THE BIOGRAPHY OF A CANARY-BIRD
Sing away, aye, sing away.
Merry little bird,
Always gayest of the gay.
Though a woodland roundelay
You ne'er sung nor heard;
Though your life from youth to age
Passes in a narrow cage.
Near the window wild birds fly.
Trees are waving round;
Fair things everywhere you spy
Through the glass pane's mystery.
Your small life's small bound;
Nothing hinders your desire
But a little gilded wire.
Mrs. Craik.
He didn't look very much like a bird, being mostly a big little
stomach, as bare of feathers as a beechnut just out of the burr,
with here and there on the head and back a tuft of down. His eyelids
bulged prominently, but did not open, sight being unnecessary in
consideration of the needs of his large stomach. Said needs were
partially satisfied every few minutes with the nursing-bottle.
And a very primitive nursing-bottle it was, being no other than the
beak of the parent bird thrust far down the little throat, as is the
family custom of the rest of the finches.
From somewhere in the breast of the mother a supply was always
forthcoming, and found its way down the tiny throat of the baby
and into the depths of its pudgy being. This food, which was moist
and smooth, was very nourishing indeed, and sweet as well, for it
tasted good, and left such a relish in the mouth that said mouth
always opened of itself when the mother bird came near. But no more
than its own share of the victuals did Dicky get, though he did his
very best to have it all. There were other babies in the same cradle
to be looked after and fed. And they all five were as much alike as
five peas, excepting that Dicky was the smallest of all and was kept
pushed well down in the bottom of the nest. This did not prevent his
mother from noticing his open mouth when it came his turn to be fed.
Canary mothers have sharp eyes; so have canary fathers, as will be
seen.
Now, when this particular pair of birds began to look about the cage
for a good place to fix upon for family affairs, some kind hand from
outside fastened a little round basket in one corner, exactly of the
right sort to stimulate nesting business. It was an old-fashioned
basket, with open-work sides and bottom, airy and clean. Now, had
this basket been a box instead, we should have had no tragedy to
record; or had the mesh been closely woven, no fatal mistake (though
well meant) would have darkened the sky of this domestic affair. But
alas! the truth must be told, since the biography we are writing
admits of no reservations.
It all came about by the interference of the father bird, whose
presence in the nursery should have been forbidden at the start. The
mother was more than once alarmed by his activity and misapplied zeal
about the nest, and she had scolded him away with emphatic tones.
[Illustration: CANARY.]
Not having anything of importance to do save to eat all day and sleep
all night, he was on the alert for employment. One dreadful morning,
when the mother was attending to breakfast, this father canary espied
some, tatters sticking out of the bottom meshes of the nest basket,
bits of string ends and threads, carelessly and innocently overlooked.
"Ah," thought he, "here is something that ought to be attended to at
once."
And he went to work! He thrust his sharp beak up between the round
meshes of the basket bottom and pulled at every thread he could
lay hold of, struggling beneath, fairly losing his foothold in his
eagerness to pull them out. Having succeeded in dragging most of the
material from beneath the birdlings, he caught sight of a few more
straight pink strings lying across the meshes, and began tugging
at them. The mother, feeding the babies from the edge of the nest
above, noticed the little ones each in its turn crouching farther and
farther into the bottom of the cradle, faintly opening their mouths
as if to cry, but being too young and weak to utter a sound. It was a
mystery, but the deepest mystery of it all was the fact that little
Dicky, the dwarf of the family, came to the top as the rest worked
down, and was getting more than his share of the breakfast.
About this time the mistress of the canary-cage came to see after her
pets, and beheld a sight which made her scream as hard as if she had
seen a mouse. There, beneath the nest, was the father bird tugging at
protruding feet and legs of baby birds with all his might, growing
more and more excited as he saw his supposed strings resisting his
attempts to pull them through.
