Tales of the birds

by W. Warde Fowler

“Never mind me,” said Pipi at last; “look at me, Mrs. Flip, a poor wreck, with a bruised bill, and a game leg, and only half a song: who could be jealous of me? Leave off fluttering round poor Flip, and let me tell him my story, and then you shall have him all to yourself.”

So Mrs. Flip perched quietly on a bough hard by, for she was a sensible bird, or she would not have married Flip; and she had so often heard him talk of Pipi that she felt he must want sadly to hear the story.

Then Pipi told how he had suddenly come upon the light, and then lost all his senses as suddenly; how, when he came to himself, he was in a horrible cage, with nothing fit to eat, even if he could have eaten it; how the Professor had taken him in his hand and stroked him softly, and then had bound up his leg without hurting him a bit; how he had told Peter’s wife to keep Pipi warm, and to get some insects off the trees for him if he got any better. And then how he felt the warmth slowly reviving the life within him, and how he began to flutter a little about the room, and was very nearly caught by the cat, and then put into the cage out of her reach; how Peter brought a great piece of willow-bough, as the Professor had told him, on which Pipi had contrived to find a few insects; and how, as strength returned, a great desire grew within him to get away to the meadow and the brook, and he fluttered so much that his feathers began to fall out, and he could take no more food. And lastly, how Peter’s good wife had taken the cage into the garden and opened the door, and how he had made his way, slowly and wearily, to the old summer home.

“And now you know all about it,” he said, and sang one strain with something like the old force. “Let us go and find old Blossom,” said he, “and see if his tale is equal to mine. And Twinkle too—poor grumpy Twinkle; I shall never be able to hold up my head before him any more, and he will be more unpleasant than ever. But after all,” he went on after a moment, “Twinkle was my only companion that dreadful night, and he is not such a bad bird after all, and is sure to be glad to see me. And let me tell you,” he added, in a serious voice, “that I intend to visit that kind lighthouse-woman again, and the Professor too, if I can find him; for I have found out one thing in the lighthouse, and that is, that though men are often cruel to us birds, they are not all so; and though they must, most of them, know very little about us, there are a few at least who understand our ways.”

Pipi soon regained his strength, his song, and his spirits; he found a wife, and when his young ones were old enough to understand, he told them many stories of his wonderful adventures. And he did not forget to go and see Peter and his wife in the autumn, when the birds were on their way once more to the south. He came into the garden, and from the stunted currant-tree on the wall he looked into the kitchen, and uttered a little low note of greeting. The woman looked up from her washing, saw Pipi, and uttered a cry of delight. “Peter!” she called, “it is the sick bird! Come quick and see!” But Pipi could not stay for Peter, and the cage, still standing on the dresser, made him even now feel a little uncomfortable. His voice, like that of all his comrades, had been almost silent for several weeks; but as a gleam of autumn sunshine shot into the garden, and lit up the hardy little double daisies that still contrived to bloom in that bleak spot, he called up all his strength, and uttered a single strain, the faint echo of his old spring song, before he flew away. It went straight to the good woman’s heart, and she never forgot it.

“Peter,” she said, as the lighthouse-man came into the kitchen, “don’t forget to tell the Professor gentleman that the little bird came back to thank him and us. And, Peter, don’t you ever go for to keep any more birds in cages, when you can have ’em sing to you out o’ doors; for the blessed creatures are worth better than that, and there’s human beings as might take a lesson from ’em.” And those kind eyes of hers were moist as she went on with her washing.

THE OWLS’ REVENGE.
(A TALE OF BIRDS AND MEN.)

I.

In May all woods are beautiful; but of all the woods I know, there is none on which the month of bluebells so freely lavishes her delights, as on the ancient and unkempt wood of Truerne. The blue carpet spread in every clearing, the gray-green oak-stems rising softly out of the blue, the fleecy clouds of spring, seen gently moving eastwards through the ruddy young leaves overhead, can never be forgotten by any one who has rambled here for a whole May-morning. No trim park-paling shuts in Truerne wood; its outskirts are set about, in these sweet spring days, with an untidy maze of “whitening hedges and uncrumpling fern,” with stretches of gorse and trailing bramble, with dense thickets of blackthorn where the nightingale builds his nest and sings unheeded. It is all this wild setting of the woodland, as well as the freedom of the wood itself, that makes it so dear to such of its human neighbours as love quiet and solitude, as well as to the birds and beasts that find home and happiness in its shelter.

Of the few human beings who haunted it a few years ago, old Oliver the woodman was the only one to whom it had wholly yielded up its secrets; and when one day he was found under his favourite old oak-tree, wrapped in a slumber from which there was no awakening, we felt that the good genius of the wood had vanished, leaving no successor. But on the morning of that 16th day of May on which my story begins and ends, old Oliver was still vigorous, and had risen at daybreak in order to finish his work early. He meant to set forward about midday for the neighbouring town on the hill; for it was fairday, or “club” as we call it in these parts, at Northstow, and he wished once more to buy a fairing for the rheumatic old wife sitting by the chimney-corner at home.