Tales of the birds

Slipping warily out of his tree he flew slowly homewards, and before he reached the rookery had made up his mind as to what should be done. He mentioned to a few old friends, the ancient dignitaries of the settlement, that he wished to consult them at once on an important matter; and a meeting was accordingly held on a tree hard by. An aged and highly respected bird, with two white feathers in his wing, was voted into the chair, who, taking his perch on a prominent bough, requested Gaffer to open his mind.

“My friends,” said Gaffer, turning his one eye with an evil look round and round upon the assembly, “you will perhaps remember that last spring I was asked advice about a certain egg, and that my advice was not taken. I will ask you whether that egg has been a credit to our rookery?”

A chorus of cawing encouraged him to proceed.

“I will not allude,” said he, “to painful circumstances connected with that egg, and to personal insults which I suffered on account of that egg. I may feel that I hardly received at that time the support which I might have looked for from the older and wiser among us. But let bygones be bygones. I have to tell you that the bird which was the ill-omened result of that egg is about to bring home a wife who is not one of our community. (Great disturbance, lasting several minutes.) I have watched, and I have seen the guilty pair but an hour since, and we may expect them at any moment. This is painful news to have to tell you, but I must sacrifice my own feelings. I wish to know what line of action you would propose that we should take?”

Almost before he had finished speaking, such a hubbub of indignation arose, that the president had the utmost difficulty in restoring order.

“Friends,” said he at length, “let us take a flight to calm our spirits after the terrible news which has been sprung upon us; then we will deliberate on the case.”

Agreed. They all sailed about above the tree for a few minutes, and then descended again, cawing so loud that a passing wayfarer looked up at the tree in astonishment. The president then called on the oldest rook in company to give his opinion.

“Kill her,” he said; “it’s the shortest way and the least trouble. As for him, he’ll soon get over it.”

This proposal was received with a round of cawing, in which Gaffer did not join. When it came to an end the President asked whether any one else had a plan to propose. A worthy old rook flapped her wings and said,

“I object to killing. It excites the young birds. When they have done it once they want to do it again. We might be breaking up the very foundations of society by encouraging this kind of punishment. Let them build in a tree by themselves. Live and let live, I say.”

This plan found a few supporters, but more assailants: Gaffer prudently held his tongue. Every one began to give his own opinion, and the two opposing parties got so angry that the president felt obliged to order another flight. When they returned, Gaffer spoke as follows: —

“I hope my worthy friends who have made their proposals, will not take it amiss if I state my opinion that they are both open to serious objection. If we kill this upstart’s bride, surely we shall be leaving the real criminal unpunished. (Loud caws of approval.) If on the other hand we let them build in a tree by themselves, they will bring up their young, and instead of having two rebellious birds to deal with, we shall have a whole family to keep aloof from. I ask you, is it likely, is it possible, that we should be able to keep our young birds from associating with them? Now what I propose is this: let them come and try to build in our trees, as I know they will; let us tell our younger birds, who will be very glad of the job, to take away every stick they bring, and worry them till they are sick of it. If they get a few bruises, or a broken leg or wing, so much the better; if they give up the attempt, and go elsewhere, we shall have got rid of bad rubbish (applause), and they won’t get on better anywhere else, depend upon it. If any rook here thinks that I have a personal grudge against this young Jetsom, I trust that the moderation of this proposal will undeceive him. I request the President to put my motion to the vote without delay.” (Much cawing.)

The President did as he was desired; and the motion was carried by a large majority. Each old bird was then directed to tell his younger friends that they might freely take any nesting materials collected by Jetsom and his spouse; and the meeting broke up.

The victim of these hard-minded old birds brought his wife home that night, and they roosted in one of the trees without being molested or even noticed. Next morning early they set about choosing a place for a nest, and while they were looking about, Gaffer sent a polite message, by a lively young bird, that an excellent position was vacant in his tree. The wily old gentleman wished to witness the success of his plot, without taking part in the proceedings himself. Jetsom began to think he was getting into Gaffer’s good books again, and gladly accepted the offer. “That old fellow,” he said to his wife, “is a great authority here, and if we can enlist him in the great cause, it will be the best thing that could happen to us. Now, my dear, we will begin our labours cheerfully.”