When the affair was looked into, there was but one bird left alive of
the five little infants no more than five days old, and they were
released from their predicament to have a decent burial in the garden
at the foot of a motherly-looking cabbage head that stood straight
up in disgust of the cruel affair, "as if she would ever have such
a thing happen to her little cabbages!" True, she had no little
cabbages of her own, but that made no difference.
Now that we have tucked away these four little canary-birds, who
never saw the light of day, and therefore never could realize what
they missed by not holding on harder to what little they had by way
of feet and legs, we will drop the painful subject and attend to
Dicky.
Of course the father bird was excluded from the nursery, as he should
have been weeks before, and there was only one mouth to feed. And
that mouth was never empty unless the owner of it was sleeping. In
fact, the babe was stuffed; though, strange to say, his stomach grew
no bigger, but less and less, as the rest of his body filled out.
At the end of a couple of weeks he had a pretty fair shirt on his
back, of delicate down, softer than any shirt of wool that ever
warmed a human baby's body. And the mother stood on the edge of the
basket and admired it. She didn't make it, of course, but she was
in some way responsible for it, and no doubt felt proud of the bit
of fancy work. She noticed, also, that the eyes of the little one
did not bulge so much as they did, and a tiny slit appeared at the
center, widening slowly, until one happy hour they opened fairly out,
and "the baby had eyes." But they were tired eyes to start with, like
the eyes of most young things, and they wearied with just a glimpse
of the light. So the lids closed, and it was several days before
Dicky actually took in the situation as he ought.
There being no other baby to crowd, he kept to the nest longer than
birds commonly do, and when at last he got on his feet he was pretty
well fledged.
Now, when he had obtained his first youthful suit of clothes,
his mother looked surprised, as did also his father, it is to be
supposed, he in his solitary cage hanging close to the other. Both
parent birds were pure-bred Teneriffe canaries, the male as green
as emerald and the female more dusky and lighter. By a strange
freak of nature, which happens sometimes by breeding these birds in
captivity, the young fellow was bright yellow, of the tint of a ripe
lemon, beak white, and eye black, while his feet and ankles retained
their original baby pinkness. Oh, he was a pretty bird! But it was
foreordained in his case, as in similar cases, that he should not
be so sweet a singer as though his color had been like that of his
parents. He was not conscious of this fact, however, and it mattered
not to him that he was yellow instead of green. Nor did he care in
the least that the price of him was marked down to a dollar and a
half when it should have been double. Away he went in a new cage,
after his new mistress had paid the sum named into the hand of his
former owner. He peeked out of the bars as he was carried along
swinging at every step; that is, he peeped out as well as he could,
considering that a cloth was covered over the cage. The wind blew the
cloth aside now and then and Dicky saw wonderful sights--sights that
were familiar and "so soul-appealing." Not that he, in his own short
life, had ever seen such sights, but that somehow in his little being
were vague memories or conceptions of what his ancestors had seen. It
is hard to explain it, but everything cannot be explained. When we
come to one of these things we call it "instinct," with a wise shake
of our heads, just as we were told to say "Jerusalem" when we came to
a word we couldn't pronounce when we were very young and read in the
Second Reader.
Well, Dicky had a good home of his own, and lived for a purpose,
although he never developed into a trained singer. In the heart of
him he longed for a mate, and often expressed his desires in low,
musical notes. But no mate came to him, and he would sit for hours
pondering on his bachelor's lot, and singing more notes.
Now, wild birds are constantly having something "happen" to them.
They fly against a wire or get a wing hurt, or the young fall out of
the nest and can't find their mother. Dicky's mistress was always
on the lookout for such accidents, and she brought such birds into
the house and nursed them and brought them back to health when
possible. It occurred to her to offer a "calling" or "vocation" to
Dicky. So she made a small private hospital of his cage, into which
she placed the victims of accident or sickness as she found them.
Dicky was surprised, never having seen a bird save his parents, and
his lady-love in his dreams, and at first he stood on tiptoe and was
frightened.
But he learned to be kind after a while, and to show his visitors
where the food and water were kept, and to snuggle up to them on
the perch when it came bedtime. Many and many a poor invalid did he
aid in restoring to freedom and flight, until he became pretty well
acquainted with the birds that nest in our grounds.
