Bird Lover

I

MY father was always getting something new to be interested in. He would do one thing awhile, then he would change and do something different. Once he bought some books through the mail that showed you how to draw. They had pictures of naked people in them, so my mother would not let us look at them, but when my father came home from the store where he worked he would draw feet and arms and legs like the ones in the book, and my brother Joe and I could watch him if we did not cough or breathe down his neck. But after a while lie stopped drawing and got interested in taking pictures. Then when cold weather came he started making things in the basement out of wood. Once it was a whatnot, and once it was a vegetable bin, and once it was a thing to hang hats on. But after a while spring came, and my father did not have anything to be interested in.

One afternoon he had come home from work, and he was in the back yard walking around. Joe and I were out there playing, and all of a sudden my father stopped walking and began staring up into the apple tree over our heads.

I looked up too, but I didn’t see anything. ‘What are you looking at, Papa?’ I asked him.

‘Shh,’ my father said, frowming. He tiptoed toward the tree and stood under it, stretching his neck and looking. I opened my mouth to ask him again, but he shook his head and pointed up at a limb. A bird was sitting on it. It was a brown bird with a thing growing on its head, and a long piece of straw in its mouth.

‘Look, Joey,’ I told my little brother. I whispered it, but the bird must have heard me, because it looked down at us, and dropped the straw and flew away. My father was mad at me and said: ‘There, you see what you did. You scared it away. Can’t you be quiet for even one minute?’

‘I didn’t mean to,’ I said. He looked up in the tree for a while longer, then he stopped being mad.

‘I guess it will come back,’ he said. ‘If you and Joe will be quiet and not scare it, it might come back and build a nest and lay some eggs in it.’ He started talking to himself a little, and walking around looking at the tree.

‘What kind of a bird was it, Papa?’ I asked him after a while.

‘What?’ my father said, sort of disgusted. ‘You mean to say that you don’t know a cedar waxwing when you see one at your age? Why, when I was four years old I knew that much. By the time I was as old as Joe I knew all the common birds and their songs and their habits. It’s just like I always said, the city is no place to raise a child. If I had my way every child would be brought up on a farm close to nature.’

He walked around a little more, muttering to himself. Then he said, ‘If we had a birdbath and a feeding station out here I wouldn’t be surprised if we could have a whole back yard full of birds by the middle of the summer. And you and Joe could watch them hatch. It would be an interesting hobby for you and you could learn about nature.’

Joey was not listening.

‘Are you going to be interested in birds next, Papa?’ I said.

‘Besides, it would give you something to be responsible for,’ my father said. He got out a piece of paper and started writing on it. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll start on it tomorrow. We’ll make the birdbath tomorrow afternoon. You can help me.’

‘That will be fun, won’t it, Joey?’ I said.

But Joe kept on shoveling dirt and didn’t say anything. ‘I think it will be fun,’ I said.

The next morning some men came in a truck with four bags of cement and a lot of rocks. ‘What in the world . . .’ my mother said, when she had looked at the slip of paper they gave her and saw that it was really for us.

‘I know what it is,’ I told her. ‘Don’t you remember? It’s for Papa’s birdbath that we’re going to make.’

‘Yes, but for heaven’s sake!’ my mother said. ‘He’s got enough stuff here to build a swimming pool. What kind of birds is he making it for — eagles?’ But she told the men to put it in the back yard under the tree. That night when my father came home he put on his overalls and we began to make the birdbath.

He mixed the cement in a dishpan with a lot of water, and he told Joey and me to stick the rocks on when he told us to. After we had worked a few minutes Joey stopped. ‘I don’t want to do this any more,’ he said.

‘I do,’ I said.

‘All right, then,’ my father told Joey. ‘Helen will. And if you’re going to be so all-fired lazy you can go off somewhere else. You’re not going to stand here and watch us work.’

Joey went in the house and I put the rocks down while my father spread the cement on. It got higher and higher, and pretty soon it began to look like kind of a monument. When it got dark we stopped working. ‘The next thing is to find something to put on top to hold the water,’ my father said. ‘We’ll get a pan and cover it with rocks and cement, and the next thing you know we’ll have as artistic a little birdbath as you’d find anywhere. If you bought it, it would cost ten or twelve dollars.’

The next morning we finished the birdbath before my father went to work. It looked sort of funny. My father called my mother out to look at it.

