. My pets; real happenings in my aviary . to build. It would have been cruel to keep all my farmers wanted them. I could not feed a largenumber, and I decided that the right way was tokill them, though that one thing—the necessity oftaking life would easily have destroyed my pleasurein farm life, if I had allowed it to do so. One thing I have discovered about them, makingthem more suitable than any other birds for pets, isthat they do not mind careful handling. Mypigeons climb about me like pups, and they are theonly birds I have that do not object when a hand islaid over their wing
. My pets; real happenings in my aviary . to build. It would have been cruel to keep all my farmers wanted them. I could not feed a largenumber, and I decided that the right way was tokill them, though that one thing—the necessity oftaking life would easily have destroyed my pleasurein farm life, if I had allowed it to do so. One thing I have discovered about them, makingthem more suitable than any other birds for pets, isthat they do not mind careful handling. Mypigeons climb about me like pups, and they are theonly birds I have that do not object when a hand islaid over their wings. All my other tame birdswill light on my shoulder or hand, allow me to talkto them, but would be overcome with uneasiness if Iput my hand over their only means of escape froman enemy—their wings. My pigeons go to sleep on my lap, and let mefondle them as much as I choose. Indeed, I shouldsay from what I know of them, that a pigeon thathas once formed an attachment for a human being,will never entirely go back to pigeon society. 167. CHAPTER XVIII MY FIRST CANARIES SOME years ago I heard John Burroughs lecturein Boston in the rooms of the Procopeia Clubon Observation of Nature. He said that we see in life what we look for,and told of Thoreau who had a great faculty forfinding arrow-heads. A friend with whom he waswalking one day asked him how he found them. In this way, replied Thoreau, stooping downand picking one up. After I became interested in birds I found themall around me, and even in my small native city dis-covered that there existed several fine collections ofbirds, especially of canaries. i68 My First Canaries I visited these collections and, observing the greatvariety of canaries, found that it is with them as itis with pigeons. The original stock has been sotransformed and improved on that one cannotrecognize the little wild ancestral canary of the is-lands off the coast of Africa, in their diversifieddescendants. There are the nervous, high-strung Belgian ca-
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