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.