Shortly after parting from my rabbits and rats I became much interested in hearing from a naturalist friend, of the arrival of a strange bird on our coast. A pitiless gale had been beating strange birds shoreward, and this wanderer had been picked up, helpless, but still living. The man who found him knew from his brilliant coloring that he was no Nova Scotian bird, and sent a description of him to my naturalist friend, who at once pronounced him to be a purple gallinule—a heron-like wader related to the coot family.
“The bird is a native of the Gulf States,” wrote the naturalist, “and of the South Atlantic generally. I wish he could give us an account of his trip. He must have been caught in a tyrannous blast, and been whirled more than a thousand miles, and he not a great flyer, either.”
I was quite excited about this bird that had been hurried so swiftly through the air; the more so, as I heard that he was intended as a present for me, after he had recuperated in a cage that he seemed quite contented in.
Shortly afterward the naturalist arrived with the gallinule in a box, with a kind of chimney to it to accommodate his long neck. I could not see him properly in it, so we hurried to the aviary and let him loose on the earth. He was a beauty, with handsome blue and purple plumage, and seemed a gentle, reasonable sort of bird, not at all frightened by captivity. After eating gravely from a cup of cornmeal pudding, with worms for raisins, he took a long drink.
The guineapigs, devoured with curiosity, ran round and round this handsome bird with the long, slender legs. He walked very lame on one of these legs, but after examination, we decided that there was nothing broken—he had merely rheumatism in it.
In order to hasten his recovery I took him up to my warm study, where I added hard-boiled eggs to his bill of fare. These he liked very much. I loved to watch him. He had a pretty way of carrying his long neck and head, an exceedingly calm, philosophical manner, and lovely dark eyes. He had also a comical way of flirting his tail and showing the pretty white feathers in it.
After a few days his wings did not droop so much. He was getting better, his excellent appetite helping him in this respect. While eating, he was very economical; and if a crumb dropped outside his dish he at once picked it up.
Soon he began to fight his cage in my study, and beat himself about so much, that I decided to put him downstairs. First, though, we must take his photograph, and we had great amusement in arranging a sofa in a window, and persuading him to sit on it.
After his picture was taken, he was put into the aviary, and seemed delighted with the greater freedom, flying to and fro, with his legs sticking straight out behind him. Finally he calmed down, walked about, looked out the windows, and at night-time took possession of a broad, soft nest that I had made him in one of the trees standing against the wall. He liked the protection of these firs and spruces. Animals and birds kept in captivity enjoy having some place where they can get out of sight. I often pity squirrels kept in open cages. They should always have a box to run into.
The guineapigs kept on bothering the gallinule. When he was eating, they pressed close to him. He eyed them severely, but did not retaliate until they were actually on his long, slender claws. Then, with a well-directed blow, he would strike them exactly on the top of the head with his heavy beak, and I fear caused the death of several of them, that were found lying quite still and cold where they had fallen in their tracks.
He also disliked being bothered or troubled by any birds, and in a quiet but determined way always got rid of them. Shortly after I got him he took a fancy to double up his long legs, and squat in a nest of straw that I made for him on a broad window ledge. As he sat there in the sun, the other birds went to call on him. He paid no attention to first calls, but when the ringdoves, whose chosen place was near him, came a second time, he leaned over, took one by the tail, and pulled it.
This seemed to me to show some sense of humor, and I afterward noticed other birds indulging in tail-pulling. Canaries are particularly fond of it, and I often have seen a mischievous canary sneaking up to another who is sitting on a branch, his little throat distended, his head back. He is singing the most eloquent song he knows. Perhaps he is showing off before some pretty stranger whose good graces he wishes to gain, when, lo, he is thrown into a most pitiable state of confusion and contortion, for canary number one has seized his tail and has given it a good tweak.
He almost falls back, then with a wrathful squawk the song changes, and he pursues the bad bird to give him a pecking.
The gallinule never liked my ringdoves. I brought them home with me when I came from my European trip. I got them in Boston, though I had resolved to get them in Paris, for one day while walking down the Boulevard Montparnasse, I had fallen in love with a gentle bird that had called, “Coo, oo, oo!” to me, from the door of a laundry.
I turned to speak to him, as he stood bowing unceasingly to me, and the smiling proprietor of the shop informed me that he was very tame and never flew away.