All that day they went backwards and forwards bringing sticks to lay the foundation of the nest; and Gaffer sat on a high bough and looked down on them benignly with his one eye. He even condescended once or twice to give them a little advice as to how the sticks should be placed. In the evening they went off to rest, bathe, and enjoy a little conversation about the happy future of the race of rooks; and a happier or more loving pair of birds were not to be found in all that large rookery. How their hearts sank within them on their return when they found that every stick they had laid had been taken away!

Gaffer was still sitting there, looking very wise: and Jetsom asked him who had done them this bad turn, and why.

“My dear young friend,” said Gaffer, with an ill-concealed leer, “these are little troubles that we have all had to go through. It’s only fun, you may be sure. Some of those idle young birds have been amusing themselves at your expense. Don’t be disheartened: begin again.”

“Thank you, you dear, kind old bird,” said Jetsom’s wife. “How good of you to take such an interest in us. May I have a little talk with you some day about the problems of life?”

Gaffer was overpoweringly polite. “My dear,” he said, “you do me great honour. I shall be delighted to discuss them with you. But perhaps you will solve them for yourselves.” And he seemed to leer at her with his vacant eye, while he winked the other at a friend in a tree hard by.

The work began again next day; the same thing happened again, and again Gaffer encouraged them to persevere. Next day Jetsom stayed on guard, while his wife collected sticks. Seeing this, Gaffer took himself off, and only returned to find, to his extreme delight, his victim in a very ruffled state, the other rooks in possession of all his sticks, and his wife in very low spirits. She appealed to him to protect them.

“My dear,” said Gaffer, “this is one of the problems of life. You are now beginning to face the facts of the world. Go on, persevere, and sooner or later you will solve the problems.”

The luckless pair took his advice once more, and day after day went on collecting their sticks, only to find them stolen directly their backs were turned. If one remained on guard, battles ensued; and Gaffer could hardly repress his delight when he saw Jetsom’s feathers begin to fall off in these fights. Several times he had to retire by himself to a distant tree, to enjoy his revenge in solitude.

At last the younger birds began to get tired of this game, and having finished their own nests, were no longer in want of the sticks that Jetsom collected. Gaffer began to get sulky and anxious. He sat on his bough and saw the nest beginning to rise at last: something must be done at once. He waited till both birds were away together; then down he went on the nest and began to pull it all to pieces. But it was a long job for one bill, and before he had done, back came the owners. Gaffer was surprised, and was quite unable to persuade them that he was only helping to arrange the sticks; it was all too plain. Jetsom fell into a fury that frightened his poor wife out of her wits, and before Gaffer could stammer out something about “the problems of life,” he was attacked, pecked, driven from one tree to another, worried, pushed, flapped at, till his one eye closed for ever, and he fell to the ground lifeless. But the problems of life had been too much for Jetsom. He felt a moment of glorious triumph as his enemy fell, and was just returning to his wife and nest with pride and honour, with heart swelling with joy and hope: when his senses gave way, his bill opened, his eyes grew dim, and in the moment of victory he expired, falling to the ground by the side of his conquered foe. He had solved his problem.

Half an hour later a gentleman walking down the road, stopped to watch a strange assembly of rooks in an adjoining meadow. They were standing in a large circle, making a great noise; in the centre of the circle stood a single rook, ruffled and miserable-looking. As he watched, the noise gradually ceased, and after a moment’s silence, the whole company rose on their wings and rushed upon the victim in the middle. The noise again became deafening, and nothing could be seen but a mêlée of wings, tails, and beaks, on the spot where the solitary bird had been seen a moment before. The gentleman scrambled over the hedge, waving his stick and shouting: the rooks flew away with loud cawings. When he reached the spot, he found nothing but a mangled mass of feathers – the lifeless body of one miserable bird.

