Colonial memories

Dr. Watts, though doubtless an excellent and estimable divine, must have had but little experience of the ways and manners of birds when he wrote this oft-quoted line. Birds are really the most quarrelsome and pugnacious creatures amongst themselves, though they are capable of great affection and amiability towards the human beings who befriend them.

I have always been a passionate bird-lover, and have had opportunities of keeping, in what I hope and believe has been a comfortable captivity, many and various kinds of birds in different lands. My first experience of an aviary on a large and luxurious scale was in Mauritius, many years ago, and was brought about by the gift of a magnificent and enormous cage, elaborately carved by Arab workmen. It was more like a small temple than anything else. But the first steps to be taken were to make it, so to speak, bird-proof, for the ambitious architect had left many openings in his various minarets and turrets, through which birds could easily have escaped.

Regarded as a cage it was not a success, for it was really difficult to see the birds through the profuse ornamentation of the panelled sides. However, I stood it in a wide and sunny verandah, and proceeded to instal the birds I already possessed in this splendid dwelling. I had brought some beautiful little blue and fawn-coloured finches from Madeira, and I had a few canaries. Gifts of other birds soon arrived from all quarters; a sort of half-bred canary from Aden—there were a dozen of those—and many pretty little local birds. I made them as happy as I could with endless baths, and gave them, besides the ordinary bird seed, bunches of native grasses, and even weeds in blossom, which they greedily ate. The little Aden birds would not look at water for bathing purposes. They came from a “dry and thirsty land, where no water is,” and evidently regarded it as a precious beverage to be kept for drinking. They had to be accommodated with little heaps of finely powdered earth, in which they disported themselves bath-fashion, to the deep amazement of the other birds.

But how those birds quarrelled! At roosting-time they all seemed to want one particular spot on one particular perch, and nothing else would do. All day long they quarrelled over their baths and their food, and the only advantage of the ample space they enjoyed was to give them more room to chase each other about. They all insisted on using one especial bath at the same moment, and would not look at any other, though all the baths were exactly alike. One fine day a batch of tiny parrakeets from a neighbouring island arrived, and I congratulated myself on having at last acquired some amiable members of my bird community. Such gentle creatures were never seen. With their pale-green plumage and the little grey-hooded heads which easily explained their name of “capuchin,” they made themselves quite happy in one of the many domes or cupolas of the Arab cage. In a few days, however, a mysterious ailment broke out among all the other birds. Nearly every bird seemed suddenly to prefer going about on one leg. This did not surprise me very much at first, as the mosquitoes used to bite their little legs cruelly, and I was always contriving net curtains, &c., to keep these pests out. At last it dawned on me that many of the canaries had actually only one leg. An hour’s careful watching showed me a parrakeet sidling up to a canary, and after feigning to be deeply absorbed in its own toilet, preening each gay wing-feather most carefully, the little wretch would give a sudden swift nip at the slender leg of its neighbour, and absolutely bite it off then and there. Of course I immediately turned the capuchins out of the cage with much obloquy, but too late to save several of my poor little pets from a one-legged existence.

I had also several parrots and cockatoos, but they had to be kept as much as possible out of earshot, for their eldritch yells and shrieks were too great an addition to the burden of daily life in a tropic land.

There was one small grey and red parrot, however, from the West Coast of Africa, which was different from the ordinary screaming green and yellow bird. This was certainly the cleverest little creature of its kind I have ever seen. Dingy and shabby as to plumage, and with a twisted leg, its powers of mimicry were unsurpassed. It picked up everything it heard directly, and my only regret was that it appeared to forget its phrases very quickly. Before it had been two days in the house it took me in half-a-dozen times by imitating exactly the impatient peck at a glass door of some tame peacocks, who always invited themselves to “five o’clock-er.” I used to go to the door and open it; of course to find no peacocks there, for they were punctuality itself, and never came near the house at any other time. After the pecks—exactly reproduced as if on glass—came an impatient note, followed by the exact cry of an indignant peacock. I believe that grey parrot had the utmost contempt for my mental powers, and delighted in victimising me.

I was a constant sufferer in those days from malarial fever, and when convalescent and comfortably settled on my sofa in the drawing-room, the parrot would first gently cough once or twice, then sigh, and finally, in a weak voice, call “Garde, Garde.” This was to a functionary who lived in the deep verandahs, and whose mission in life seemed to be the regulating of the heavy outside blinds made of split bamboo. The next sound would be the awkward shuffling of heavy boots (for the “Garde” usually went barefoot, except when in uniform and on duty), followed by “Madame.” Then my voice again, “Levez le rideau.” “Bien, Grande Madame.” Then you heard the creak of the pulleys as the curtain was raised, followed by the Garde’s tramping away again, all exactly imitated.

