Birds Illustrated by Color Photography, Vol 3. No 6, June 1898
TextTHE NEW TENANTS
By Elanora Kinsley Marble
And now the little Wrens are fledged
And strong enough to fly;
Wide their tiny wings they spread,
And bid the nest "good-bye."
Such a chattering as greeted Mrs. Wren when she returned with a fine black spider in her bill. All the children talked at once. Bobbie alone never uttered a word.
"You naughty boy," exclaimed Mrs. Wren, turning to the crest-fallen Pierre, "did I not tell you to take care of your brothers and little sister? The idea of trying to fly before you have had a lesson! I have a good mind to whip every one of you," and the irate Mrs. Wren very unjustly did indeed peck every little head sharply with her bill.
Bobbie cowered in the nest much too frightened to whimper or even mention the injury to one of his legs which he had sustained in his fall.
Mr. and Mrs. Wren the next day proceeded to give the children a lesson or two in flying.
"My tail is so stubby," wailed Emmett at the first trial, "it brings me right down to the ground."
"Tho doth mine," lisped little Dorothy, "dess wish I had no tail at all, so I do," at which the others laughed very heartily.
Bobbie made a heroic effort to do as did the rest, but at the first movement sank back into the nest with a cry of pain.
"Such fortitude!" exclaimed Mrs. Wren when it was found one of his legs was broken, "not a whimper has the little fellow made since his fall. How heroic! How like my dear, dear papa!" and Mrs. Wren laughed, and then cried, from mingled pity and joy.
"H'm," commented Mr. Wren, "if Bobbie had remembered the motto I gave them before I left yesterday morning, this accident wouldn't have happened. Can you repeat it?" turning to the eldest of the brood.
"Be sure you're right, then go ahead," shouted Pierre, totally forgetting he had not heeded the rule any more than Bobbie.
"Yes, a safe rule to go by," said Mr. Wren, gravely stroking his chin with one claw. "Dear, dear," ruefully examining the injured limb, "now the the child will go stumping through life like his grandpa. I only hope," with a dry cough, "that he'll not turn out a rowdy and lose one eye, too."
"'He jests at scars who never felt a wound,'" loftily replied Mrs. Wren, who seemed never to forget a quotation. "For my part I am proud that one of my boys should turn out to be such a spirited little fellow. But there, Mr. Wren, the children are calling you from that bunch of weeds over yonder. Go down to them, while I fetch a nice canker-worm for Bobbie."
After a few days the lame Bobbie was able to leave the nest and go hopping around with the other children, adding his feeble chur chur to theirs. Mr. and Mrs. Wren led them from one place to another, always among the weeds and shrubbery where they were soon taught to earn their own livelihood.
"Moths, butterflies, gnats, flies, ants, beetles, and bugs constitute our bill of fare," said Mrs. Wren as they went whisking along, "together with thousand-legs, spiders, and worms. If we didn't eat them they would destroy the fruits in their seasons, so you see, my children, what valuable citizens we are in the world."
At nightfall Mr. and Mrs. Wren, with their brood, flew to the crotch of a tree, and in ten seconds every little head was under a wing, and every little Wren sound asleep.
"Well," said Mr. Wren one day, "the children are old enough now to take care of themselves, and we must begin, my dear, to build a nest in which once more to begin housekeeping."
"It will not be in an old tin pot this time," replied Mrs. Wren, with a toss of her head, "and furthermore, Mr. Wren, I intend to have entirely new furniture."
"Of course, of course," assented her mate, "whoever heard of a Wren raising a second brood in the same nest? We are much too neat and nice for that, my dear."
"We," sniffed Mrs. Wren, ever ready for quarrel. "I'd like to know, Mr. Wren, what you had to do with building the nest, I would, really! Humph!" and Mrs. Wren flirted her tail over her head and laughed shrilly.
"I brought the first sticks, my dear," he answered mildly, "and didn't I do all the house hunting? Besides, I forgot to tell you, that when looking about in April, I found two other apartments which, if the tin-pot had not appeared suitable, I intended to offer you. In order to secure them I partly furnished each, so that other house hunters would know they were not 'to let.'"
"Humph!" returned Mrs. Wren, though exceedingly well pleased, "I'll wager we'll find a Sparrow family in each one of them."
"No we won't," chuckled Mr. Wren "for the houses I selected were much too small for Mr. and Mrs. Sparrow to squeeze in."
"You clever fellow," exclaimed Mrs. Wren, pecking him gleefully with her bill. "I am proud of my hubby, I am, indeed," and Mr. Wren laughed, and hopped about, never hinting to his innocent spouse that all the gentlemen Wrens did the same thing every year.
