A ROBIN AND SPARROW FRIENDSHIP
Another one of Dan’s victims was a pine grosbeak, a most amiable,
gentle bird that I rescued from a small cage in a bird-store.
My grosbeak was a greenish-gray bird, with a stout beak and intelligent
eyes. More than any bird I had ever had, did her expression remind me
of that on the face of a human being. I scarcely looked at her without
thinking of a friend--a handsome woman with a well-developed nose. I
never had a gentler, kinder bird, nor one that became tame in so short
a time. She loved human society, and would follow any of the family
about, perching on our heads or shoulders and taking seeds from our
lips. Indeed, she soon became so tame that she would take food from the
hands of utter strangers.
One pretty trick she had was to go sailing on the blocks of wood that
I put in the big water dishes for the little birds to light on. The
grosbeak took the greatest delight in perching on these blocks and
floating from one side of a dish to the other.
I knew that the mockingbird did not like her, but she was so
large--about eight inches long, and had such a stout beak that I knew
he could not hurt her, and I hoped she would get over her dread of
him. She did not. He frightened her, and made her feel so timid in the
basement that she took to sleeping in the elevator. Then she began to
come up on the veranda, and if the gate leading to it were closed she
would stand beside it and tap on the wire till I let her in.
At last I took her upstairs, and there she had a happy winter, though
she never seemed very strong. One day I was amused to see her sitting
beside my sister, who was cracking sunflower seeds for her--the
grosbeak being either too lazy or too miserable that day to do it
for herself. My sister would open the seed and give the grosbeak the
contents. The grosbeak watched her intently, and if ever so small a
piece fell on the floor she would fly down and pick it up.
As a family, the grosbeaks are very trustful birds, and are said to
stare at a hunter approaching them with a gun, and will continue to
stare, even after he has shot down one or more. They are extremely
affectionate with each other, and one grosbeak has been known to follow
its mate into captivity.
However, they are not foolish birds, judging from the one I had. She
was sweet and trusting, but also intelligent. When the early summer
came she died, to the very great regret of the whole family, and I
always blamed Dan for undermining her constitution by his bullying.
I had, however, become foolishly fond of this bird, and could not bear
to part with him, and kept him in my aviary until this autumn, when I
made up my mind that he was really too bad to be left at home without
my supervision.
I sent him to an aviary where he would have more room than with me,
and would be with larger birds. When the first reports came from him,
one of the family remarked that handsome Dan always fell on his feet.
He was getting special care and attention, but--and I could not help
smiling--one bird had singled him out for persecution, as he had so
often singled out weaker ones for persecution in his day. Dan’s enemy
was an English blackbird, who was pursuing him so relentlessly that one
of her flight feathers had to be pulled out so that she could not catch
up to him. I hope this affliction may make him a better bird, and may
cause him to reflect that there is a great law of retribution in the
bird as well as in the human world.
To return to the robins--Bob went on with her nestmaking, and soon I
had another robin brought to me who grew up to look so much like her
that she was a veritable Bob the Third. This baby robin was about the
best one I ever brought up. It was the same old story--fallen from the
nest, no parents near, and cats abounding, so I adopted the little
Bobbie, carried her about on my finger, and as the house was full of
company took her every night in one hand, and her dish of worms in the
other, downstairs in my father’s study to sleep on a big sofa bed.
The walls were lined with books, and pulling out one from its fellows I
would put Bobbie on it. There she sat all night, but when daylight came
she began to chirp politely and remind me that a hungry robin was near.
This bird was never one bit of trouble. At one time I left her to go to
the country to buy a farm. She took her food from my sister, and later
on, when I moved all my birds to the farmhouse, she settled down in her
rooms there, as if she had always been accustomed to them.
I kept her a year, then opening the door, told her to fly outside
if she wished. She did wish, and calmly went to the flower garden,
hopped about there for a while, followed the men plowing near-by, then
accepting the advances made to her by a respectable-looking wild robin,
built a nest on one of the house windows, raised a family of young
robins, and I hope, went south with them when autumn came, for I have
seen nothing of her since.
My next robin was my beloved Dixie, and I have had him only a few
months. During June of the year 1907 I saw, on looking out of the
windows of the little sun-room on the top of the house, that a pair of
robins had built a nest at the back of the box on a tall telephone post
near-by. They seemed to have young ones on one side of it, and a pair
of sparrows seemed to have their young ones on the other side.