‘It adds something to the back yard,’ he told her. ‘There’s a lot of cement left; maybe I’ll make a sundial later on.’

Joey started feeling of the cement to see if it was wet.

‘Look out, Joe,’ my mother told him. ‘It looks awfully shaky. It might fall over on your feet.’

‘It’s as firm as a rock,’ my father said. He shook it to show how strong it was. A few pieces fell out. ‘ But it’s not quite dry yet,’ he said.

‘Keep away from it, Joe,’ my mother told him.

All afternoon I stayed in the back yard and waited for the birds to come. A few flew around the branches of the apple tree and sat on them, but they did not pay any attention to the birdbath. By night I was tired of waiting.

‘No birds came,’ I told my father.

‘We’ll build a feeding station in the fence corner,’ he said, ‘That will bring them. Every day you must put crumbs on it for them to eat and a piece of apple and things like that. I’ll go call up the place and order some lumber. Then you’ll see!’

II

The next day a truckload of boards came and my mother said some things under her breath, and she told the men to put them in the back yard where the rest of the sacks of cement still were. When my father came home I was playing marbles with Joe, but he told me to come and hold the boards while he sawed them.

' Joe, you go on in the house,’ I told my little brother. ‘You can’t stand there and watch us if you’re not going to work.’

‘I don’t want to watch you,’ Joe said. He went around in front to play. ‘Never mind,’I said; ‘you’ll be sorry.’

I got tired of holding the boards. I thought: I wish I was bad like Joe, then I wouldn’t have to work. ‘No birds have come yet.,’ I told my father.

' Wait till we get the feeding station finished,’ he said. ‘Plenty will come then.'

When the feeding station was finished it was like a shelf on some stilts. We put some crumbs and a carrot on it, and then my father said we would sit on the other side of the yard behind the bushes and watch to see what would happen. Por a long time nothing did, then after a while two sparrows flew down and started pecking at the crumbs. Then they flew away again.

‘There!’ my father said.

‘Now they’ve started,’I told him. ’I bet Joe wishes he had helped. Don’t he? ‘

‘Yes,’ my father said. ‘But, this is nothing compared to what it will be later on. You must get yourself a little notebook and write down all the birds that come to the feeding station. It will be interesting for you to read when you get older. I did that one summer when I was a boy.'

‘Where is the book you wrote now?’ I asked him.

‘It got lost,’ he said. ‘And you can look up the ones you don’t know. By the time summer is over you ought to be able to name any common bird of the southeastern states.’

That’s too much like school, I thought.

I could see Joey around in the sand pile making a house out of some of the rocks that were left over.

‘I guess I better go play with Joey now,’ I said.

‘Shh,’ my father whispered, pointing. ‘Look.’ The two sparrows had come back and had begun to eat on the carrot. And just then a pigeon flew down from the top of the house and sat in the birdbath and began to splash the water.

‘See!’ my father said. ‘That makes three already. Now let’s keep real quiet and see what comes next.’

But no more came.

‘Well, you’ve got to give them time,’my father said when we went in to supper.

‘Yes,’ I said, but my legs were stiff, and so was my back from sitting still so long. I was thinking to myself maybe it would be better if I was lazy, like Joe. But anyway, I would know all about nature, and Joe wouldn’t.

The next day my father gave me a dime to get a notebook with and he showed me how to fix the pages in it as he did when he was a boy. And he told me to watch the feeding station and the birdbath all day and make a record of any birds that came. So all day long while my father was at work I stayed behind the bushes and watched. When my mother told me to come in and practise my music lesson I told her I couldn’t because of what I was doing.

‘You get yourself in here, young lady,’she said. ‘Birds or no birds, you are going to practise your music lesson. They can wait till you get through.’

But as soon as the half hour was up I hurried back out to the bushes. That night when my father came home he looked at what I had written. Five sparrows had come and I had written them all down. My father looked sort of disappointed. ‘Well,’he said.

I felt sorry for him. ‘A robin started to light., but it flew the other way. I guess it changed its mind,’ I told him.

His face brightened up. ‘Bring your book and we’ll watch to see what comes now. This is the best time of day to watch birds.’

I thought to myself, I am getting sort of tired of watching them, but I didn’t say that, because it might hurt my father’s feelings. We waited a long time behind the bush, and nothing came again but one pigeon. And I could see my little brother Joe in the kitchen waiting to get the cake pan to scrape.

