XIX — Behind the Bars
Mockingbird, Cardinal, Indigo-bird, and Nonpareil
One gray Saturday in January, when the wind rushed through the trees, making the frozen branches clash with the sound of metal rather than wood, and it was too cold to snow, Tommy Todd came to the kitchen door at “the General’s” carrying a large and unwieldy bundle carefully wrapt in an old quilt.
The door was opened by Matilda, the old coloured woman, who had been “the General’s” cook in her youth, staying on as caretaker during the years when the house had been closed. “What you got dere, sonny? Sumpin’ live, ’cause I kin hear hit scratchin’. Don’t say yer bringin’ in a trap o’ rats, ’cause if dere’s anythink I mislike ’ticular, it is dem.”
“No, mammy; it isn’t rats, it’s a bird,” said Tommy, beginning to unwind the quilt which covered a long cage made of wood and stout wires. When he had succeeded in freeing it from the cover, which, being ragged, caught on the wires, he lifted the cage to the kitchen table, where the light came full upon it. There, hopping nervously to and fro between the perches, was a gray bird about the size of a Robin. Its wings and tail had a browner wash than the rest of its back, while some of its tail-feathers and its underparts were white, though now soiled and rather ragged from chafing against the bars. As it moved about, it whisked its tail to and fro, in very much the same way as our Catbirds and Brown Thrashers.
Matilda adjusted her big spectacles, grumbling as she did so, “Doan you know, chile, dat Missy doan like birds to be shet up in cages, and be prisoners, and sole away from home no mor’n de General would ’low folks to be shet from liberty an’ traded away? I ’spect she’ll be powerful mad when she sees dis yere. Whar yeh done git hit?” Then, as she drew near the cage and saw the bird plainly, which for a moment stopped its fluttering, she cried, “For de love ob Heaven, honey! it’s a Mocker, and my ole eyes ain’t seen one since de ole cabin hit burn down, and we was all scattered out’en, and left Lou’siana for to git Norf!
“My! but what birds dem Mockers were. I kin just year ’em now.” And Matilda seated herself by the table, pushed back her glasses, and closed her eyes.
“Winter wa’n’t well ober ’fore dey began to sing up, and come peepin’ around de cabins and in de road bushes lookin’ fer a nest-place. Sometimes dey put it in de thick bush ober top de swamp, but more times dey put it close in de rose vines, like as if dey t’ought snakes wouldn’t likely git ’em dere, ’cause snakes is as set to git Mockers as de ole one in de garden ob Eden was bound ter git Ebe.
“Dat nest, hit was kinder throwed together ob sticks, but de beddin’ in hit was good an soft, for de Mockers knew mighty well whar ter find ole cotton fluff to make a linin’. An’, while all this was doin’, how dey did sing! Day wasn’t long ’nough fer him, ’cause ’long towards noon his froat hit git dry and he’d go way down de orange grove an’ rest him jest a li’l bit, and den come out again an’ git nearer and nearer to de cabin, an’ when de sun hit role away to bed an’ de moon-up come, he’d git from de rose vine to de roof, an’ den up to de chimley edge an’ sing straight down at yer. Laws, honey, yer couldn’t never tell in daylight what birds was singin’, de real ones or him a-mockin’ ob dem. De Red Bird with de topknot, de Blue Jay, de li’l Wren wif de sassy tail, de Hangnest (Oriole), or de Blue Sparrow might all be singin’, for all I know’d, or hit might be only he a-mockin’ of ’em better than dey knew how demselves.
“But when hit come night, and eb’ry one was home at de quarters, an’ some was singin’, an’ some playin’ de banjo, an’ de smell from de orange groves risin’ up powerful on de wind, and sun-down t’ree four hours gone, den when we heard all dem birds a-singin’, we knew it was de Mocker, an’ sometimes he wouldn’t stop all the night until de light hit slip right from silber to gold, an’ den copper, an’ ’twas sun-up again; an’ in dose days most eb’ry one had a Mocker in a cage. But here I be runnin’ on ’bout de times when de Lord he let folks an’ wild birds both be bought an’ sold. Tell me, honey, whar ye done git him? Shore he neber was flyin’ round about up yere in de cold an’ snow—him what lubs de sun-up ’way down Lou’siana way.”
“I didn’t put him in a cage, Aunt Tilda,” said Tommy, earnestly; “it is this way. He belonged to old Ned that works of summers for my Uncle Eph over at Bridgeton, and then goes home every year down South at Christmas, to spend the cold weather. This year he has hurt his leg, and is sick and can’t go, and has to stay in Bridgeton Hospital. So, as he used to know ‘the General,’ and he’s heard that Gray Lady loves birds, he told me to bring his Mocker over here, and ask her if she’d keep it safe and feed it until real warm spring weather, and then hang the cage outside, and open the door, and let it fly away if it would. ’Cause he thinks somehow it would find the way home if it wants to.
