Marshall Saunders - Golden Dicky, The Story of a Canary and His Friends

KNOWN the world over as the champion of the dumb animals, to which her lively imagination has given human speech, Marshall Saunders, the author of “Beautiful Joe,” a book translated into many languages, has enlarged her range of humanitarian interests to take the feathered world into her protecting care. A new story of hers, entitled “Golden Dicky, the Story of a Canary and His Friends,” presents a moving plea, not only in behalf of those prime favorites of the household, the canaries, but of other birds as well, even the too much despised sparrow coming in for anything but half-hearted defence. While one may feel that his imagination must take to itself powerful pinions to follow the story, particularly in the dialogues, yet at the same time he is made aware of how largely the practical enters into it. Miss Saunders has made a careful study of animal and bird life, and introduces into her pages much interesting information of the ways and the needs of her humble protégés, and many useful hints as to their proper care, so that the story is something more than entertaining.

While Dicky-Dick’s chronicles mainly concern the familiar feathered folk of our homes and their leafy environment, the author cannot forego an excursion into her old haunts, and in Billie Sundae, the fox-terrier, a capital new chapter is added to the literature of dog biography and autobiography. The squirrels also come in for a share of attention. Squirrie, the bad squirrel, supplies a proper villain to the cast of characters, with the sensible and good Chickari to redeem his race from opprobrium.

The children who read these delightful pages will surely form lasting friendships with Dicky-Dick, the cheery songster, and Chummy, the stout-hearted little sparrow, and all the robins and grackles and crows who with the dogs and squirrels and Nella, the monkey, make up the lively company embraced in these chronicles. In Mrs. Martin, the kind-hearted lover and protector of birds, and her gentle daughter, “Our Mary,” we have illustrated the kindly relations which should obtain between man and the beasts of the field and the fowl of the air, over which the Creator has given him the responsibility of dominion.

WHEN I look in a mirror and see my tiny, bright black eyes, it seems queer to think that once upon a time, when I was a baby bird, I was more blind than a bat.

My sense of sight was the last to wake up. I could hear, smell, taste and touch, before I could see. We were three naked little canary babies in a nest, and at intervals, we all rose up, threw back our heads, opened our beaks, and our mother Dixie daintily put the lovely egg food down our tiny throats. Oh, how good it used to taste! I never had enough, and yet I did have enough, for my mother knew how much to feed me, and when I got older, I understood that most young things would stuff themselves to death, if the old ones did not watch them.

I shall never forget the first day my eyes opened. I couldn’t see things properly for hours. There was a golden mist or cloud always before me. That was my mother’s beautiful yellow breast, for she hovered closely over us, to keep us warm. Then I was conscious of eyes, bright black ones, like my own. My mother was looking us all over affectionately, to see that we were well-fed, warm and clean, for canary housekeepers are just like human beings. Some are careful and orderly, others are careless and neglectful.

Then my father would come and stare at us. He is a handsome Norwich canary, of a deep gold color, with a beautiful crest that hangs over his eyes, and partly obscures his sight, making him look like a little terrier dog. He used to fling up this crest and look at us from under it. Then he would say, “Very fine babies, quite plump this lot,” and he would fly away for more lettuce or egg food, or crushed hemp, for we had enormous appetites, and it took a great deal of his time to help my mother keep our crops quite full and rounded out.

How we grew! Soon I was able to look in the mirror opposite our nest, and I could see the change in us from day to day. Canaries grow up very quickly, and when we were a fortnight old, we had nice feathers and were beginning to feed ourselves. There was myself, a little brother, and a sister. I had a great deal to learn in those fourteen days, which would be like two or three years in the life of a child.

My little mother Dixie used to tell us stories as she brooded over us. Some people do not know that when a mother bird hovers over her little ones, and twitters softly to them, that she is telling them tales, just as a human mother amuses her babies.

My mother told us that we ought to be very happy little birds, for we were not in a cage where canaries are usually hatched, but in a good-sized bird-room, in a comfortable nest. This nest was a small wooden box, placed on a shelf high up on the wall, and we could stand on the edge of it and look all about the room.

My mother also told us that we must love, next to our parents, the young girl who owned this bird-room and who came in many times a day to feed and water us and to see that we were all comfortable.

I shall never forget how I felt the first day I rose up in our nest, stepped to the edge of our box, and looked about the bird-room.

It seemed enormous to me. I gasped and fell back in the nest. Then I looked again, and this time the sight did not make me feel so weak, and I straightened things out.

It was, or is, for I often visit it yet, a good-sized attic room, with one big window looking east, and a door opening into a hall. Standing two and three deep all round the room were rows of fir trees, straight but not very tall, and looking like little soldiers. They were in big pots of earth, and my mother told me that every few months they were taken out and fresh ones were put in. Running between the trees and resting on their branches were long, slender poles and perches, for fir branches are not usually very good to sit on. A bird likes a spreading branch, not one that hugs the tree.

In the middle of the room was a tiny fountain, with rock work round it. Night and day it murmured its pretty little song, and the birds splashed and bathed and played games in the shallow basin under it. There were not big birds in the room, so we did not need a deep bathing pool.

Beyond the fountain were the trays of green sods and dishes of food and seeds. Oh, what good things we had to eat, for as we were not caged birds, we could have quite rich food. Then we took so much exercise flying to and fro that it sharpened our appetites. I shall never forget the good taste of the egg food that I fed myself, and the bread and milk, the bits of banana and orange, and pineapple and apples, and pears and grapes—the little saucers of corn meal and wheat and oatmeal porridge, and the nice, firm, dry seeds—rape, millet, canary, hemp and sometimes as a great treat a little poppy seed.

The floor was covered with gravel and old lime, and once a month a man came in and swept it all up and put down a fresh lot.

Near the fountain was one small wicker chair, and there Miss Martin, the lame girl who owned us all, used to sit by the hour and watch us.

As I sat, a weak young thing, on the edge of my nest, looking down into the room, it seemed to me that there were a great many birds flying about, and I should never be able to tell one from the other. However, I soon learned who they all were. First of all, there was my lovely mother Dixie, an American canary, with dainty whirls of feathers on her wings, my golden colored father Norfolk, my father’s sister Silkie, her roller canary mate Silver-Throat, who was a tiny, mottled bird, with an exquisite voice, and about twenty other canaries of different breeds, some Australian parakeets, African love-birds, nonpareils, and indigoes, and in the nest beside me my little sister Cayenna and my brother Green-Top, so called from his green crest. I am a plainhead.