Читать книгу Golden Dicky, The Story of a Canary and His Friends - Saunders Marshall - Страница 3

WHEN I look in a mirror and see my tiny, bright black eyes, it seems queer to think that once upon a time, when I was a baby bird, I was more blind than a bat.

My sense of sight was the last to wake up. I could hear, smell, taste and touch, before I could see. We were three naked little canary babies in a nest, and at intervals, we all rose up, threw back our heads, opened our beaks, and our mother Dixie daintily put the lovely egg food down our tiny throats. Oh, how good it used to taste! I never had enough, and yet I did have enough, for my mother knew how much to feed me, and when I got older, I understood that most young things would stuff themselves to death, if the old ones did not watch them.

I shall never forget the first day my eyes opened. I couldn’t see things properly for hours. There was a golden mist or cloud always before me. That was my mother’s beautiful yellow breast, for she hovered closely over us, to keep us warm. Then I was conscious of eyes, bright black ones, like my own. My mother was looking us all over affectionately, to see that we were well-fed, warm and clean, for canary housekeepers are just like human beings. Some are careful and orderly, others are careless and neglectful.

Then my father would come and stare at us. He is a handsome Norwich canary, of a deep gold color, with a beautiful crest that hangs over his eyes, and partly obscures his sight, making him look like a little terrier dog. He used to fling up this crest and look at us from under it. Then he would say, “Very fine babies, quite plump this lot,” and he would fly away for more lettuce or egg food, or crushed hemp, for we had enormous appetites, and it took a great deal of his time to help my mother keep our crops quite full and rounded out.

How we grew! Soon I was able to look in the mirror opposite our nest, and I could see the change in us from day to day. Canaries grow up very quickly, and when we were a fortnight old, we had nice feathers and were beginning to feed ourselves. There was myself, a little brother, and a sister. I had a great deal to learn in those fourteen days, which would be like two or three years in the life of a child.

My little mother Dixie used to tell us stories as she brooded over us. Some people do not know that when a mother bird hovers over her little ones, and twitters softly to them, that she is telling them tales, just as a human mother amuses her babies.

My mother told us that we ought to be very happy little birds, for we were not in a cage where canaries are usually hatched, but in a good-sized bird-room, in a comfortable nest. This nest was a small wooden box, placed on a shelf high up on the wall, and we could stand on the edge of it and look all about the room.

My mother also told us that we must love, next to our parents, the young girl who owned this bird-room and who came in many times a day to feed and water us and to see that we were all comfortable.

I shall never forget how I felt the first day I rose up in our nest, stepped to the edge of our box, and looked about the bird-room.

It seemed enormous to me. I gasped and fell back in the nest. Then I looked again, and this time the sight did not make me feel so weak, and I straightened things out.

It was, or is, for I often visit it yet, a good-sized attic room, with one big window looking east, and a door opening into a hall. Standing two and three deep all round the room were rows of fir trees, straight but not very tall, and looking like little soldiers. They were in big pots of earth, and my mother told me that every few months they were taken out and fresh ones were put in. Running between the trees and resting on their branches were long, slender poles and perches, for fir branches are not usually very good to sit on. A bird likes a spreading branch, not one that hugs the tree.

In the middle of the room was a tiny fountain, with rock work round it. Night and day it murmured its pretty little song, and the birds splashed and bathed and played games in the shallow basin under it. There were not big birds in the room, so we did not need a deep bathing pool.

Beyond the fountain were the trays of green sods and dishes of food and seeds. Oh, what good things we had to eat, for as we were not caged birds, we could have quite rich food. Then we took so much exercise flying to and fro that it sharpened our appetites. I shall never forget the good taste of the egg food that I fed myself, and the bread and milk, the bits of banana and orange, and pineapple and apples, and pears and grapes—the little saucers of corn meal and wheat and oatmeal porridge, and the nice, firm, dry seeds—rape, millet, canary, hemp and sometimes as a great treat a little poppy seed.

The floor was covered with gravel and old lime, and once a month a man came in and swept it all up and put down a fresh lot.

Near the fountain was one small wicker chair, and there Miss Martin, the lame girl who owned us all, used to sit by the hour and watch us.

As I sat, a weak young thing, on the edge of my nest, looking down into the room, it seemed to me that there were a great many birds flying about, and I should never be able to tell one from the other. However, I soon learned who they all were. First of all, there was my lovely mother Dixie, an American canary, with dainty whirls of feathers on her wings, my golden colored father Norfolk, my father’s sister Silkie, her roller canary mate Silver-Throat, who was a tiny, mottled bird, with an exquisite voice, and about twenty other canaries of different breeds, some Australian parakeets, African love-birds, nonpareils, and indigoes, and in the nest beside me my little sister Cayenna and my brother Green-Top, so called from his green crest. I am a plainhead.

