Bullfinches

I was the only mother the nine little bullfinches had ever known. I stole my two bullfinch nests, one having four birdlings, the other five. I stole them while yet the birds were deaf, blind, and only half fledged. When first they heard and saw, they were in a sanatorium and I was poking food down their throats. They found nothing strange about either my voice or looks, apparently; they thought me a comfortable mother.

I wanted to take my bullfinches home to Canada. Then I got ill and was unable to travel. The two nests stood on a tray beside my bed. I fed my nestlings every half-hour from dawn till dusk. The sanatorium nurses and the doctor were most co-operative.

When the little birds discovered that they had wings, their first flight was direct to me: they nestled round my throat as I lay in bed, circling it like a necklace. They never again returned to the nest but were put in a wicker cage in my room. Whenever a sanatorium patient was downhearted or dreary, his nurse came to my door begging, “Lend the little soldiers.” Then the nine bullfinches would spend the day in that “down one’s” room to cheer him. It was very amusing to lie and watch them sitting in a long bobbing row trying to sing. All the while they tried, they danced and bobbed. The male bullfinches had rosy breasts, the females brown; all had black bonnets.

Only one pair of my bullfinches got out to Canada with me. They were so pugnacious, such bullies, that one by one, for the sake of peace, I had to give this one and that one away, or they would have killed the others. By and by I had just one pair left, and then at last I came back to Canada. The “Bullies” thrived very well out there for five years. Then one day the cage fell and Mrs Bully broke her thigh bone.

I took her to a doctor friend of mine. He and his wife often cared for my birds when I was away for a few days.

“She’ll live,” he said, “but her leg will always stick out hideously. Broken up in the thigh, it cannot be set. Suffer? Yes, I guess she will for a bit.”

“Chloroform her for me, please.”

The doctor’s wife interposed.

“Oh, no! If she dies, Mr Bully will die too. Bullfinches mate for life. If one of a pair dies, so does its mate.”

I stood holding the little bird. She was easy, lying in my hand.

“Think it over,” suggested the doctor. “You can bring her to me later.”

I held her all day. I could not go to bed holding her in my hand. When I laid her in her cage she called and fretted.

It took only one drop of chloroform on a pinch of cotton-wool. Her calm, gentle heart-beat stopped against the palm of my hand. This saved her the worry of being transferred into a strange grasp.

Did the faithful husband fret? He did not. For the first time in his life Mr Bully was “it”, took and gave all the petting which his mate had done him out of, swelling himself in the glory of being “the only”.

I kept his cage on a low wide seat so that he could share the doings of the old sheep-dog and me. We were his idols. He adored us both, had no fear whatever of the hot-breathed dog; he would lie in the palm of my hand, not one quiver or mad heart-beat, loving the great dog’s moist tongue to lick him. If the dog and I went into the next room, Bully would call and fret till I bade the dog “Go, sit by Bully.”

The gentle lumbering beast would go into the studio, sigh himself patiently up onto the bench, and hump a shoulder against the bars of Bully’s cage. The lonely little bird would trot up the perch to the wire and snuggle against the dog’s warmth. Great dog—tiny bird!

I went into the bitter North one mid-winter. I was to be away for only two weeks. I dared not take Mr Bully with me: he would freeze on the way. I loosed him in the aviary among the canaries. I had before let him fly among them. They were on good terms, but then Bully knew I was always near. Now he called and called—I did not come. At the end of the first week he was dead, just wanting me.