“I shall have a pair of ringdoves when I go home,” I remarked, and therefore purchased two pretty birds, and took them up to Nova Scotia with me. They were gentle birds, but unyielding and obstinate, and they did not want the gallinule in their corner of the aviary. The laundryman had been right about their love for home. They rarely wandered about the aviary, but kept in their pet place. The gallinule, forgetting how he had resented their visits, would insist on calling on them, and then there would be a fight.
Their combats were bloodless, and exceedingly funny. When the doves saw him approaching they would look angry, would slide along their perch, and, lifting their wings, would give him good, sound slaps. All the dove and pigeon tribe fight in this amusing way, and they can give quite hard blows.
The gallinule, finding one on each side of him, would try to look martial, and clapping his wings close to his sides, would tilt backward, double up his long legs, spread his claws flat, and give a splay-footed kick at them. He had the effect of falling over backward as he fought, and his doubling-up process must have been as fatiguing as it was funny, for he always brought it speedily to a close, and beating a retreat, left the doves in possession of their perch.
Before I leave these doves, I must speak of their amusing watchdog habit. All through the night they would cry out if they heard any noise inside the house. It would have been impossible for a burglar to enter the basement, without having them call loudly in concert to him, “Coo-oo, ooo-ooo! Whooo!”
After I had had Beauty for some months, I had another gallinule come over seas and land to join my collection of birds, though he, of course, had not the least intention of entering an aviary when he left the sunny South. Strange to relate, he too was picked up exhausted on the shores of Nova Scotia, but nearer to me, having dropped down close to Dartmouth, a town across the harbor from Halifax.
I first heard of him from a bird-fancier in Dartmouth, who called on me and asked me what I gave my gallinule to eat.
“You have not by any chance a live one?” I asked.
He said he had; that a little boy had picked up a strange bird on the railroad track by the shore, and knowing that this gentleman had a fine collection of stuffed birds, had brought it to him, asking him to kill and mount it for him.
Telling the boy that it would be a pity to kill so handsome a bird, the gentleman gave him a dollar, and told him to choose one of his already stuffed birds.
The boy went away happy, and the gentleman came to me to write a bill of fare for the stranger, as he wished very much to keep him.
I told him I had not dreamed there were any but stuffed gallinules for several hundreds of miles near me, and that as his bird was fortunate enough to be alive, I would recommend a general sort of diet, for I saw my Beauty picking at all sorts of food in the aviary.
Above all, we must have a good, deep water dish. No matter how cold the weather was, Beauty would stand for hour after hour in his bathtub, gazing about him in a quiet contemplative fashion, and occasionally making a swift bob down into the water to wet his purple plumage.
The gentleman said he would possibly get tired of keeping a solitary bird, and if he did, would send it over to me. Therefore, I was not surprised, when in a few days gallinule number two arrived in a basket. Once more I was excited. What would the meeting be like between these two wanderers from a foreign shore? Imagine my delight if, held prisoner in Mexico, I should suddenly have thrust into my prison another real, live Nova Scotian.
I took the new bird down to the aviary and let him out. He also was a handsome bird, and in good condition, in spite of his long flight; and was, I imagined, slightly larger than mine.
To my disappointment, there were no hysterics, no heroics about the meeting. They did not fly to meet each other. My gallinule looked at the strange gallinule, and the strange gallinule looked at him. I thought I saw tokens of quiet pleasure on the part of each one, but it was extremely quiet.
The stranger, after gazing about him with the cool philosophical stare that seems to be peculiar to gallinules, walked up to a little looking-glass, and pecked at his reflection there. As it did not reciprocate, he kicked at it scornfully. Then he looked about to see what there was to eat. After satisfying his appetite he had a bath.
The next day I found him stuffing himself with bread and milk that was very warm, almost hot. I was struck by it, for most birds like their food lukewarm or cold.
Though still undemonstrative, he soon attached himself to my gallinule, and they usually kept together, though their friendship was of the coolest, calmest kind. Nothing ever disturbed the equanimity of those gallinules but the firing of the twelve o’clock gun from the citadel in the middle of the city. In all colonial towns around the world that possess an English garrison this noontide gun or cannon is fired.
The first gallinule always jumped and gave a loud squawk when it went off. The other one did not mind it so much.