My mother told me a great many stories about all these other birds, but I will not put them down just now.

I must tell, though, about my naming. I had a trouble just as soon as my eyes opened. My big brother Green-Top was jealous of me. He is a larger, handsomer bird than I am, but even when we were babies my parents said that his voice would not be as good as mine. Just as soon as he got the use of his wings he began to beat me. My parents naturally stood up for me, because I am smaller and weaker and plainer looking. It was really surprising that I should turn out to be such an ordinary-looking little bird, when I have such handsome parents.

Green-Top told me that the old birds in the room said I was the exact image of my grandmother Meenie, who was a very common little bird from very common stock, that Miss Mary Martin brought into the bird-room out of pity for her.

Well, anyway, our Mary Martin was not slow in finding out that I was set upon, and one day as she stood watching us, she said to me, “Come here, you golden baby. I haven’t named you yet.”

She held out her hand as she spoke, and I lighted on her shoulder and got a lump of sugar for being obedient.

“I like the way you stand up to that naughty brother of yours,” she said. “You are a little hero. I am going to call you Richard the Lion-Hearted and Dicky-Dick for short.”

All the birds were listening to her, and when she stopped speaking you could hear all over the room the funny little canary sounds, like question marks, “Eh! What! La! La! Now what do you think of that! Such a grand name for a little plainhead bird!”

Naming a bird was a very exciting event in the bird-room and always caused a great deal of talk.

Green-Top was furious. His name sounded quite short and of no account, compared with Richard the Lion-Hearted. To show his displeasure he dashed across the room and brushed our Mary’s ears with his wings. That was a favorite trick of the birds—to brush the hair or the ears of Miss Mary, or to light on her head, and the way they did it showed the state of their feelings toward her.

“Naughty boy!” she said, shaking her head at him. “Hemp seed for every bird in the room except Green-Top,” and she fed us an extra portion of this seed we liked best while he, knowing better than to come forward, sat in a corner and sulked.

She was just like a mother to us all, so good and indulgent, but she would not have any bullies in her bird home, and if a bird got too bad she gave him away.

After a while she went out of the room, and Green-Top flew at me, beat me, and was beginning to chase me most wickedly, when our father called us to have a singing lesson.

By this time we were six weeks old, and had been driven out of our nest three weeks ago. My mother was now getting ready for a second family. Miss Mary had given her a fresh box with a new nest in it, and my mother was lining it with soft cow hair, moss, dry grass, and short lengths of soft, white string. Our Mary never gave her birds long bits of anything, for they would have caught on their claws and tripped them up.

We young ones watched her jealously. We had cried bitterly when we were put out of the nest. Our mother did not beat us, but our father did.

“Don’t you understand, babies,” she said, as she turned herself round and round in the nest to shape it with her breast, “that I must get ready for this second family? I could not have you hanging about your old home. You would step on the nestlings. You must go out in the room and get acquainted with some of the young birds, for a year hence you will be choosing mates of your own.”

“I don’t want to go out in the room, mother,” I chirped bitterly. “I want to stay with you. Green-Top is so ugly to me and sets my cousins on to tease me. They crowd me at night on the perch, they make me wait at the food dishes till they have eaten. I want to live with you. You are so pretty and so good and comfortable.”

“Darling, darling,” she twittered in her lovely soft tones. “Come at night and perch near me. Wait till your father puts his head under his wing.”

This was very soothing, and at least I had happy nights, although my days were always more or less worried. Parents don’t know what a lot of trouble their young ones have when they first leave the home nest.

To come back to our singing lesson. My father was terribly strict with us, and we just hated it, though our mother told us to get all we could out of him, for as soon as the new nestlings came he would not pay much attention to us.

“Then what will you do,” she said, “for a canary that can not sing is a no-account canary?”

“I wish I were a hen-bird like Cayenna,” I said sulkily. “She never has to sing.”

“Hen birds never sing,” said my mother. “Cayenna’s beauty and the exquisite coloring that she will have later on, for I shall make her eat plenty of pepper food, will carry her through life. You are a very plain little bird, my darling. Your voice will be your only charm. Promise me, promise me, that you will mind what your daddy says.”

“I’ll try, mother,” I used to say every time she talked to me, but at nearly every lesson, when my father lost his temper, I forgot what I had promised her, and lost mine too. This day I was particularly sulky, and it wasn’t long before I was getting a good pecking from my father Norfolk.