Year after year the good work went on, and Dicky developed more
musical talent, until he sang sweetly, imitating the finches and
linnets outside. In the fall of the year, when the wild birds were
thinking of their annual migrations, Dicky himself grew restless
and quit his songs. Then his mistress opened his door and told him
he might "go." Not far away, of course, but all about in the room,
that seemed to this caged bird as big as any world could be. In his
quest for new nooks he came by accident upon the mirror above the
fireplace. Standing on the edge of a little vase before the glass,
just in front of the beveled edge of it, he espied two yellow birds,
one in the glass itself and another in the beveled edge, as a strict
law of science had determined should be the case.
In a second the whole bearing of the bird was changed. His feathers
lay close, his legs stood long and slim, and his eyes bulged, as they
never had bulged since the lids parted when he was two weeks old.
Then he found voice. He sang as never a green bird sang sweeter. He
turned his head and the two birds in the glass turned their heads. He
preened his wing and the two birds preened each a wing. His little
throat swelled out in melody, the tip of his beak pointing straight
to the ceiling of the big room as if it were indeed the blue sky,
and the two birds sang with uplifted beaks and swelling throats.
They were of his own kind, his own race, his own ancestral comrades.
And they were not green! The low mesas of the Canary Islands never
resounded to such melody.
But melody was not food, at least so thought Dicky's mistress, as she
tempted the bird in vain to eat. Not a crumb would he touch until
placed back in his cage, where he straightway forgot his recent
discoveries. As usual, he took his bread and cooky to the water-dish
and set it to soak for dinner, and scattered his seeds about the
cage floor in his eagerness to dispose of the non-essentials, the
hemp only being, in his opinion, suitable for his needs. Of course
he was obliged to pick up his crumbs after he had thus assorted the
varieties.
Every day when the door was open he flew straight to the mirror. If
we moved the vase to the middle, away from the beveled edge, he found
the place by himself and stood on tiptoe exactly where the reflection
accorded him the companionship of two birds, and he would resume his
melody. It was real to him, this comradeship, and it lasted until
actual and personally responsible companions were provided for him.
Now, let not the reader conjure up a picture of many birds in a cage
with Dicky as governor or presiding elder. It was midsummer, when the
sands are hot and inviting to the retiring and modest family known by
name as "lizards." The particular branch of this family to which we
refer, and to which Dicky was referred, is known to scientists, who
would be precise of expression, as Gerrhonotus. But the familiar name
of "lizard" is sufficient for the creatures we placed in a large wire
cage on the upper balcony and designed for Dicky's summer companions.
Now, it should not seem strange to any one that we chose the lizard
people to associate with this yellow-as-gold canary. Were they not
one and the same long ages ago? And this is no legend, but fact.
Have they not both to this day scales on their legs and a good long
backbone? To be sure, the birds now have feathers on most of their
bodies, so they may be able to fly; but a long while ago the bird
had only scales, and not a single feather. And are not baby lizards
hatched from eggs laid by the mother lizard? Ah, it is a long story,
this, dating back too far to count. But long stories are quite
the accepted fashion in natural science, and from reading them we
resolved to make some observations of our own. There is more to be
gained sometimes in making observations on one's own account than by
adopting those of others.
We captured half a dozen lizards and gave them the names of Lizbeth,
Liza, Liz, and Lize. That is, four of them, being of the same order,
received these names; there were two little ones besides, with
peacock-blue trimmings, which have nothing to do with this story.
The four named were about eight inches in length, speckled above and
silver beneath. Their other beauties and characteristics will not
be discussed except as it becomes necessary in treating of Dicky's
further development.