“He fed it well, and cared for it, and never thought about its being unhappy in a cage until he had to go to the hospital, and be shut in, and couldn’t go home South, perhaps, any more. Then I guess he knew how his Mocker might feel, too. I think Gray Lady will keep him, even though it says on the Bird Law posters that you mustn’t keep a wild bird dead or alive or have its nest or eggs. Because if Sheriff Blake arrested her, he knows old Ned and Gray Lady could explain it all so’s she wouldn’t be fined.”
“What is it that Gray Lady can explain so that she need not be fined?” said a voice from the store-room on the other side of the entry way, and “sheself” walked in; “sheself” being Matilda’s name for her mistress when she wished to use a term that she considered more dignified than the homely one of “Missy.”
Then Tommy repeated his explanation, while Matilda stood looking at the Mockingbird and muttering to herself of the many happenings of her slave days, happy as well as sad, that the sight of him recalled.
“Of course I will keep the Mockingbird until spring,” said Gray Lady, “and then I will hang the cage in the porch, open the door, but still keep it well supplied with food, so that he may come and go, and if his heart leads him back towards his southern birthplace, be sure that he will join the flock of some of his northern kindred and in their company reach home.”
“Do we have any kind of Mockingbird up here?” asked Tommy, his eyes opening in wonder.
“Not real brothers of the Mockingbird, though he has half a dozen in the southwestern part of the country, but two first cousins, and half a dozen second cousins. Let us take the Mocker up to the playroom and hang his cage in the warm window by the chimney, where the sun will shine on him whenever the clouds let it peep through. Then I will tell you all who his cousins are, and about three other American birds that for many years were caught and kept prisoners in cages and sold out of their native land.”
The children were all gathered upstairs by the time Gray Lady arrived, followed by Tommy, carrying the cage.
“I had a Robin in a cage, once, and a Catbird, and grandma and Aunt Mary always have Canaries. Why is it against the law to keep wild birds in cages? That Mockingbird doesn’t seem to mind it a bit; now that he’s smoothed down his feathers, and has begun to eat, he acts real happy,” said Eliza Clausen, after they had looked at the newcomer and heard the story of his being sent to Gray Lady.
“There are two reasons why wild birds should never be kept in cages except for really scientific study, or to help them when they are exposed to cold, or are ill and maimed in some way. The first reason is that when Nature placed birds in certain localities provided with the best sorts of beaks, feet, etc., to make them able to earn their living, it was done because there was work there for them to do that they could perform better than anything else. They were a part of the Great Plan for preventing insect life (which also has its uses) from increasing too much and doing damage. This is the practical way of considering birds for what the Wise Men call their ‘economic value.’ These birds may be able to hold their own against the birds of prey, that in the beginning were doubtless made to keep the smaller birds from becoming too numerous and upsetting the balance of the Plan, but when man came in, and not only destroyed them for some fancied damage to his crops, but took the young from the nest, or trapped the old birds, and sold them into captivity where they could no longer follow the creative law, to ‘increase and multiply,’ the danger became grave.
“The second reason, however, is one that our own kind hearts can understand the best, and that is the misery of the bird born wild when he feels himself a captive. If he outlives the first misery, and seems to become resigned, he may become content in a way, but he can never forget the liberty he has lost, nor can we, in any way, make up to him, by mere food and creature-comforts, the ecstasy of the wild life. The very fact that the healthful joy of flight and choice in mating is denied him is enough.
“I did not realize this when I was a girl, and I also kept cage birds like every one else; it was not because I was cruel, simply that I had never thought of the matter any more than my friends, until one day, being ill and shut in my room, like poor old Ned in the hospital, I watched the fluttering of a Painted Bunting or Nonpareil that my father had bought me.
“This bird is one of the southern Sparrows, in size no larger than a Chippy. Its plumage is tropical in its beauty, deep blue head and neck, red underparts, glistening green back, green-and-red wings, with a reddish tail; in short, a glittering opal copied in feathers. Its cage was roomy, and it had the best of food, and fresh water for bathing and drinking, while the shelf in the window, on which it stood, was filled with flowering plants, up through the branches of which it could look. But, oh, the expression of that bird’s body! I watched its every motion; the head thrown backward, searching in vain for a loophole of escape between the bars, the quivering of its wings as the impulse for freedom, and the company of its kind, swept over it! Sometimes, late in the night, when I awoke and looked toward it, I could see that it was awake and its wings trembling with the thought of dawn that it could not fly to meet. Then I knew, even if it became cowed, and forgot its natural instincts so far as to be dumbly content as a prisoner, that the real life of the bird would be as dead as if a bullet had ended it, and though it was late winter, February, I felt that I must give it liberty.