I kept watch, and soon I saw the old robins going in and out with worms
hanging from their beaks. At night the mother robin would sit on the
nest, and the father would perch in a tall tree across the street. He
might have sat close to her, if our beautiful big elms in front of the
house had not been killed by some mysterious disease.
One June day, as I sat writing in my study, I heard a pair of birds
having hysterics in our garden, and springing up, I went to the window.
They were robins of course--it seems to me that of all the birds I
know, the robin is the most noisy and fussy when danger threatens
him. Instead of keeping still, which might have enabled them to have
their little nestling with them, they were yelling at the tops of
their voices because he had flown into the garden and could not get
out. Therefore, at their outcry, a ring of little faces surrounded the
fluttering baby.
“Please go away, children,” I called out, and they obediently
disappeared.
“Now,” I reflected, “if I can only keep the cats off!”
By some miracle, the cats did not enter our garden that morning, but I
was sorry to see that the little robin could not rise higher than the
fence. The parents were too frightened to feed him there, and at last I
went out and tried to catch him.
In vain--I, of course, was as formidable to him as a cat, and when he
saw me coming he managed to flutter over the fence into the street, and
to the low branch of a tree. I promptly returned to the house, and in a
few minutes he was in the garden again. I tried not to watch him. The
cats would soon get him--and what was one robin more or less, anyway?
It was a good deal--it was the whole world to me that morning, and
any bird-lover will understand my feelings. I would write a little,
then would hurry to the window to see that no enemy came near that
precious baby bird. I admired his calmness. He sat all the morning on
a fence-post, and only toward noon did he slip under some raspberry
bushes. I hoped that his parents might find him there, but I doubted
it, and with a sinking heart I went away to fulfil an engagement.
I could not keep the stoical little birdie out of my thoughts, and the
sequel to his story is as strange as a made-up one.
At dusk I returned home, and on going upstairs was surprised to hear
a loud robin-chirp near me. I followed the sound, and there, sitting
in the middle of the upstairs bathroom floor, stoical no longer, but
clamorous, now that no cats were near, was my robin baby of the morning.
“You blessed thing!” I exclaimed, catching him up. “However did you get
in here?”
I looked at the window. It was screened, as were all the windows in the
house, to keep the birds in, and the cats out. The little fellow, when
night came on, had been warned by his instinct to get up high. He had
flown or scrambled up the side of the house, perhaps by means of an ash
tree trained against the wall, and had gone up the screen, and then
down, where it did not quite fit against the sash.
I had never had a bird perform such a feat, and I said soberly to him,
“Providence has delivered you into my hands.”
He looked distrustfully at me. He did not care much for me in those
days, but in his hunger he soon forgot his shyness. His poor little
crop was quite empty. I fed him all he would eat, and in a few days he
had forgotten his parents, and fluttered his little wings, and called
for food whenever he saw me coming.
I called him Dixie, and put him in a cage with a young sparrow that a
boy had brought me a few days before, saying that a painter had sent
it. The man had been at work on a house, and this young one had fallen
out of its nest. He was so young that he soon forgot his parents, and,
like the robin, shook his wings when he saw me coming, and called for
food.
Amusing to relate, the little sparrow took a violent fancy to the
robin, and looking upon him as a second parent, followed him all about
the cage begging for food. The young robin was dreadfully embarrassed.
He could not feed himself--how could he feed another bird? Sometimes
when the sparrow’s pursuit grew too hot, he would stop running, and
turning, would face the smaller bird with wide-open bill, as if to say,
“Look for yourself--there is no food in there.”
The sparrow was not to be reasoned with. He never stopped his pursuit
of the robin, except to rest. At first I permitted it, for it gave
them both exercise. Then, when the exercise increased till it became
over-exertion, I took them both out of the cage and put them on the
roof-veranda. By this time the sparrow could feed himself, but the
robin could not. With strange inconsistency, the smaller bird would
stuff himself with bread and milk, or egg-food, then he would run after
the robin with his cry of, “More, more!”
The poor robin would run from one side of the veranda to the other,
skipping over food and water dishes, and occasionally stopping short,
and turning on the sparrow with wide-open bill.
The sparrow never gave up the chase until Dixie eluded him by slipping
into some hiding-place. Then he would go all about, peering into
corners with his sharp little eyes till he found him.
I have heard strangers utter shrieks of laughter at this peculiar
pursuit of the robin by the sparrow. When these two birds grew older it
was just as amusing, for then they flew from place to place.
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