. My pets; real happenings in my aviary . o a treewith a satisfied Tsip! and I left him. He was an exquisite night singer; indeed, one ofhis names is the American nightingale, and one sum-mer I had to request him to descend to the basementto sleep, as his loud night-singing disturbed adelicate neighbor. He was a very mischievous bird,and one day when I v/as carrying a hammer andnails about the aviary, he espied a match in the box,and darting down, flew off with it for his nest. Ipursued him for a long time before I could per-suade him to drop the dangerous plaything. It is a great delight to m
. My pets; real happenings in my aviary . o a treewith a satisfied Tsip! and I left him. He was an exquisite night singer; indeed, one ofhis names is the American nightingale, and one sum-mer I had to request him to descend to the basementto sleep, as his loud night-singing disturbed adelicate neighbor. He was a very mischievous bird,and one day when I v/as carrying a hammer andnails about the aviary, he espied a match in the box,and darting down, flew off with it for his nest. Ipursued him for a long time before I could per-suade him to drop the dangerous plaything. It is a great delight to me to reflect that these ^17 My Pets lovely cardinals can no longer be bought in thebirdstores. How any one can enjoy the sight ofthis bright red bird, with his wild, free spirit hop-ping to and fro in the narrow confines of a cage, isas much of a mystery to me as the wearing of hisdull and lifeless skin in a hat. We must educate ourchildren into the conviction that a dead bird is asgrotesque an ornament as a dead mouse or a deadfrog. 238. CHAPTER XXIV SPARROWS AND SWALLOWS POOR little brown immigrants, how many ene-mies and how few friends they have, and yetwhat have they done to deserve so hard a fate?Merely following out the biblical instruction tomultiply and increase—they always remind me oftrue Anglo-Saxon stock. They protect the family,they fight all strangers and, Colonize, colonize, istheir motto. I have had quite an extensive acquaintance withthe English sparrow, both in town and in thecountry, and I think that this bad boy of the air hasa worse name than he deserves. Undoubtedly he isbad; so are all boys, and all birds, and all men and 239 My Pets women. We want supervision, correction, restric-tion—but the sparrow has good points. Sparrow mothers lead all birds in mothering, asfar as my observation goes. Again and again I haveput a baby sparrow on the roof. He is a strangerpicked up in the street. I do not know what nest hecomes from, he does not know, no one kno
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