“I told my father, and he sympathized with me as usual, listened to my story, and then, packing the cage safely, had it sent by special express to a family friend, who was wintering in Florida, with the request that she liberate the prisoner. For, as we could not get it to its winter haunt in the tropics, this seemed next best, and it would soon meet the flocks of its kin on the return trip.
“So the bird was freed, and once more felt the joy of being lifted on his wings whither he would go, and whatever loneliness he may have suffered after that, he had gained liberty, which is the right of the least of God’s creatures.
“Of the four American birds that were most commonly caged, the Mockingbird and Cardinal have always been the most popular, and this is what some of the writers have said about taking them into captivity.
The Mockingbird
“The Mockingbird ranges from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from middle Illinois, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, southward to the Gulf of Mexico. Usually the bird-hunters take the young from the nest as soon as they open their beaks for food. These are sold in Southern cities by negro boys for from fifteen to twenty-five cents apiece.... Thousands of Mockingbirds find their way across the Atlantic.”
—Henry Nehrling.
“This is one of our most common cage-birds and is very generally known, not only in North America, but even in Europe, numbers of them having been carried over both to France and England, in which last country they are called ‘Virginia Nightingales.’”
—Alexander Wilson.
The Indigo-bird
“The combination of musical ability, lovely plumage, and its seed-eating qualities long since has made the Indigo Bunting in danger of extermination, through the fact of its being universally captured throughout the South and sold as a cage-bird, both for home use and for export.”
“This splendid, gay, and docile bird, known to Americans as the Nonpareil (the unequalled), and to the French Louisianans as le pape, inhabits the woods of the low countries of the Southern states.
“For the sake of their song as well as beauty of plumage they are commonly domesticated in the houses of the French inhabitants of New Orleans and its vicinity....
“They are commonly caught in trap-cages, to which they are sometimes allured by a stuffed bird, which they descend to attack; and they have been known to live in captivity for upwards of ten years.”
—Thomas Nuttall.
“The Mockingbird, as you see, has sombre gray plumage like his cousin, the Catbird, that we all know so well that I think he should drop a name that belies his wonderful musical ability, and be called the ‘Northern Mockingbird.’ Even though the Mocker is caged, you can see the resemblance, in the way in which he twitches his tail, and first throws back his beak and then looks sideways, to our merry singer of the garden who often makes us think that half a dozen birds are perching in the drying-yard when he sits upon the top of a clothes-pole and lets his imagination float away with his voice.
“The Brown Thrasher, too, with the long, curved beak, brown back, and speckled breast, is also a first cousin and has the Mockingbird habit of mounting high up when he sings and looking straight up at the sky; while the Wrens, one and all, belong to this famous family group and come in, we may say, as second cousins, and like the Mockingbird, aside from the beauty of song, are very valuable insect eaters. The other three birds have the conical beak that stamps them as members of the family of Finches and Sparrows.
“Rich colour is the chief attribute that sets the Indigo Bunting apart from its kin of the tribe of Sparrows and Finches.
“Blue that is decided in tone, and not a bluish gray, is one of the rarest hues among the birds of temperate zones; for one may count the really blue birds of the eastern United States upon the fingers of one hand.
“This Bunting belongs to the tree-loving and tree-nesting part of his tribe, in company with the Grosbeaks, and the brilliant yellow American Goldfinch, whose black cap, wings, and tail-feathers only enhance his beauty. The Sparrows, of sober stripes, nest on or near the ground, and their plumage blends with brown grass, twigs, and the general earth-colouring, illustrating very directly the theory of colour protection, while the birds of brilliant plumage invariably keep more closely to the trees.
“In size the Indigo Bunting ranks with the small Sparrows, coming in grade between the Field- and the Song Sparrows, and being only slightly larger than the Chippy. The female wears a modification of the Sparrow garb, the upper parts being ashy brown without stripes, the underparts grayish white, washed and very faintly streaked with dull brown, the wings and tail-feathers having some darker edges and markings.
“When it comes to painting the plumage of the male in words, the task becomes difficult; for to use simply the term indigo-blue is as inadequate as to say that a bit of water that looks blue while in shadow, is of the same colour when it ripples out into full sunlight and catches a dozen reflections from foliage and sky. A merely technical description would read: Front of head and chin rich indigo-blue, growing lighter and greener on back and underparts; wings dusky brown, with blue edges to coverts; tail-feathers also blue edged; bill and feet dark; general shape rounded and canary-like, resembling the Goldfinch.