From the day when these five creatures became fellow-captives they
were friends. The lizards took to sleeping in the canary's food-box,
so that in getting at his meals he was obliged to peck between them,
and sometimes to step over them and crowd them with his head after
hidden seeds. As the afternoon sunshine slanted across the cage
the five took their dry bath all in a heap, bird on top with wings
outspread, lizards in a tangle, each and all thankful that there was
such a thing as a sun bath or family descent. Later, as the sun was
going down and the lizards became drowsy, as lizards will, Dicky sang
them a low lullaby, now on the perch above them, now on the rim of
the feed-box. At times another comrade joined them, especially at
this choral hour.
One of those red and white striped snakes seen in ferns and brakes
along watercourses made a home in the cage with the bird and the
lizards. This snake had an ear for music; at the first notes he
emerged from his lairnrid glided in his direction. If the bird were
on the perch the snake would crawl up the end posts, taking hold
with his scales, which, of course, were his feet, and lie at length
on the perch at Dicky's feet, watching out of its beautiful eyes.
At other times it would merely glide toward the bird, lift its head
erect some five or six inches, and remain motionless until the song
was finished. A big, warty hop-toad, also an inmate of this asylum,
was a friend of Dicky's, as indeed was every creature, even to the
big grasshopper. This toad and the bird were often seen in the bath
together, the toad simply squatting, as is the custom of toads, the
bird splashing and spattering the water over everything, including,
of course, the toad. The toad blinked and squatted flatter to the
bottom of the bath, hopping out when the bird was done, and the two
sunning themselves after nature's own way of using a bath-towel.
It would be too long a story were one to tell of the songs Dicky
sang to the drone of the drones bumming away against the wire, sorry
perhaps that they were to become dinner to lizards before summer was
half over. But we must bring the biography to an end, hoping that
these few reminiscences will tend to interest people in the "Dickies"
that are about them in wire cages, too often neglected and never half
comprehended.
But we should by all means give an account of the last we ever saw of
this particular Dicky.
During his stay on the balcony he had become acquainted with the
finches and linnets and mocking-birds of the yard, holding quiet
talks with them in the twilight, and growing more thoughtful at
times, even to the extent of watching for opportunities to escape.
One evening, just as we lifted the door to set in a fresh pan of
water, out darted Dicky. Straight to a tree near by he flew, and
called himself over and over again. We cried to him, "Dicky, O Dicky,
come back."
Ah, but here was a taste of freedom--the freedom which his ancestral
relatives had enjoyed on the low slopes of Teneriffe before ever a
foreign ship had carried them away captive. And Dicky had never read
a word about his ancestors and their freedom! Therefore, what did he
know about it? Scientists call it "instinct." It is a word too hard
for us, and we will say "Jerusalem" and let it pass. Away across the
street flew Dicky, the bird of prison birth, the bird of only two
comrades of his kind and color, and these but shadows in a mirror.
The lizards heard us call, and peeped lazily over the edge of the
hammock seed-box, blinking sleepily, and then cuddled down again
without sense of their loss.
Running after the bird did not bring him back, as everybody knows to
his sorrow who has once tried it. A glint of gold in the pine-tree, a
radiance as of lemon streamers in and out of the cypress hedge, and
we saw Dicky no more.
My bird has flown away,
Far out of sight has flown, I know not where.
Look in your lawn, I pray,
Ye maidens kind and fair,
And see if my beloved bird be there.
Find him, but do not dwell
With eyes too fond on the fair form you see,
Nor love his song too well;
Send him at once to me,
Or leave him to the air and liberty.
_From the Spanish._
Some day a budding ornithologist, more eager than wise, with
note-book and pencil, will possibly record a "new species" among
the foothill trees--a species that resembles both yellow warbler and
goldfinch. And the young man will look very knowing, all alone out
in the woods; and he will send his specimen to the National Museum
for identification. And the museum people will shake their wiser
heads and inform the "ornithologist" that, in their opinion, there is
more of the ordinary tame canary "let loose" in the individual than
goldfinch or warbler.
Let it pass.
A bird for thee in silken bonds I hold,
Whose yellow plumage shines like polished gold;
From distant isles the lovely stranger came,
And bears the far-away Canary's name.
Lyttleton.