The A.D.C.’s way of calling his “boy” (generally a middle-aged man) was also faithfully rendered, beginning in a very mild and amiable voice, rising louder as no “boy” answered, and finally a stentorian “boy” produced a very frightened and hurried “’Ci, Monsieur le Capitaine, ’ci.” I grieve to say this performance generally ended with a confused and shuffling sound as of a scrimmage.

There used also to be an orderly on duty outside the Governor’s office, who, once upon a time, was afflicted with a violent cold in his head. This malady, and his primitive methods of dealing with it, made him a very unpleasant neighbour, so his Excellency requested the Private Secretary to ask for another orderly without a cold in his head. Of course this was immediately done, and the desired change made, but not before Miss Polly had taken notes. Next day I was startled by the most violent outburst of sneezing and coughing in the verandah, followed by other trying sounds. I next heard a plaintive and deeply injured voice from the Governor’s office—it must be remembered that every door and window is always wide open in a tropic house.

“I thought I asked for that man to be changed.”

This brought the Private Secretary hurriedly out of his room, to be confronted by a small grey parrot, who wound up the performance by a sort of sob of exhaustion, and “Ah! mon Dieu!” the real orderly standing by, looking as if he was considering whether or no he ought to arrest the culprit.

One likes to have parrots walking about quite tame, free and unfettered, but it is an impossibility if a garden or any plants are within reach, for the temptation to go round and nip off every leaf and blossom, and even stem, seems irresistible to a parrot or a cockatoo.

Soon after I went to Western Australia, in 1883, I was given a pair of beautiful cockatoos called by the natives “Jokolokals.” They did not talk at all, but were lovely to look at, and as they had never been kept in a cage and were reared from the nest, they were perfectly tame and their plumage most beautiful, of a soft creamy white, with crest and wing-lining of an indescribable flame tint. I never saw such exquisite colouring, and they looked charming on the grass terraces during the day, and for a while roosted peaceably in a low tree at night.

But one morning, early, I was told the head-gardener wished to speak to me, and he was with difficulty induced to postpone the interview until after breakfast. I tremble to think what the expression of that grim Scotch countenance would have been at first! It was quite severe enough when I had to confront him a couple of hours later. The Jokolokals had employed a long bright moonlight night in gardening among the plants with which the many angles and corners of the wide verandahs were filled, and such utter ruin as they had wrought, especially among the camellias! Not only had every blossom been nipped off, but they had actually gnawed the stems through, and few pots presented more than an inch or two of stalk to my horrified eyes. After that—on the principle of the steed and the stable-door—the beautiful villains were put in a large aviary out of doors, and revenged themselves by awaking me every morning at daylight by fiendish yells. The gardener’s cottage was out of earshot.

I had also a very large cage of canaries, in which they lived and multiplied exceedingly. In a country where there are no song-birds a canary is much prized, and every year I gave away a great many young birds. There was also another large cage with small (and very quarrelsome) finches, including many brilliant Gouldian finches from the North-west (they call them Painted finches there), a tiny zebra-marked finch, and many different little birds kindly brought to me from Singapore and other places.

However, to return for a moment to the cockatoos. The large white Albany cockatoo, which has a very curved beak and wide pale-blue wattles round the eye, talks admirably, and is easily tamed if taken young. In spite of its ferocious beak it is really quite gentle, and mine—for I had several—were only too affectionate, insisting on more petting and notice than I always had time to bestow.

There were often garden-parties in the lovely grounds of the Government House at Perth, and at one of the later ones some of my guests came to me complaining, as it were, of the weird utterances of the Albany cockatoo, who lived with other parrots in a kind of wire pagoda among the vines. “What does he say?” I asked laughingly. “He wants to know if we like birds,” was the answer. So I immediately went down to the cage, and was at once asked by the cockatoo in a very earnest voice, “Do you like birds?” Alas for the want of originality in the human race! He had heard exactly that remark made by every couple who came up to the cage, and had adopted it. My little son taught that bird to call me “Mother,” and it never used the word to any one else. If I ever passed the cage without stopping to play with or pet the cockatoos, I was greeted with indignant cries of “Mother,” which generally brought me back, and the moment I opened the door the big cockatoo would throw himself on his back on the gravel floor, that I might put the point of my shoe on his breast and rub his back up and down the gravel. I never could understand why they all loved that mode of petting.

But the Australian magpie is one of the most delightful pets, and can be trusted to walk about loose, as he does not garden. “Break-of-day-boys” is their local name, and it fits them admirably. At earliest dawn only do you hear the sweet clear whistle which is their native note. They learn to whistle tunes easily and correctly, but nothing can be compared to their own note. They are exactly like the English magpie in appearance, only a little larger. I had a very tame one, which had been taught to lie on its back on a plate with its legs held stiffly up as if it were dead. I have a photograph of it in that attitude, and no one will believe me when I assure them the bird was alive; not even its open and roguish eye will convince them. I only wish the sceptics had been by when I clapped my hands to signify that the performance was over, and Mag jumped up like a flash of lightning and made for the nearest human foot, into the instep of which she would dig her bill viciously. It must have been her idea of revenge, for she never did so at any other time; and she scattered the spectators pretty swiftly, I assure you.

