CHAPTER XX. Canary Characteristics

CANARY CHARACTERISTICS

Among my canaries were two hybrids, who were half-goldfinch and half-canary. They were fine, dark birds, more like their wild parent than their domesticated one.

While I had my farm I let all my wild birds fly away, except old Bob, the robin. I deliberated about the hybrids, and finally decided to let them take their choice, so after keeping them on the farm for a year I one day opened the door and told one of them that he might fly away with the goldfinches, purple finches, and other birds I had just released.

He went happily, and I heard later that he had called at a farmhouse farther down the road. I hope that he found his wild kindred and migrated with them. I did not know whether to let the other one go or not. He was a fierce little creature, with a beautifully marked goldfinch back, but his spirit was Norwich’s--that is, the nervous part of it was. Norwich was never cruel. He had in addition to this mental excitability, inherited Norwich’s peculiar leg feathering, and he was the only one of Norwich’s descendants that had done this. There was the little, dark fluffy skirt above the clean goldfinch legs, and he also danced while he sang his exquisite and constant song. A bird-dealer once coveted him, for hybrids are valuable, but I decided that nothing would induce me to imprison in a cage this little, wild, free spirit.

One day I found him beating a canary so severely that I said to him, “You are too bad for a house, go and play with your goldfinch brothers.” It was the Fourth of July I remember and, opening the door, I pointed to the tall maples about us. He went out with no apparent reluctance, but he would not leave the farm, and for the rest of the day he flew about the house, striking the aviary windows and calling to the birds inside.

When night came he flew to one of the trees. The next morning he resumed his siege of the house, and I had to give in. “Come back,” I said, opening the hall door, “if you are as fond of your half-brothers and sisters as that, rejoin them. I will never put you out again.”

He came in like a feathered streak, and I have him to-day--nervous, lively, in fine physical condition, and improved in his conduct, as I have never seen him strike a bird since.

This change of temper I have often observed in birds. In the case of this hybrid it was very striking, for, in the days of his youth, he would violently beat an inoffensive bird, and when he grew older I have seen him put up with every insult from another canary who coveted his mate, and who persecuted him from morning till night. Possibly birds, like human beings, gain wisdom with age. He and his mate build nest after nest that I never interfere with, for the eggs of hybrids are said never to hatch.

I have referred to the weak strain in the canary Minnie’s constitution and, strange to say, several of her nestlings succumbed before I lost her. I was in a measure prepared for her death, but when I at last found her little dead body I mourned sincerely and a long time, for a stouter-hearted, braver spirit never existed in a fragile body. She always reminded me of a little, plain-featured, delicate woman in a household, who with iron will sways every one to her wishes.

My nervous Norwich sang at the top of his voice on the day that he was made a widower. At the time I thought him heartless. Now I think he was probably mourning in his excitable way. It is as easy to misjudge birds as human beings.

A recent writer says that the Japanese often giggle when a funeral procession passes by. In reality, they are as sympathetic as we are, but they have a different mode of expressing themselves.

After Minnie died, Norwich devoted himself principally to a canary called Pussy’s Baby--her mother having been a good-sized yellow bird, with the reputation of a murderess of other canaries. Pussy’s Baby never had the influence over Norwich that Minnie had, and he became fussy and meddlesome. He interfered with other birds in their nest-making, and often received rebukes and hard blows. One evening I noticed that he was particularly excited about a new canary that I had put on the roof-veranda. The hybrid led her to his corner, and Norwich followed. The hybrid showed signs of terrible impatience, but as I have stated before, he was a reformed bird, and I did not think he would strike Norwich unless he was cunning enough to wait till I had left them for the night. However, I was shocked to find Norwich’s dead body on the floor the next morning, close by the hybrid’s perch. He was far from his own nest. Pussy’s Baby was sitting on a nestful of eggs in Sukey’s room. Norwich should have spent the night near her. He had either fallen dead in one of his fits of frantic singing and dancing, or the hybrid had struck him a fatal blow.

We should not criticize Norwich too harshly. His death was a real grief to the family, and my mother mourned for him as she has mourned for no other bird. He knew her, and when she spoke to him he always put his handsome head on one side, peeped from under his crest, and answered her with an intelligence she could not mistake.

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Alas! the dead are soon forgotten (among canaries). Norwich’s funeral was held at ten o’clock, and by noon a goldfinch had slipped into his place, and was sitting by Pussy’s Baby, devotedly putting choice morsels of food down her pretty, yellow throat.

I was very fond of my goldfinches. They were such neat, dapper, soldierlike little birds, and so good-tempered as they flew about the aviary with their sweet notes. I never saw one of my real goldfinches strike or hurt another bird. This particular one became a good mate to Pussy’s Baby, and helped her bring up Norwich’s family.