It was the body of Jetsom’s widow. She too had solved the problem of her life, and the rookery was no longer troubled with revolutionary ideas.

A QUESTION BEGINNING WITH “WHY.”

One warm summer afternoon two young men were leaning out of a window, smoking their pipes, and enjoying a lazy half-hour. The window was one of a long row in the garden-quadrangle of an old gray Oxford college; and you looked out of it on a beautiful close-shaven lawn, bordered with flower beds, and inclosed on one side by one of watery Oxford’s many streams. This lawn, in the summer, is never without its family of water-wagtails. Here there is no fear of bird-nesting boys, and comparatively little peril of cats; and the turf is mown so often and so closely, that even the youngest bird can find his food there without the least trouble. And there they were that July afternoon, sometimes running so quickly that you quite lost sight of their little black legs, then stopping suddenly and moving their tails rapidly up and down for a few moments, then pouncing upon some unlucky insect on the grass, or perhaps pursuing it in the air with a quick fluttering of wings and tails; and all the while uttering that contented little double-note of theirs, which seemed to say to the occupants of the old panelled rooms above them, “This is real happiness; we take what comes, and ask no questions; we don’t puzzle our heads over Philosophy, and Biology, and Constitutional History, and Economical Science. Why, even you wouldn’t be trying to find out a reason for everything, if you weren’t afraid the Examiners were going to ask you for it! Come down here and lie on this beautiful lawn in the shade, and forget all about the why and the wherefore. Take things as you find them; there are no Examiners about just now!”

The two young men were not thinking of the wagtails; but neither were they thinking of anything else in particular, and the invitation to go and lie on the lawn found its way somehow into their temporarily vacant minds. They put on their flannels and their boating coats and went and stretched themselves at full length under the cool shade of an acacia. There they lay quite quiet and happy, and were for some time so silent that the wagtails ventured up quite close to them without any sign of fear.

One was a poet; at least his friends thought him one, and as he himself was not quite sure that they were right, it is not impossible that he had a few poetic streaks in his nature. The other was a student of science, and spent most of his time in cutting earth-worms and frogs into beautiful little slices, and looking at them through a microscope. They had a liking for each other, because neither fully understood the other’s thoughts and ambitions; so there was plenty of room for comfortable silence, and cosy human companionship.

At last the silence was broken by the poet. He spoke as much to himself as to his friend.

“It’s very puzzling,” he said.

“Very,” said the man of science, without taking his pipe from his lips, and not in the least knowing what the other was thinking of. At this moment a young wagtail took a long run, and stopped, in all the innocent fearlessness of youth, within half-a-dozen yards of them. There was a pause again.

“I never can make out,” at last pursued the poet, “why Shakespeare wrote no more plays during the last years of his life. He wasn’t old, and he must have had plenty of time at Stratford.”

“He probably liked better to lie in his garden and think of nothing at all,” said the other. “But I don’t see why you want to find out. Much better to leave the poor man alone. – ”

“Why, what do you do all day up at the Museum?” asked the poet. “I thought you were always trying to find out something or other. I dare say you’d like to find out why that bird wags its tail,” he added, as the young wagtail made another little run forward, and stood there just in his line of vision with her tail going gently up and down.

“Why it wags its tail?” said the man of science: “you just catch it and bring it up to the Museum, and we’ll soon tell you why it wags its tail. It’s only a matter of nerves and muscles, and spinal cord you know, and all that sort of thing. The professor would soon put you up to all that. But that reminds me that I said I’d help him with some specimens this afternoon, and it’s past three o’clock.” And up he jumped, and ran off to get his hat, startling the young wagtail, which flew away to the other end of the lawn.

Little did these two lads know how much trouble and anxiety their conversation was to bring upon the inhabitants of that peaceful lawn. That young wagtail had heard what they said; for birds certainly understand what men say. Do they not carry secrets? People should be careful what they say in their hearing.