Dear, clever Mag was lost or stolen just before we left Perth. I intended to have brought her to England, but one morning I was informed by the sentry that he could not see her anywhere, and she always kept near him. Further and anxious inquiries elicited that she had been observed following a newspaper boy near the back-gate. The police were communicated with, and the result was my being confronted at all hours of the day and night by an indignant and rumpled magpie tied up in a pocket-handkerchief, who loudly protested that we were absolute strangers to each other. And so we were, for among the numerous arrests made of suspicious characters among magpies, not one turned out to be my poor Maggie.

But I must not loiter too long over my West Australian aviary, in spite of the great temptation to dwell on those dear distant days. I brought a small travelling-cage of Gouldian and other lovely finches from the neighbourhood of Cambridge Gulf home with me. What I suffered with that cage during a storm in the Bay of Biscay no tongue can tell. However, they all reached London in safety, and in due time were taken out—also with great personal trouble and difficulty—to Trinidad. Here they were luxuriously established in four large wired compartments over the great porch of Government House. No birds could have been happier. The finches had one compartment all to themselves, so had the canaries; whilst the laughing jackass, another Australian magpie, and a beautiful Indian hill mynah occupied a third compartment, the fourth being brilliantly filled by troupials, morichés, and sewing crows from Venezuela, besides many lovely local birds of exquisite plumage.

In each compartment stood large boxes and tubs filled with growing shrubs, whilst creepers, brought up from the luxuriant growth at the pillars below, were twined in the fine meshes of the netting. Of course there were perches and nests, all sizes and at differing heights. It was really one man’s business to attend to them, but they were beautifully kept. Every morning the grasscutter brought in a large bunch of the waving plume-like seed of the tall guinea grass; and they had plenty of fresh fruit, in which they greatly delighted. Of course they quarrelled over it all, and a fierce battle would rage over half an orange, of which the other half was utterly neglected.

The canaries led a commonplace existence and had only one adventure. I had noticed that for some few weeks past the numbers of these little birds seemed rather to diminish than increase at their usual rapid rate. But I saw so many hens sitting on nests very high up that I accounted for the small number in that way. However, one day a perch fell down, and the black attendant went into the cage with a tall ladder to replace it. Presently I heard a great scrimmage and many “Hi! my king!” and other agitated ejaculations, which soon brought me to the spot. It was indeed no wonder that my poor little birds had been disappearing mysteriously, for there was a large, well-fed, but harmless snake. It must have got in through the mesh when quite young and small, but had now grown to such stout proportions that escape through the wire netting—which would only admit the very tip of my fourth finger—was impossible, and it was easily slain. The snake was found coiled on a ledge too high up to be easily perceived from below.

Soon after that episode the little finches underwent a sad and startling experience. One morning the coachman brought me in a beautiful little bird of brilliant plumage which I had never seen before. It had been caught in the saddle-room, and was certainly a lovely creature, though unusually wild and terrified. However, I was so accustomed to new arrivals soon making themselves perfectly at home and becoming quite tame, that I turned the splendid stranger into the finches’ compartment with no misgivings, and went away, leaving them to make friends, as I hoped. About half-an-hour later I passed the tall French window, carefully netted in, which opened on the corridor, and through which I could always watch my little pets unperceived. My attention was attracted by two or three curious little feathered lumps on the gravelled floor. On closer examination these proved to be the heads of some of my especial favourites, which the new arrival (a member of the Shrike family, as I discovered too late) had hastily twisted off. Besides these murders he had found time to go round the nests and turn out all the eggs and young birds. My dismay and horror may be imagined, but I could not stop, for luncheon and guests were waiting. I hastily begged a tall Irish orderly who was on duty in the hall to catch the new-comer and let him go. Now this man loved my birds quite as much as I did, and seemed to spend all his leisure-time in foraging for them. They owed him many tit-bits in the shape of wasps’ larvæ or the nursery of an ants’ nest nicely stocked, or some delicacy of that sort. There was only time for a hurried order, received in grim silence, but when I was once more free and able to inquire how matters had been settled, all I could get out of O’Callaghan was: “I’ve larned him to wring little birds’ necks.”

“Did you catch him easily?” I inquired.

“Quite easily, my lady, and I larned him.” This in a voice trembling with rage.

“What have you done to him?” No answer at first, only a murmur.