‘Write down the pigeon,’ my father said. ‘It’s not really a wild bird, but write it down anyway.’

Joe was looking out the kitchen door, licking the icing spoon.

I wrote down the pigeon, but I was thinking: I wish I wasn’t so good; I wish I was bad like Joe; he has more fun than I do.

III

For a few weeks after that it was nothing but sparrows. School was out, and I stayed behind the bushes all day long except when I had to practise or set the table. But every night when my father came home and looked at the notebook it was the same. It seemed to make him feel very bad. ‘I can’t understand it,’ he said.

Then all of a sudden one morning a different bird came to the feeding board. It was a little yellow one that I forget the name of now. That night when my father read it in the notebook he got very excited. ‘You see!’ he said, ‘You have to be patient where nature is concerned. It can’t be rushed.’ He showed the name to my mother. ‘You see what happens if you only wait,’ he told her. ‘This is good training for Helen; it is teaching her not to give up hope,’

‘Yes,’ my mother said. She was busy fixing over a dress or something.

My father went out and watched a long time for the yellow bird to come back, but he did not get discouraged when it didn’t. He told me to watch closer than ever during the day, and to be sure to keep the birdbath full and enough crumbs on the feeding board. ‘It came once, and it will come again,’ he said. ‘And it will bring others with it. When they get a little more used to us and know they’re safe we won’t be able to drive them away.’

And it turned out that he was right. The next day there were two robins and a wren and the yellow one again. And the day after that there were more different kinds, and pretty soon they came thick and fast in big flocks and covered the feeding board and fought over the crumbs. The birdbath would have as many as five birds in it at one time, splashing out the water, and I would have to fill it up three or four times during the morning. My father got awfully excited. ‘You mustn’t let it stay empty for even a few minutes,’ he said. And he told me to scatter crumbs all around on the ground too, so there would be enough for them all. I had to hang a bottle of syrup on a bush for the hummingbirds because they didn’t like crumbs. ‘They must always find plenty of everything here, or they’ll go somewhere else to get their food,’ my father said.

So I spent nearly all my time tending to the birds, and the more I tended to them, the more they came until in a few weeks the back yard was full from morning till night.

They sat on the fence and in the trees, and they hopped all over the ground. All the time they were singing and squawking, until my mother said it made her head ache. ‘You can’t even walk without stepping on a bird,’ my mother said. ‘And it’s not safe to sit under a tree any more for them. Nasty little things! ‘ She was taking in some clothes that had been hanging on the line, and the birds had ruined them and they had to be washed over.

‘Disgusting little things,’ my mother said. ‘I will certainly be glad when your father gets birds out of his system.’

But my father only got more interested in them instead of being tired of them. We did not have to hide behind the bushes any more to watch them. They had got so tame that they would not fly away even if you got up close. They would sit on my father’s deck chair and hop around his feet. They would fly so low over his head that they would almost touch it. This got him very excited. ‘I believe I could tame them so they would sit on my shoulders and eat out of my hand,’ he said. ‘There’s no limit to what patience will do with birds.’

‘You would look a perfect fool with birds sitting all over you,’ my mother said.

‘Never mind,’ my father told her. ‘You always discourage me in my hobbies, but it’s things like that that keep a man young. And look what this summer has done for Helen. She has been out in the open air all day, and that has been good for her health, and besides she can name any bird on sight. I suppose you’ll admit that’s a useful accomplishment for anybody.’

‘I don’t see why,’ my mother said. ‘The child’s a nervous wreck. She’s associated with birds too much. It’s not natural.’

My father didn’t like to argue, so he wouldn’t say any more. He went outside and started practising holding a piece of bread in his hand, and at first the birds would only snatch it in their bills and fly away, but in a few days the robins would sit on his arm for just a minute at a time, long enough to get the bread, and finally they got so tame that two or three would sit on his shoulders and even his head. Sometimes he would have as many as ten birds sitting all over him even if he didn’t have any bread for them.

He got out the camera that he had had when he was interested in taking pictures, and he told me to take his picture.

’I want it to show the men at the store,’ he said. ‘When I tell them about it they don’t believe me. Besides, it would be a very novel thing to put on our Christmas cards this year.’

The pictures turned out to have a white streak across them, but they were pretty good. My father sent one to a magazine called Nature, but they didn’t put it in.

IV

So the summer went on by and it was late in August and it was almost time for school to start. I could hardly believe it, the time seemed so short. It didn’t seem as if I had had any vacation, with tending to the birds. It seemed as if I had done nothing but work.

