CHILD BIRDS.
During childhood, that is, during the first season, most birds look
quite different from their parents. Many of them do not get the color
or texture of grown-up birds for a year or more.
You can soon learn to tell which are the children among the birds by
what they wear and by the way they talk. Their voices are childish
and coaxing. They sometimes cry, and call in piping tones even after
they have learned to fly to the highest tree, or to soar far into the
blue sky, just to see how high they can go.
We have sometimes thought that bird children play at games of
hide-and-seek among the bushes, and that they try to see which one of
them can jump the farthest. Watch them for yourselves, and you will
see such fun as will make you laugh.
Birds are like other children, they get hungry very often at their
play. We have seen whole broods of young orioles following the
old birds about and teasing for food long after the next nest of
birdlings was hatched. These teasing children were as large as their
parents, and might better have been feeding their younger brothers
and sisters.
Parent birds often drive their young away from them, and eat the food
which they have caught themselves right before the children, as if to
say, "Go, find some for yourselves."
In Southern California, where we live, in midsummer the yard seems
full of young linnets[5] coaxing from day-light till dark. All the
limbs of the trees are alive with them. They stand in rows, with
their mouths wide open, and we wonder how the old birds can take care
of so many children at once. We see the young birds teasing one
another sometimes, as if they were saying, "Tommy dear," or, "Susy
dear, please divide your lunch."
[5] House finch, _Carpodacus mexicanus frontalis_.
[Illustration: Linnet.]
So we see that birds have a childhood as well as a babyhood, but
it is very short, for they are soon taught to work hard and to be
self-supporting.
A lazy young bird never gets on in the world. Parent birds are
very kind but firm. It sounds as if they were sometimes scolding
good-naturedly. We imagine them saying to their children, "We have
shown you the seeds and the berries, now go to work. If you want
food, help yourselves; for we have been to market for you long
enough. Dress yourselves, too. See how you each have a bottle of oil.
Now be neat and careful of your clothes, for it will be a long while
before you get any more."
We have seen young birds make very awkward attempts at dressing
themselves. Sitting in a tree, they try to imitate the old birds,
fluttering and turning about, and rubbing their small heads on their
shoulders, and falling off from the branch in their excitement.
It is this daily care of their clothes that makes birds so beautiful.
It seems to us that they know very well that they will not be able to
get a new suit very often, and that they must take good care of those
clothes they have. We have never seen child birds smear their food
over their faces and clothes, not even when they were eating bread
and butter and stewed blackberries. It may seem funny to you that
birds should eat bread and butter and stewed blackberries, as if they
were cooks and housekeepers. But they really do, as you shall see by
and by.
Little birds pay attention to what is said to them. They learn their
lessons well, and they "say their pieces" like any child, and, like
children, they seem to make mistakes at first. They do not take their
dinner-pails and go long distances to school. They learn at home
with their fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters.
The school-house is anywhere, in the yard or the woods or fields. If
you take the trouble to listen and keep very quiet in midsummer, you
will be able to see and hear these bird schools going on at a rate
that will make you smile and think that birds are real people.
You can see the children in the nests or on the branches of trees, or
even on the ground, learning musical notes, and the letters of their
alphabet, and running the bird scale, just like any class in school.
Every now and then you will see them skip out for a drink of water at
the pump or brook. They may not hurry back at once, but stop to look
at themselves in the water and to frolic about in the ferns and grass.
Birds have a very happy childhood. It will pay any child or grown
person to spend a whole summer or autumn in studying them and their
ways. This would be much better than wishing one could go somewhere,
when one hasn't the money to go with, or being unhappy because one
hasn't fine clothes and houses.
Young birds do not seem to be very much afraid of us. They only look
a little surprised and try to hop a bit faster if we go too near them.
See how queer the tops of their heads look, with the baby down still
sticking out in little tufts through the thicker feathers. Their
lips, too, along the edges of the bill!--how yellow they are, as
though they had just been eating new spring butter.
Those soft yellow lips will soon turn dark and hard from use, just as
a real baby's feet lose their pink softness and grow callous when the
child goes barefoot a while.
Altogether, bird children are very interesting, and one who loves
them never gets tired of watching them. There is something new and
charming to learn every day. We wonder that there are any unhappy or
cross or sulky people in the world, when they may have the birds to
teach them better.
There is many a kind little boy who picks up a child bird and puts it
in a high place out of reach of cats and naughty boys. These may be
sure that the mother bird will find her young one, and you may hear
her thanking you, if you listen. Besides, every time a boy is good to
a child bird he has made his own childhood richer and happier.
O happy little bird-child, full of life and glee,
Won't you stay this summer in the yard with me?
You shall have some berries when the berries grow;
Berries don't hurt children--mother told me so.
[Illustration]