I am exceedingly interested in studying the descendants of Norwich and Minnie, in tracing in the children the characteristics of the parents. It is easy to study canary families, for the young birds hatched this year will next year bring up families of their own, and one has a number of canaries spread out before him.

My Germans have crossed with the English breed, and now I have the mixed families with complications and ramifications. With birds it is as with human families--as the parents are, so will the children be.

Some time ago a lady brought me a little paper parcel.

“This is a dead bird,” she said, “but it is so beautiful I want you to look at it.”

I did look, and there lay an exquisite little creature with Norwich’s heavy crest and lovely, silky feathers, but with Minnie’s frail and delicate body.

“You gave it to me when it was a young one,” the lady continued, “and the other day I found it dead. I wonder what was the matter with it?”

I had lost sight of the bird, and did not know what care she had given it, but my conclusion was that the weak maternal strain had been the cause of its sudden death.

However, good stock will not survive everything. The most astonishing ignorance prevails with regard to the care of birds. I have had a woman ask me seriously whether it was wrong to change a bird’s drinking-water every day.

I wanted to say, “Woman, where is your common sense?” However, I restrained myself, and she went on to say, “A friend of mine had a little bird in a cage and she changed its drinking-water every day and it died, and another friend who had a bird changed the water only once in three days and the bird lived.”

Here was a perplexing case.

However, I laid down some broad and generous rules: “Give a bird fresh food and water every day. If he is caged, don’t let him stuff himself, but if the cage is a good size, as it should be, he can stand quite an amount of food and green stuff, and a daily bath.

“Better than keeping birds in a cage, is to have one end of a room wired off for them. They are far happier and are less likely to have vermin, and they can eat more. My birds eat an immense amount of green food, and I have never had a case of typhoid fever among them. They have fruit all the year round, and in winter I plant bird-seed for them and give them the green sprouts. They are very fond of the common buckwheat, sown thickly in pots and set in the aviary. They eat down the green shoots in a short time, then I overturn the pots and let them have the mud with the worms and roots in it to play with. This is a great opportunity for my old Bob to get nesting material.

“Always buy the best of seeds for your birds. Don’t get seeds in packages. They may be fresh, and again they may be stale. Go to a bird-fancier or a wholesale dealer in seeds. I once gave my birds some sunflower seeds that they would not eat. I thought they had taken a dislike to them, until one day I picked up a few seeds and cracked them. There was nothing inside. I had to open the seeds to find out. The birds knew without opening them.

“Don’t hang birds in bright sunshine, except for a short time. Do you like to sit in the burning sun? Treat your birds as you treat your children. Give them light, some liberty, and amuse them. Birds like variety as much as we do. I try to give mine something to interest them.

“Be sure to see that a new bird knows where to find his food. I had an exquisite little goldfinch starve to death in the midst of plenty because I had not penetration enough to discover that he was too stupid to find out where his food dishes were.”

I once had a bird come to me suffering from the effect of loneliness. His owner had gone to the country, and the neglected bird had sung all day in a lonely house. He had been used to the sound of children’s voices and the care of his mistress. When they left him he was alone except for the space of time required to put fresh seeds and water in his cage. He moped, and was brought to me in a dying condition. So nervous was he from the long hours alone that he started if I went near him. Nothing consoled him, and he soon died.

A canary is a high-strung, nervous, intensely affectionate and faithful bird, and it is pathetic and horrible to reflect how many are tortured to death by the kindest-hearted but most ignorant persons. Bird-dealers give a few directions about the care of birds to persons who buy, but these directions should be in printed form, and should go with the bird.

I can assure purchasers that they suffer loss by not having intelligent instruction. They buy a canary and he dies. They buy another and he dies. I don’t suppose many persons get a good singer for less than five dollars. Twenty-five cents will procure a book of instructions. If birds must be kept in cages these books should be consulted, but better than a cage is partial liberty for a canary.

Do you not often see a canary in a cage stretching his wings? What is that for? God gave him his wings for use. If the bird had been intended to hop through life he would have been differently constructed. I never put a bird in a cage so small that he cannot use these wings, and I always allow a caged bird the occasional privilege of flying about the room. At present I have no birds in cages. All are free. In the basement aviary they have fifteen feet by thirty-two of space. From it they enter the elevator that is twenty feet high and ascend to the roof-veranda and sun-room, where are fifteen feet by thirty-two.

Less space than this would do, but I have it, and give it to my birds that now only number forty-five, for I have allowed a number their liberty. Better than cages, better than aviaries is the broad blue sky, and the boundless fields; but of course, one cannot release delicate foreigners in our Northern climate.