouse. It would not take long to get there, and he felt that he must go and find out if anything was to be seen of poor Pipi. A flight would do him good, and there were plenty of hedges to rest on. So after a number of quick low flights from hedge to hedge and tree to tree, he came to the front of the lighthouse, and sank rather tired into the long grass where Twinkle had landed in the night. Peeping out after a while, he flew about a little, searching for poor Pipi’s body: but nothing was to be seen of it. Then, taking courage, he flew up on to the platform in front of the light, on which Twinkle had described Pipi’s falling, but neither here was there a trace to be seen of Pipi.

Just as he was going to fly off he heard a voice inside the lantern-room, and listened, for birds can understand all languages.

“Well, Peter,” said the voice, “what did you get in last night’s gale? The warblers ought to be coming now; we have had the chiffchaffs and the wheatears, and a few redstarts; who are the next earliest this year?”

Flip peeped in at a corner of the window; it was dangerous, but he might see or hear something of Pipi. The man who had spoken was a tall, hale, and hearty looking old gentleman, with a face glowing with its own good-nature as well as with the blustering of the gale. He was answered by the lighthouse-man, who wore an oilskin hat, and was short and weather-beaten.

“Good afternoon, Professor,” he said, as he put his hand into a deep pocket of his overcoat, “I’ve a thing or two for you this time; sure to get something in a gale like that, though for the matter of that a calm night suits ’em better. We’ll have more to-night again, I’ll answer for it. Here they be: some of ’em knocked agen the window and fell on the platform (Flip felt his ears tingling and his brain swimming); some on ‘em were blowed right away and we couldn’t find ’em. Wrens we calls ’em here, though they ben’t just like our jenny wrens, all the same,” said he, as he pulled out a number of little birds and laid them on the table.