. My pets; real happenings in my aviary . istscall them. I cannot dislike them nor call themnames. They are brave little birds, and when Ithrow open my window on a cold winter morning,and see them waiting on the opposite roofs for theirbreakfast, and reflect that they alone of all thesummer birds are left to us in the city, I cannot dealharshly with them. Under a certain tree, is emptied each day a certainamount of grain, no more no less, and it is put therewhether I am at home or not. Birds like to knowwhat to depend on. They dont want to be fed spas-modically any more than we do. All day the
. My pets; real happenings in my aviary . istscall them. I cannot dislike them nor call themnames. They are brave little birds, and when Ithrow open my window on a cold winter morning,and see them waiting on the opposite roofs for theirbreakfast, and reflect that they alone of all thesummer birds are left to us in the city, I cannot dealharshly with them. Under a certain tree, is emptied each day a certainamount of grain, no more no less, and it is put therewhether I am at home or not. Birds like to knowwhat to depend on. They dont want to be fed spas-modically any more than we do. All day the spar-rows flutter about the house. As far as I can makeout we have a flock of sixty or seventy in our neigh-borhood. When night comes they tuck themselvesaway under the house-eaves, getting near the chim-neys if they can. When the time comes to exter-minate them I will help. In the meantime I do notsee what good it would do to carry on an unsys-tematic and shocking killing of the helpless youngones—the pets of my children friends. 247. CHAPTER XXVA MOTHER Careys chicken PERHAPS the strangest pet I had in my aviarywas a black bird that was brought to the doorone evening by a boy. He said that a young manhad picked up this pigeon on the common, and hadtold him to bring it to me. I found that it was asooty-looking bird, with a tubular bill and whitefeathers at the end of its tail—evidently a MotherCareys chicken—that had probably been flyingacross the peninsula on which the city of Halifax isbuilt, and had dropped in exhaustion. I saw that itwas ill, and as soon as I could, hurried to the fishmarket and interviewed an old sailor who had fishedon the banks of Newfoundland. He told me that 248 A Mother Careys Chicken flocks of these petrels used to follow his ship, eatingthe fish livers that were thrown overboard and thatfloated for days behind them. He had no liver onhand, but he gave me a whiting, for he said that fishwould also float on the water. I knew nothing about thes
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