“I never heard such harsh and broken tones,” he said angrily. “Listen to Green-Top, how he holds his song like an endless strain.”

I tried again, but unfortunately I caught my uncle Silver-Throat’s eye, and broke down and gurgled and laughed in my father’s beak.

Didn’t I catch it! He and Green-Top both fell on me, and to save my feathers I flew straight to the most sheltered fir tree in the room, where Uncle Silver-Throat sat hunched up all day long, holding against the wall that part of his body which had once been a lovely tail.

He is a little Hartz Mountain canary, with a fluffy, mottled breast, and he has the most wonderful voice in the room.

He was laughing now. “Come here, poor little birdie,” he said. “There is no use trying to learn from your father; he is too impatient. He can’t sing, anyway. He is an English bird, and all his race are bred for form and appearance. My race is for song. It doesn’t matter how we look. Can he teach you the water-bubble, deep roll, bell, flute, warble, whistle, and the numberless trills I can? Does his voice have a range of four octaves?”

“No, indeed,” I said, “but he is my father, and I would like to learn from him.”

“That’s right,” he said heartily. “I really think you should control yourself a little more. Well, we’ll leave it this way. Go back to your father, when he becomes calm, and learn all you can from him, but come to me for extra lessons. I’ll teach you to sing much better than that scamp Green-Top does, for your voice is sweeter than his. He is a very disrespectful, saucy young bird. It is he that puts your father up to abusing you, I believe.”

“Uncle,” I said timidly, “two days ago you had a fine tail. Now you have none. Why is it?”

He smiled. “I am quite a deep thinker, birdie, and yesterday as I sat dreaming on this branch, I failed to notice that new, golden spangled Lizard canary who has lately come to the bird-room. She was acting queerly about the five eggs she has just laid. Finally I did remark that she was breaking and eating them. It seems she had a poor home before she came here, where she was fed stale seeds. So Avis, being scantily fed and having no dainties given her, used to eat a nice fresh egg whenever she could get it. ‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘they are her own eggs. She has a right to eat them if she chooses,’ so I didn’t interfere.

“Her mate Spotty came along after a while and fell into a rage. He asked if any bird had seen her at this mischief, and I said I had.

“He asked why I hadn’t stopped her, and I said it was none of my business.

“He said it was, that all the birds in the room, even the parakeets and the love-birds who are pretty selfish, had made up their minds to stop this business of egg-breaking; then they all fell on me and picked out my tail feathers to remind me to interfere when I saw another bird doing anything wrong.”

“Do you feel badly about it, uncle?” I asked.

“My tail is pretty sore, but my mind is tranquil. I did wrong, but I have been punished for it, and my feathers will grow. Why worry about it? I am sorry for Spotty. He expected to have a nice lot of young ones in thirteen days, and now he will have to wait for weeks.”

“Why would Avis eat her eggs, when she has plenty of lime and crushed egg shell and all sorts of food here?” I asked.

“Habit, my birdie. She had the naughty trick and could not get over it. If I had only shrieked at her, it would have frightened her and kept her from murdering all her future nestlings, as Spotty says. But there is your cayenne pepper food coming. Go and eat some, so that your feathers will be reddish gold. It is a good throat tonic, too.”

Our Mary was just coming in with a saucer of mixed egg food, grated sweet bread, granulated sugar and cayenne pepper sprinkled on the top of it. She also had a deep dish of something purple.

“Blueberries, birds,” she said, as she put it down. “Nice canned blueberries, almost as fresh as if they had just come off the bushes.”

Nearly every bird in the room uttered a satisfied note, then they all flew to her feet where she set the dishes.

I was not hungry, and ate little. When she opened the door a few minutes later to go out, I flew to her and lighted on her arm.

My father was taking a nap, and I knew by the wicked look in Green-Top’s eye that he would begin bullying me as soon as she left the room.

“Take me out,” I chirped, “take me out,” for I knew that she often took good steady little birds out into her own part of the house.

She understood me. “But, Dicky-Dick,” she said, “you are so young. I fear you might fly away.”

“I’ll be good. I’ll be good,” I sang in my unsteady young voice, and, relenting, she put out a finger, urged me gently to her shoulder where she usually carried her birds, that being the safest foothold, and walked out into the hall.

My mother saw me going and called out a warning. “Be careful, Dicky-Dick. You will see strange sights. Don’t lose your head. Keep close to our Mary.”

“I’ll be careful, careful,” I called back, but my heart was going pit-a-pat when the bird-room door closed behind me, and I went out into the strange new world of the hall.