‘It’s about time for your father to start something new,’ my mother said. ‘And I hope to goodness it will be pretty soon now. Every time I look out the window and see him out there like that it makes my flesh creep.’

One afternoon my father came home from work and he had a little package in his hand. ‘I was going through the ten-cent store,’ he said. ‘They had a lot of seeds thrown out on a table for only five cents a package. So I thought I would plant a little patch of mustard greens in the back yard. There’s all that ground going to waste, and besides if we grow our own mustard greens it will save on the grocery bill.’

‘It certainly will,’ my mother said. ‘I think that’s a good idea.’

My father looked surprised and pleased too. ‘Do you?’ he said. ‘I’ll go out and dig up the ground before it gets dark and sow the seeds tomorrow. Helen can help me.’

‘I guess I better practise my music lesson now,’ I said.

When I got through practising my father was still digging and I watched him from the window because if I went out there he might let me help him.

He could hardly dig because the birds kept flying around and sitting all over him. ‘Get away now,’ he would tell them, but they didn’t seem to understand him. They were flying around his head and singing and squawking, and even when he raised the hoe to dig they would just go off a little piece to keep from being hit, and then come right back again.

I saw my father look around to see if anyone was watching, and then he pushed the birds away with his hand. ‘Shoo,’ he said. But they came right back and settled down on the dirt. So he went on trying to dig, but it was no use. After a while he threw the hoe down and came on in the house. He sat down in the living room and seemed to be thinking. Finally he said, ‘Helen, it’s about time for the birds to go south anyway, so you don’t need to put so many crumbs out for them after this. They can find their own food for a while now.’

‘Ha, ha,’ my mother said under her breath.

So the next day I didn’t put any crumbs out and I didn’t fill the birdbath, but the birds came anyway, and sat on the grass and in the trees, and all over the ground my father had dug, and pulled worms out of it. And when my father came home they all flew to him singing and squawking and perched all over him again, and every time he tried to dig they got in front of him and started looking for worms until he couldn’t do anything for them.

‘I could throw some rocks at them,’ Joe told my father.

My father looked at Joe a minute. Then he said in a loud voice, ‘Of course not. Don’t you ever let me catch you throwing rocks at harmless birds. That’s about as cruel and inhuman a thing as you could possibly do. I don’t ever want to hear tell of a boy of mine doing a thing like that. Shoo,’ he said to the birds.

My mother was on the back porch getting something out of the refrigerator. ‘Ha, ha,’ she said, this time out loud.

But finally by dark he got the ground dug up and the seeds planted. ‘Now in a week or two we will see some little green leaves peeping above the ground,’ he told Joe and me, ‘and pretty soon they will be ready to eat. A dish of mustard greens, and vinegar — that’s a dish fit for a king. That’s what I was raised on when I was a boy. I wish I had thought of it earlier, and we could have some tomatoes and things.’

I did as my father said, and did not feed the birds any more, but they kept on coming, and they hopped on the garden and pecked in it. ‘Look, Joe, they’re eating up the seeds,’ I said. ‘We ought to do something to stop them.’

‘I could set a trap for them,’ he told me, but I knew my father wouldn’t like that, so I said we’d better leave them alone.

Every night my father would come home and water the garden with the hose, and once he squirted a little water at the birds, but they seemed to think it was a shower bath and they sat down in the puddles and squawked and fluttered their wings.

‘Get away from there!’ my father told them; then he said something under his breath that I couldn’t hear.

But they kept on splashing and paying no attention.

So two or three weeks went by, and the garden didn’t come up; then it was time for school to start.

And every day my father would look more disgusted when he came in from the garden, and finally he stopped digging, and he stopped looking to see if the plants were coming up. He tore down the feeding station to use for kindling, and the bird bath fell down by itself, and my father would hardly go into the back yard at all any more.

He bought himself a lot of wires and things and started to build a radio broadcasting station in the basement.

1 took the bird notebook to school once to show Miss Adkins when we were having nature study and she said, ‘That is very nice, but we are going to work on a unit on Fall Flowers now.’

And my father finished the radio station by Christmas and tried every night to get Panama, but all he could get was a college boy in Maryville named John Slitz.

‘It would be cheaper and quicker to call him on the telephone,’ my mother said when we were listening to him talking. ‘It’s only twelve miles away.’