Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/29

16 degree. But we were all accustomed to observe what was stirring in the natural world, and would bring in our separate anecdotes for the amusement of the social circle with as much zest as young ladies generally tell of their balls, or young gentlemen of their exploits in the cricket-field.

My first strange pet—I mean foreign to the household—was a buzzard, a large and noble bird which I used to carry about on my arm or shoulder when I was about seven years old. I called him Nestor, he looked so grave and wise; and though I loved him very much, or thought I did, and took him often into the fields to spend my time with him alone, I always regarded him with a certain kind of awe, especially when he stretched out his great brown wings, and closed them over his head, as he always did in the act of eating, holding the food in his claws, and devouring it beneath this natural veil, as if the act of eating was too sacred and important to be exposed to vulgar eyes. I do not think my venerated friend was very amiable, or cared much about the laceration of the small arm on which he was carried, and which often bore the marks of his powerful talons. Nor am I sure that I was myself quite clear of blame in exciting his savage, propensities; for I remember a terribly wounded leg of his, the consequence of my chasing an old woman in the harvest field with the great bird held out in my arms, his beak and claws very formidably presented to the old woman, who turned sharply round and struck him with her sickle, to my indignation and dismay; though feeling that I could say little in the way of complaint. Of course the wounded warrior was carefully attended to, and soon recovered from the blow.

All the while that this intimate acquaintance with the buzzard was carried on, we had large supply of household pets, consisting of cats and dogs of various kinds and characters, guinea pigs, rabbits, white mice, and birds of many descriptions, though seldom or never kept in cages, for in caged-birds we took no delight. I must honestly confess to the clipping of a wing now and then; but in almost every case the wing was allowed to grow, so that the bird might take flight on the return of spring, when the temptation of a mate, or the excitement of nest-building generally robbed us of our one year’s companion.

Besides those that were regularly domesticated, we had many shy friends of the fields and the garden who maintained a more stealthy intercourse with us, coming to be fed on a little raised table which we had placed near the dining-room windows in order to enjoy the pleasure of seeing them plentifully supplied, or hopping upon our hands and shoulders when we sate upon a very retired old garden seat kept almost sacred to this kind of intercourse. Here my father especially delighted in the intimacy of a robin, and often visited the solitary spot for the sake of inviting his little friend to perch upon his hand. Like us he persisted in believing everything that was good of all robins, and of his robin in particular; until one day, when a certain phase of the robin character was developed which appeared to shock and disappoint him a good deal. He had caught a stray bird of this species in the house, and took it in his hand to show to his little friend in the garden; when the latter, furious with jealous rage, flew at the stranger, and my father believed would have torn it in pieces, had he not permitted the wild robin to fly away. Whether it is the pretty little red-breast which awakens such wonderful tenderness on behalf of this bird, or the touching story of the “babes in the wood,” or its sweet plaintive song in the autumn when other birds are silent, or the peculiar way it has of looking at you and seeming to attend upon your steps as you tread the garden walks, or, more than all, its willingness to perch at the window on cold wintry days, and to accept food at the hand of man—whatever the cause may be, the robin has certainly obtained a place in the human heart to which its own exemption from unamiable passions would never have entitled it. But so let it be. Human hearts are not apt to admit too much into their warm recesses. The greater would be the pity for even a little spiteful robin “to be discarded thence.”

The birds with which my private menagerie was supplied were chiefly birds of prey, such as owls of various kinds, hawks, &c., with rooks, ravens, jackdaws, and magpies, and once a beautiful falcon, almost as large as an eagle, brought in a ship, on which it had alighted, from the coast of Norway. This bird I lost, it is to be feared after much suffering on its part, from not knowing that sand or gravel was necessary to enable it to digest its food.

Of the owls I never could make much in the way of companionship, simply because my day was their night, and vice versâ. Moreover, I had always on my mind the impression made upon us all by the reading of a useful and most charming little book, now lost sight of, called “Talking Animals.” It was very graphically written, and better calculated than any grave discourse I ever heard to awaken in the hearts of children a real interest in animals, with pity for the sufferings which injudicious or ignorant petting must inflict upon them. Particularly were we all affected, I believe to frequent tears, by the history of a family of owls torn from their parent’s nest, and exposed to all the horrors of glaring, mid-day captivity without a screen to shelter them from the hated sun, and the still more hated eyes and hands of their persecutors. The book was written on the supposition of a number of animals meeting together, each to relate the history of his own captivity and treatment at the hands of man, just as the circumstances had been in their effect upon himself, not at all as they had been intended; and that of the owl, especially, was so well told, and so true to nature, that it quite cast a damp upon my intercourse with the whole species, because I could not bring myself to let in upon them more than a kind of dim twilight, nor liked, even at any time, to intrude upon that strange, mysterious majesty in which even a very juvenile owl seems always to shroud himself.

Thus my knowledge of the owl character is rather limited, though I had many, both horned and common, at different times under my care: for the people in the neighbourhood, as well as our house servants, knowing my fondness for animals, used to bring me all kinds of maimed