The next day, while preening their feathers, and getting ready for a visit to the apartments Mr. Wren had spoken of, a cry of distress smote upon their ears.
"That sounds like our Dorothy's voice," said Mrs. Wren, her little knees knocking together in fright.
"It is Dorothy calling for help," assented Mr. Wren. "I left the children in the orchard. Come, let us fly over there as quickly as we can."
On the ground, under some bushes, they found huddled their frightened group of little ones, while above, on a limb of a tree, perched Mr. and Mrs. Jay, uttering at intervals their harsh cry of jay, jay, jay.
"Its our Bobbie," cried Mrs. Wren, aghast, after she had counted her brood and found one of them missing, "look at him fighting over there with that young Jay."
"That's it, give it to him," screamed the delighted Mr. Jay to his young son, "hit him in the eye, my boy, hit him in the eye."
Mr. and Mrs. Wren flew about Bobbie uttering cries of distress.
"Fair play, fair play," cried papa Jay, flying down almost upon Mr. Wren's back. "Give the young ones a chance, or – "
A loud, sharp twitter from the tree top caused Mr. Jay to glance up.
"My old enemy," he exclaimed, his crest falling at once, as a low crown encircling a pompon of orange-red showed itself among the green branches. "That tyrant, Mr. Kingbird. He's always meddling in other people's affairs, he is. I'd like to wring his neck. Come, Mrs. Jay; come, my son," he screamed, and off they flew to boast of the victory among their neighbors.
"I hope your little boy is not much hurt," said Mr. Kingbird rather pompously, "I arrived just in the nick of time, I think."
"Oh, my Bobby," wailed Mrs. Wren, wiping the blood from his face, "that dreadful Jay has scratched out one of his eyes."
"How did it happen?" sternly inquired Mr. Wren, "tell me the truth or – "
Dorothy interrupted her father with loud sobbing.
"I – I was flirting," she stammered "just a little, with young Mr. Jay, papa – you know how handsome he is, and bold – when Bobby steps up, and he says – he says – "
"Well, go on, my little miss," said Mr. Kingbird, deeply interested, "what did your brother say?"
"He said," wiping her eyes with a corner of her wing, "that 'birds of a feather flock together,' and a girl with such a grandpa as I had should be ashamed to associate with the son of a robber and coward like Mr. Bluejay, and so – "
"And so young Mr. Jay pitched into me," interrupted Bobbie, "and I pitched into him. I'd a licked him, too, Pop," he added, flourishing his crippled leg, "if his old pa and ma hadn't come up when they did and told him to hit me in the eye."
"A chip off the old block, ma'am," said Mr. Kingbird, who had heard of Mrs. Wren's fighting papa, "a chip off the old block, I see. Well, good-day all, good-day. As your son wisely says 'birds of a feather flock together,' and it wouldn't look well, you know, for a person of my aristocratic appearance to be seen in such humble company. So good-day, good-day," and off the pompous fellow flew leaving Mr. and Mrs Wren decidedly angry though grateful.
Another week found the pair building a nest in the cavity of a maple tree near the study window. To the sticks and straws which Mr. Wren had placed therein early in the season, Mrs. Wren added spider webs and cocoons, lining the nest, or furnishing it as she called it, with horsehair and the downiest goose and duck feathers she could procure.
"There!" said she, when all was completed and the first egg laid, "Mrs. John can't sneer at our home now. No coarse chicken feathers, or stable straw this time, Mr. Wren. We will use the other apartment you chose for the third brood, for three we are to have this summer as well as Mrs. John. When we go south in November, our family I intend shall be as large as hers."
Mr. Wren made no answer, but, possibly being such an uncommonly wise bird, inwardly marveled over that imperious force, that wonderful instinct which made it necessary for them and all the feathered tribe to reproduce their kind.
Very carefully, one winter's day, Bridget removed the nest from the tin-pot and wreathing it in ribbons, hung it above her chest of drawers in the the attic.
"It do same," said she to the children, who prided themselves upon their knowledge of the looks and habits of the House Wren, "that in sthudoin the birds this summer I do be afther learnin' a lesson I wasn't expectin' meself at all."
"A lesson?" said they curiously.
"Indade! Its young ye's aire, me darlint's, to be thinkin' of the same, but sure its not meself that'll ever be forgetten the patience, ingenuity, industhry, and conjoogal love of the wee pair. Faith but it was a purty sight. Dumb animals indade! Niver sphake to me of dumb animals, for be St. Patrick, if them two blessed little crathers didn't talk, schold, make love, and sing in a langwidge all their own, then me grandfather's name wasn't Dinnis, and I'm not Bridget O'Flaherty, at all, at all."