Now up to this time this young bird, like her brothers and sisters, had never given a moment’s thought to what she did, or what she looked like. Nor had she noticed what the others did, or what they looked like. She wagged her tail, but she did it without thinking of it; as for asking why she did it, that was very far from the mind of herself or any of the family. And now she suddenly became aware, not only that she did it, but that it was possible to ask why she did it.

She looked at the others: they were all doing it, every other minute or so. Then she wagged her own tail, to see what it felt like, now she knew that she did it. And now she began to feel very ill at ease.

“What can it all be for?” she said to herself. “Even that man didn’t seem to know all about it. There goes my tail again! Really, it wags almost without one’s knowing it. There can’t be any harm in it, I should think, as father and mother are doing it too. But why do we all do it? I don’t see any use in it. There it goes again, before I ever thought of holding it still. I must really go and ask mother about it.”

She flew up to her mother, who was in a very happy and contented frame of mind, having brought up her young so prosperously in the midst of plenty and comfort.

“Mother,” she said, “will you please tell me why we all wag our tails?”

The prudent mother was rather taken aback; but after taking a little run and flight, to collect her mind, she returned answer very decidedly,

“We don’t wag our tails. Who’s been putting such fancies into your head?”

“A big man on the other side of the lawn said he should like to know why we wag our tails!”

“Men are blockheads,” said the mother. “Don’t you go near them, Kelpie, on any account. They know nothing about us. I tell you we don’t wag our tails, and I won’t be contradicted. Go away, child, and look for beetles.”

Kelpie went away, but she could not throw herself into the beetle-catching with the same ardour as before. Whenever she looked up she saw some one’s tail moving, and she got more and more puzzled over it. At one moment she thought she was rid of the puzzle: “Mother says we don’t,” she reflected, “so of course, at least I suppose, it’s all my fancy;” and she began to search for food. But the next minute she felt that her own tail was going up and down, and back came all the puzzling thoughts as lively as ever again. At last she lost all confidence in her mother, and resolved to ask her father’s opinion.

“What does my little Kelpie want?” said he, as the young one came flying up.

“I want to ask a question, father. Mother says we don’t wag our tails, but a man I heard talking said we did. Which do you think is right?”

“Your mother’s sure to be right, my dear,” said he; “I never, never knew her wrong. Never,” he said with warmth, and wagging his tail to emphasize his words. “Believe all she says, and do everything she tells you.”

“But father, dear, you’re wagging your own tail now as fast as you can!” cried Kelpie.

“I do it sometimes when I am a little excited,” he said, taken by surprise. “But don’t you think any more about it, Kelpie, there’s a dear; it would vex your mother so, you know. And promise me you won’t say anything about it to your brothers and sisters. Will you promise? All sorts of dreadful things might happen, you know, if one went about asking questions like that.”

Worse and worse for poor Kelpie! Her mother had plainly told her an untruth; her father had half admitted it to be so, and had seemed quite frightened at the idea of such questions being asked. What could the mystery be? Kelpie’s little mind was all in a flutter.

She went on as usual however from day to day, and said nothing to the rest of the family about the troubles of her mind. At last however it struck her that she might question other birds, though it was clearly no good consulting her own kith and kin. A thrush who frequented the lawn, and always looked very wise, seemed likely to be a friend in need; so she took an opportunity one day, when the others were out of hearing, of asking him her question.

The thrush put his head on one side, and listened very attentively while Kelpie was speaking. “Now,” thought she, “I shall get an answer. Oh, what a relief.” She stood quite still and waited patiently.

“Ah,” said the thrush, quite suddenly, “I thought I heard it!” And he made a quick dig into the earth with his bill, and pulled out a long worm by the tail. Kelpie watched while he swallowed it, – it did not take more than a few seconds – and then said timidly, “If you please, sir, I don’t think you heard me, I – ”

The thrush again put his head on one side, stood quite still in an erect attitude, and seemed absorbed this time in Kelpie and her troubles.

“I asked you a question, sir,” said she again; “I’m very much afraid I’m troubling you, but I do so want to find out the answer.”