“But I want to know what has happened to that bird,” I persisted.

“Well, my lady, I’ve larned him;”—a pause; “I’ve wrunged his neck.”

So in this way rough and ready justice had been meted out to the wrong-doer very speedily.

Perhaps of all my birds the one I called the Sewing Crow was the most amusing. It was a glossy black bird about the size of a thrush, with pale yellow tail and wing-feathers, and curious light blue eyes with very blue rims. It was brought from Venezuela, and its local Spanish name means “The Rice-bird,” but it never specially affected rice as food, preferring fruit and mealworms. I had several of these crows, but one was particularly tame, and rambled about the house seeking for sewing materials. I found it once or twice inside a large workbag full of crewels, where it had gone in search of gay threads, with which it used to decorate the wire walls of an empty cage kept in the verandah outside my own sitting-room. The extraordinary patience and ingenuity of that bird in passing the wool through the meshes of the wire can hardly be described. I suppose it was a reminiscence of nest-building, because it always worked harder in the springtime. It had a great friend in a little “moriché,” black and yellow also, but of a more slender build, and with a very sweet whistle. The “moriché,” too, was perfectly tame and flew all about the house, and it was very comic to watch its efforts at learning embroidery from its friend. It arrived at last at some sort of cage decoration, but quite different from that of the crow, who evidently disapproved of it, and often ruthlessly pulled the work of a laborious morning on the “moriché’s” part to pieces. Now the “moriché” knew better than to touch the crow’s work, though he often appeared to carefully examine it.

One day the crow must have persuaded the moriché to help him to roll and drag a reel of coarse white cotton from the corridor of the work-room, across the floor of my sitting-room, into the verandah. I saw them doing this more than once, and had unintentionally interfered with the crow’s plans by picking up the reel and returning it to the maids’ work-basket. However, one afternoon the crow got rid of me entirely, and on my return from a long expedition I found both the crow and moriché just going to roost in the empty cage, which was really only kept there for them to play in. I then perceived what the reel of cotton, which was again lying on the verandah floor, had been wanted for. The crow had sewn a straw armchair with an open-patterned seat securely to the cage by nine very long strands, and was sleepily contemplating the work with great satisfaction. It was quite easy to see how it had been managed once a start was made with the cotton; but it must have entailed a great deal of flying in and out with the end of the cotton, for it had not been broken off. Of course I left the chair in its place, and it remained untouched for some months; but I always had to use it myself, lest any one should move it too roughly, and so break the connecting strands which had cost my little bird so much labour and trouble.

The most popular of my birds, however, was certainly the laughing jackass, who dwelt in company with the magpie and the mynah. Unhappily a misunderstanding arose, when I was away in England, between these two birds, once such great friends. If I had only been there to adjust the quarrel, all might have gone well; but the magpie, after many days of incessant battle, I was told, fell upon the mynah and killed it. It was curious that they should have lived together for a couple of years without more than the ordinary share of bird-quarrels. I do not know what active share the jackass took in this affair. I always doubted his intentions towards that mynah, and he always regarded it with a bad expression of eye, but as he was very slow and cumbrous of movement I thought the mynah could well take care of himself. The only time the laughing jackass ever showed agility was when a mouse-trap with a live mouse in it was taken into his cage. With every feather bristling he would watch for the door of the trap to be opened, when he pounced on the darting mouse quicker than the eye could follow, and killed and swallowed it with the greatest rapidity. Once a mouse escaped him, and the magpie caught it instead, and a more absurd sight could not be imagined than the magpie flitting from perch to perch, holding the mouse securely in his beak, through which he was at the same time trying hard to whistle; whilst the jackass lumbered heavily after him, remonstrating loudly, for the magpie did not want to eat the mouse, and he did.

It always amused me to see the jackass take his bath, though it was rather a rare performance, whereas all the other birds tubbed incessantly. I had a large tin basin full of water placed just beneath one of the lowest perches, and when the jackass intended to bathe he descended cautiously to this perch and eyed the water for some time, uttering—with head well thrown back—his melancholy laugh. As soon as his courage was equal to it he suddenly flopped into the water, as if by accident, and then scrambled hastily out again. After repeating these dips many times he seemed to think he had done all that was necessary in the washing line, and scrambled up to a sunny corner where he could dry and preen his beautiful plumage.

Yes, my birds were the greatest delight and amusement to me for many years, and I had nearly a hundred of them when my happy life in that beautiful tropical home came to a sad and abrupt end. Many of my friends have often asked me if I did not regret leaving my birds; but as I left everything that the world could hold for me in the way of happiness and interest and work behind me at the same time, the loss of the birds did not make itself felt just then. I miss them more now than I did at first, but I believe they have nearly all found kind and happy homes, where they are cherished a little for my sake as well as for their own, the dear things!