Fine Feathers: A Character Sketch of Four Canaries

I

You might say I pull strings here like God. I set out the sieves and there are babies, take away the sieves and there are no babies. The reason is simple. I have n’t any right corners for nesting in this laboratory, — a ferro-concrete laboratory in the College of Medicine, — and the canary mothers therefore have to have these sieves, ordinary small coffee strainers, to give them a framework for their building.

In the year there have been four births, and here the changes are greatest, as with human babies, but the slighter, subtler changes that I want to tell about are in an old four. To help fix that four in your mind I shall begin by cataloguing them.

Striped Daughter, daughter of Striped Mother, a remarkable bird who died two and a half years ago and who in her life was the common-law wife of Father, who died two years ago and was the founder of the family.

Striped Male, whom I brought to the laboratory after Father died, and who is the parent of Junior, Penguin, and Candy.

Puck, son of Father and Plain Mother, the real wife.

Hinge, son of Father and Plain Mother.

Now these four — Striped Daughter, Striped Male, Puck, and Hinge — once in the day may be seen close together. It is just before dark, when the laboratory has quieted after the evening singing, and if I drop in on them then I have the feeling each time of having opened the door on a conference. The same at noon if a storm comes over the hills to the other side of the dump and darkens the laboratory, the wind then humming in the transoms, the canaries uneasy, stopping their singing, and the four gathering. Where they gather is on the metal crossbar of Polly’s stand, and what I would call your attention to is the mere look of them, how they lean, the distance they poke their heads into their necks, how far or how near the one gets to the other, because none of this is chance, but repeats itself in the same way twilight after twilight. As the twilight deepens — faster for their small eyes than for mine — three draw up one foot, and the fourth, Hinge, lets himself down till his abdomen rests on the bar, so that after a while they look like statues of themselves, then yet dimmer, like figures in an old drawing.

II

Striped Daughter draws up her foot last. That is something in the blood. Her mother had that in the blood too. Striped Daughter wishes I’d snap on the lights. She does n’t like atmosphere. She wants lights, life. When Striped Daughter drives across the laboratory and lands on the dead tree that rises over the chemical bench, that tree trembles. When I took away her sieve that she had nested in four weeks without result she was so excited that everybody in the place got as still as if I had rung a bell. Excited, but she did not lose her head. She went, carefully examined where the sieve had been, flew away, flew back, flew farther away, flew back, tried everything she could think of to prove to herself that that sieve was really gone, and, when she did prove it, quietly put aside her disappointment and dived to her bath.

The bath she needed. Had n’t had a bath in the four weeks. Had n’t had time. The way she took the bath was to jump in quick succession from one to the other of the four green Chinese bowls where they all bathe and drink; in each bowl wet cautiously the under side of her, no more; nevertheless when she jumped from the last she shook herself violently as if she had wet herself all over.

Now the change in St riped Daughter during the year, except for a detail to which I shall return a moment at the end, is that she is yet more Striped Daughter. She is more herself. But this is the kind of change the human eye passes over.

III

Striped Male, on the contrary, has changed in the way the human eye does not pass over. He is very changed. Only not in his affections. His affections he still has all invested in Striped Daughter. I don’t mean that he does not slip out now and then, because he does. But he comes back. It is Striped Daughter he defends, follows, feeds, and feeds not only when she is on eggs, but when she is n’t. That is, he is the same one-female male he was last year, and it does n’t alter anything that the female shows him no consideration, is forever trotting off, just can’t be bothered.

What would strike you first is how quiet he has grown. He is far from the loud-mouthed person whom I brought to the laboratory after Father died because the place had got gloomy and I wanted to enliven it a bit. What started the quiet was Hinge’s clear demonstration that such a loud mouth is no more than a loud mouth, and the day Hinge made that demonstration, by simply screaming louder than Striped Male every time Striped Male screamed, I thought it justice. I thought it only fair to push Striped Male back into the chorus of other voices where he belonged. But Striped Male — poor fellow, the thing went deep. He has never been the same. That insult has gone out into his feathers. It has got into his walk.

I don’t mean that he is n’t still the neatest, or that he has n’t the finest feathers, but since last year it is as if he had lost the art of wearing fine feathers. Or as if fine feathers had gone a trifle out of style; he knew it, nevertheless had to go on wearing them, had to be the mould of fashion in a time all wrong, could n’t escape, never, never, never, and so has got discouraged, has let the feathers run down, grow shabby. At the same time his son Junior is more and more like him, just as spick-andspan, only Junior is young. Such a contrast may be a tragedy.

IV

Puck too has changed, but you don’t feel sorry for Puck. A year ago Puck still did nothing all day but chase the ladies. I never saw the like of that in bird or beast or man. He would have you worn out just watching. He had a chubby body last year. This year he is bony, and this year when he sings to a lady he grows in the oddest way to resemble George Bernard Shaw, grows thin as a pin, and tall, and the short feathers of his face turn outward so as to give it the look of a whitish beard all around it.

But singing to the ladies is n’t this year the one big business of Puck’s day. That is where Puck has changed. I even suspect that singing to the ladies has played Puck a trick, that he sang and sang till, without intending it, he got interested in song. You could n’t have imagined that possible a year ago. The first sign was seeing Puck do what Vicious, the parrot who died, used to do. He went to the window and sang down to the dump, or maybe it was to the hills beyond the dump. Anyway, whoever had heard him before could n’t but notice in how much better voice he was, lower and less shrill.