“The last of May one of these Buntings came to a low bush, outside my window, and, after resting awhile, for the night before had been stormy, dropped to the closely cut turf to feed upon the crumbs left where the hounds had been munching their biscuits. I have never seen a more beautiful specimen, and the contrast with the vivid grass seemed to develop the colour of malachite that ran along one edge of the feathers, shifting as the bird moved like the sheen of changeable silk.
“The nest, in no wise typical, is a loose and rather careless structure of grass, twigs, horsehairs, roots, or bits of bark placed in a low, scrubby tree or bush at no great distance from the ground, and the eggs are a very pale blue or bluish white, and only three or four in number.
Order—Passeres Family—Fringillidæ
Genus—Passerina Species—Cyanea
“Being a seed-eater, it is undoubtedly this Bunting’s love of warmth that gives him so short a season with us: for he does not come to the New England states until the first week in May, and, after the August moult, when he dons the sober clothing of his mate, he begins to work southward by the middle of September,—those from the most northerly portions of the breeding range, which extends northward to Minnesota and Nova Scotia, having passed by the tenth of October. He winters in Central America and southward.
“Although of the insect-eating fraternity of the conical beak, the Indigo Bunting consumes many noxious insects in the nesting season, when the rapid growth of the young demands animal food, no matter to what race they belong. Being an inhabitant of the overgrown edges of old pastures, or the brushy fences of clearings and pent roads, he is in a position where he can do a great deal of good. Mr. Forbush, in his valuable book on Useful Birds and Their Protection, credits the Indigo Bunting with being a consumer of the larvæ of the mischievous brown-tail moth; but whatever service it may do as an insect destroyer, its service the year through as a consumer of weed seeds, in common with the rest of its tribe, is beyond dispute.
“The voice of the Indigo Bunting is pretty rather than impressive, and varies much in individuals. It consists of a series of hurried, canary-like notes repeated constantly and rising in key, but, to my mind, never reaching the dignity of being called impressive song.
“Nuttall, one of the early American Wise Men, writes that, though usually shy, the Indigo-bird, during the season, is more frequently seen near habitations than in remote thickets: ‘Their favourite resort is the garden, where, from the topmost branch of some tall tree that commands the whole wide landscape, the male regularly pours out his lively chant and continues it for a considerable length of time. Nor is this song confined to the cool and animating dawn of morning, but it is renewed, and still more vigorous, during the noonday heat of summer. This lively strain is composed of a repetition of short notes, which, commencing loud and rapid, and then slowly falling, descend almost to a whisper, succeeded by a silence of almost half a minute, when the song is again continued as before.
“‘In the village of Cambridge (Massachusetts), I have seen one of these azure, almost celestial musicians, regularly chant to the inmates of a tall dwelling-house from the summit of the chimney or the tall fork of the lightning-rod. I have also heard a Canary repeat and imitate the low lisping trill of the Indigo-bird, whose warble, indeed, often resembles that of this species.’
“This combination of musical ability, lovely plumage, and its seed-eating qualities long since has made the Indigo Bunting in danger of extermination, through the fact of its being universally, throughout the South, captured and sold as a cage-bird, both for home use and for export. In that section the bird is called the ‘blue pop,’ a corruption of ‘bleu pape,’ or ‘pope,’ of the French.
“The Cardinal, called ‘Grosbeak’ from the thickness and size of its bill, is of course a very conspicuous bird wherever seen, and therefore has always been a mark for the ‘arrow of death,’ as Mr. Allen, who knows this bird in its native haunts, and its every mood, puts it. Some day when you are older you will read his story of it as it lives in the deep recesses of the evergreen woods, called The Kentucky Cardinal. For though this bird is found nesting as far north as Central Park, New York, and it has once or twice come to my garden here, and gone into Massachusetts even, in the fall roving-time, we must always associate him with a long outdoor season and sunny skies, as we do the Mockingbird.
“If the Mocker suffered for his voice, the Cardinal was made a prisoner for his song and gorgeous colour combined, and though, as is bird law in such cases, the female is dull in colour, she has a very attractive song also, even in confinement. But I hope that these prison days are over. Whoever now confines the Cardinal is a law-breaker as well as a heart-breaker, and yet, but ten years ago, every bird-store window was aglow with the colour of the Cardinal’s mantle. I have here in the scrap-book a charming story that you will like to hear, of a Cardinal in Boston, made a temporary captive for its own preservation, and of its release when the right time came.”