“I’ve found it,” said the thrush, as suddenly as before; and he darted his bill into the ground again, pulled out another worm, and this time flew away with it. Kelpie was left alone, a sadder but not a wiser bird.

She was greatly disheartened for a time. At last however she determined to try once more. An old jackdaw, with a very gray head, used to come very early of a morning on to the lawn when no one was about except a few starlings. Kelpie didn’t think the starlings looked very promising, they were so restless, and there were so many of them together. But the jackdaw, she had heard her parents say, was the wisest bird in the whole garden; so she watched her chance, and approached him one morning very modestly.

“I fear, sir,” she said, “that you will think me very bold, but I have heard of your great wisdom, and I thought you would be good enough to explain something to me.”

The jackdaw looked at her, not unkindly. “Have you asked your parents?” he said.

“Yes, sir, but they won’t explain it to me.”

The jackdaw shook his head. “Probably they couldn’t,” he replied. “Wagtails are very ignorant birds. But I’ll give you a bit of advice. If anything puzzles you, go and listen in chimneys. There are no fires there now, and you can hear what men and women say. That’s how my family has come to be so wise. But you must get into the habit of it, you know; you must spend a good deal of time there; it may be years before you get an answer to your question.”

“But perhaps you could answer my question,” said Kelpie; “because, you see, you might have heard the answer yourself in a chimney.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” said the jackdaw gravely. “But, my dear child, what would be the use of knowledge if we were always giving it away, like the lecturers we hear from these Oxford chimneys? No, no; you go and listen in chimneys (you’re black and gray, like us, and it wouldn’t spoil your feathers), and when you find out the answer to your question keep it safe and don’t part with it. That’s the way to get wise.”

The jackdaw made a grave bow, and flew up to the college tower. Kelpie flew on to the college roof, perched on a chimney, and looked down. It smelt very nasty and was quite dark; however she tried to descend a little way, but she got so frightened that she came up again directly, and gave up the attempt for good.

“I must give it up,” she thought; and with a deep sigh she joined her family at their breakfast on the lawn. She found them in a state of some excitement, for after breakfast father Wagtail was to make an important announcement.

“My dears,” he said, when they had all gathered round him, “the summer is almost over; you are all old enough to shift for yourselves, and our little party must now break up. We may very likely meet again, but your mother and I, having brought you up as well as we can, will not be responsible for you any longer. You are free to go when and where you like. Some of you may like to cross the sea, and visit foreign countries; some may prefer to take the chance of a mild winter here. Do just as you like: but we advise you all to travel more or less, and get acquainted with the world. Now good-bye, and good luck to you all.”

Kelpie was overjoyed at hearing this news. She had not been happy for a long time; now she could go out into the wide world, and try to find out the answer to the question that so weighed on her mind. She bade adieu to the rest at once, and started off by herself in high spirits. She would be very careful, she thought, as to whom she questioned, and would try and find some really friendly and open-hearted adviser.

She was so occupied with all the new and strange things she saw – the rivers, the ploughed fields, the hills and downs she passed over, and so determined not to be put upon any more by thrushes and jackdaws, that autumn had set in before she ventured to address a single bird on the subject she had at heart. But one day in September she was enjoying herself by the side of a rapid little brook which ran through pleasant meadows, when she caught sight of a very long tail going up and down, up and down. The bird it belonged to was hidden behind a stone in the stream. She watched, and saw a gray wagtail come from behind the stone, and fly with graceful curves a little further on, then she saw another bird join him, and stood in speechless admiration of these beautiful creatures, so slender, so gentle-looking, and so beautifully covered with gray above and yellow beneath. But what most fascinated her was the motion of their long tails, which were never for a moment still.

She went up and introduced herself. They received her kindly as a distant connection, and said she was welcome to the brook; and in their company she remained for the greater part of the day, before she summoned up courage to open her heart to them.

“You are very kind and good,” she said at last, “and I think you must be very clever too. Would you mind telling me, as I see you wag your own tails so constantly and so nicely, why you do it, and why all our family do it too? If you only would, I should be so happy and grateful; you can’t think how it’s been troubling me!”