The second sign, last Tuesday he flew to the top of the book closet, stepped out to the edge of it, and sang. The book closet is the highest and most dominant place in the laboratory. Hinge always had sung there. Father did before Hinge. And now Puck. That is, with the sense of song comes the sense of platform, and Puck has been out on that platform every night since Tuesday, has sung with the whole of him, no lady to excite him, has swayed like a tenor from side to side, been anxious to sustain the long tones as long as he could, and cut the short ones at that always unexpected yet always right point, as a canary and Beethoven may.

V

The change in Hinge I first thought was merely age, but Hinge is n’t any older than Striped Daughter, and is exactly the same age, within a minute or two, as Puck. The change did not look like age, either. It was more the growth of some kind of consciousness of power. Hinge will stand over a thing, a sunflower seed that he has been picking at and that has got pushed back between his feet, and the way he stands is like a statue of Rodin or Michelangelo or a Roman wrestler.

This consciousness of power touches everything. It touches me. I will be sitting with my head under the bar of Polly’s stand. Hinge will fly to the bar. Several will follow Hinge. I will forget they are there, turn suddenly, and everybody will flee. Not Hinge. Hinge clings. What makes this especially courageous is that with his small eyes so near me he is able to see only a patch of me, and for one breathless instant I must look like a black mountain. He clings till he has got me into proper focus, when he regards me with his kingly quiet again.

One night I had to cut his toenails. I noticed he was tripping on them, and once in righting himself wrenched his wing in a way to hurt him. It is quite safe to cut these too long nails if you hold each toe up to a strong light and see where the vein goes in the nail, then are careful not to cut as far as that. What I did was wait till dark; then, when for some reason Hinge visited my table, I snapped off the lights and grabbed him. He squealed. The squealing was more outrage than fright, that I should dare turn him upside down in that humiliating way. And he kept squealing. He squealed and squealed, at the top of his voice, and it was something like inspiration to me to see a thing so tiny cry out against me and not consider how I might with nothing squeeze the life out of him, and not stop squealing till abruptly he realized that there might be some sense in w hat I was doing, when he grew very still. Polly was in the laboratory and watched it all with the greatest curiosity.

Perhaps the fundamental element in Hinge’s change is that you can’t draw Hinge into a fight. He is n’t a pacifist, but he just won’t fight — never did easily. Nothing is important enough.

The others spend a fair part of their lives fighting. While they fight, Hinge keeps off on the fishpole that spans the north wall, raises one foot and dozes. When they are done he comes. That coming is a swoop. The same swoop if he wants food, or a bath, or a drink, or a lady. If a lady, she may as well yield at once, and usually does. Yet if a mother is nesting in the dead tree it is Hinge who perches the whole day on a near-by twig, to keep an eye on the establishment.

VI

Now to return that promised moment to Striped Daughter. For some time I had been hearing a new male voice in the laboratory, or so I thought. I was aware of the voice long before I heard it, and heard it long before I set out to find it. When I did set out my attention was at once directed to the right spot by Hinge, who was standing at the edge of the chemical bench and peering down on to the concrete floor. It was Striped Daughter. It was the female, Striped Daughter, that was doing the singing, and Hinge was as perplexed and interested, and even, I think, as amazed and amused, as I.

Females sing, but it is not usual, and Striped Daughter never had sung. Besides, this was not only singing, but heroic singing, full of passion and meaning. She was practising with the same zest she had done everything in her life, and to the exclusion of all else. I do not remember any other time when she has stopped collecting, or at least picking up things here and putting them there. But now she was standing feet apart and driven into the concrete as when tugging at something that will not yield, and singing in a voice very charming, very mellow, very musical, and very small. She had already mastered a whole run of little coloratura canary tricks. Hinge watched her on and off all day. Striped Daughter had in her life tried her hand at everything, had fallen in love, built nests, had babies, run a household, run an entire relationship, and here she was singing. A highly modern personality, thus in middle life to be turning to art.

Then yesterday I put out the sieves. I put out also the nesting materials, and I knew Striped Daughter was watching me because for once she did not keep near me. All day she resisted the sieves. There were three sieves with three females more or less occupying them, but no female having yet staked a claim in the way they do when they are ready to lay. Toward midnight when I left the laboratory Striped Daughter was sleeping apart from the others, alone on the transom rod above the door. She still had resisted the sieves. It was as if she did not want babies. As if she wanted to go on singing — wanted a career. But by this morning the pull on the inside of her had got too great, and by noon when I returned to the laboratory she not only occupied the highest and most advantageous sieve, but already had it stacked with materials. All day she has not sung a note. The immense nestbuilding seriousness is over her, so that the tugging and collecting of the last months seem now only the training to be ready for this one swift performance.

In a day or two there will be eggs. In a day or two Striped Male, spick-and-span, will be perched at the edge of the sieve waiting the honor to poke a billful of regurgitated dinner down into her. Hinge will be on a near-by twig keeping an eye on the establishment. Puck will sing, perhaps to the dump, perhaps to a lady.