A Gathering of Birds

by Donald Culross Peattie

  “Oddly, even to me, I had little to do with animals when I was a child. We lived in a densely populated part of the city, brick or stone all around, and my mother was very clean, so that having a pet would have been difficult, and there wasn’t even too many in the neighborhood. I never had a dog, nor a cat, and I think that there was some feeling of fright about the wings of birds.

  “It is true that Hato, the pigeon, came, or rather was thrust into my laboratory, before there was any canary. She was not with me long, about two years, when she flew away. Then came the ‘persons,’ one after another, that were later to make my book Lives. It seems unlikely, and yet it is entirely true that each entered by chance, and that, except for an occasional canary, I had never sought an animal. There has been a sick one, and I have tried to cure it. There has been a lost one, and some one has brought it, and I have let it stay. Always something like that, but that can bring you a good deal.”

  What it has brought him, and us through his pages, is a vivid realization of individuality within the species. Possibly life in the wild does repress individuality to some extent; certainly, birds cannot be easily studied for their particular behavior, except under laboratory conditions. The beauty of Dr. Eckstein’s canaries, however, was that though they happened to inhabit a laboratory of physiology in the University of Cincinnati, they were not in cages and were not put through rigid experiments. They were at liberty to fly, sing, mate, fight, nest and in general comport themselves as they pleased. Thus their observer came as near to knowing birds at home as it is possible in this airy world to do. Perhaps one reason birds so draw us is that we can never wholly know them. But at any rate, if there is anywhere a study of the individuality of wild birds that is comparable in detail with this one of a domestic species, I have never read it.

  Gustav Eckstein was born in Cincinnati in 1890, and is a doctor of medicine and of dentistry; he is an assistant professor of physiology at the University of his native city. Thus it would seem that canaries were remote to his subject. But he has brought to his fondness for them the curiosity and power to learn of a trained man of science. Another letter tells me this:

  “I am not happy this morning. You remember Billie, the lame one. She was ill only since yesterday, but died in the night. Maybe she had one fall too many, though I think more likely it was her heart, she twelve years old and the effort of ordinary things always so much greater with her. She learned more than any, and you will not think it strange when I say that I myself learned enormously from her.”

  It is this power to learn, uncorrupted yet warmed by love of his subject, that makes of Canary a valuable though informal contribution to the study of animal behavior. That Eckstein disciplines his interest to this end is made plain when he writes:

  “Latterly my unprofessional interest has become somewhat more professional. I do in the late years think of the physiology and the psychology, to use rather rigid terms for what with me began casually and only in the course of things grew somewhat exact. My idea of the right way, for me, would have been about the same, I suspect.”

  So he reminds us that there are other ways than the hard and well-trodden ones to get to the heart of things. Working in his laboratory, he listened to his canaries and learned about bird behavior. Singing, of course, is in our human view of it, a canary’s business. Dr. Eckstein made it his, and broadens the general view of bird song. For, if scientifically trained, we have come to believe that male birds sing primarily to “proclaim territory.” A bob-white whistles over a certain area, and keeps on posting his land this way until he has won his mate and often until he has seen her well through incubation. If any other male whistles in his bailiwick, the birds advance upon each other, still calling, till they meet and come to blows.

  In this conventional view whistling is not then an expression of a heart full of happiness, nor is it a concert intended to charm a mate with sweet nothings. This generality is a good if rough approximation of the facts. But I think that any one who reads Dr. Eckstein’s account of the various situations under which canaries sing will admit that there is more to the story than that. Song is the language of song birds, a language without words, but not without meaning. Dr. Eckstein has listened for that meaning, and translated some of it for us to understand.

  CANARY

  The Music Lesson

  WHERE Father got his unusual musical powers I knew. I never heard a bird like Father, and ‘ have not since. At the bird store they said he was taught by a famous tutor owned by a famous German breeder, and of course Father was born unusual. When Father planted his feet on the edge of a music book on the Steinway rack and prepared to sing, I was always able to make anybody see how much he resembled that big-bodied Belgian violinist, Ysaye, who formerly conducted the orchestra here in Cincinnati, and who also planted his feet as if he were determined to draw the melodies up through his body out of the earth.

  But Father was not only an extraordinary singer. He was an extraordinary teacher too.

  I never knew that a bird lesson could be that formal, or a bird teacher have such patience. Ordinarily Father taught one or two sons at a time, but more if more drifted in. He would sing their notes with them till they got them clear, perhaps three notes, then lengthen the three, sing upwards from them, sing downwards from them, and only after that start the trills. I do not mean that the lessons began with a clock and ended with a clock, or that there was a professional silence in the laboratory, or that there were not temperamental irregularities as in any healthy teaching—but the lessons were lessons, unmistakably. I do not mean either that Father taught anything essentially different from what all his ancestors taught before him, but he did what he could to keep that teaching true.

  In the course of a lesson Father might wander off on something that interested him more as artist than as teacher, and for that he liked quiet and if he did not get quiet might lean across and give someone near him a whack.

  Father because of much hearing of the piano knew things the later canaries never had the chance to learn. I had less time to play when they came—especially during that year and a half after Hinge. Father had a range of two notes over three octaves. Hinge had almost that. All the sons could sing triads and liked to. The low notes were difficult at first and would come out husky and slip about. I never tried teaching our kind of tunes, but that also would have been possible up to a point. In the best periods the male voices all modulated as fast as the piano—did not follow the melody, but changed key as the piano changed key. I say best because many things made the quality go up and down.

  Right in the middle of a lesson you would see a pupil bend over, reach between his feet, nibble a bit of paper out of the music page. Hundreds of pages were so autographed. Even Father reached. But Hinge never reached. This is one of the ways Hinge differed. I sometimes used to wonder whether Hinge liked this standing in a row to take your lesson. He so often kept away, or came late, sang a few notes, hopped off. He seemed lazy, yet even to my ear it was clear he was making progress—or finding what was in him. I used to fancy that he had been so near Father, whom he could never equal, that he thought: “My father does it—so what is the use?”

  The Groom

  The laboratory was black after the deaths, especially after Father’s, the song so much reduced. Therefore when Christmas came round again I went to the bird store and bought the canaries another bird. A Christmas present—Christmas 1931. We shall see how my good intention worked out.

  The bird was a male. I called him Striped Male. He now would be the only one not born in the laboratory.

  They had packed him in an ice cream carton, and all the way up the hill to the Medical College I could hear his toes fighting to get a hold on the pasteboard bottom, and once in the laboratory it was a different story from that first bird five years before. Out of his prison in a flash! Gay yellow and brown, head bristling, back arched—drum major!

  I think he had the longest legs I ever saw on a canary. In a minute I knew the
legs were not so long, that it was the smart-aleck’s way he stood on them, also the way the belly feathers form-fitted round the belly. He tramped to the front of the Steinway, estimated the distance to my table, gambled, made it. He had not had too easy a time keeping himself in the air, yet no sooner did he land and get a fresh footing, on he continued to the sectional bookcase.

  The whole population was silent.

  Several were below the bookcase on the zinc-top table, eating. They stopped. He looked down on them, joined them. His diet at the bird store had not been much besides water and seeds, but that did not prevent him recognizing higher food. However, he thought best first to make sure that all this was his—without warning gave the amazed bird next him a half dozen pecks, and the one next, so on, everybody scooting to the four corners. No one had ever treated them that way before. One female with a hurt foot took a head dive to the concrete.

  The table thus cleared of vermin Striped Male began nonchalantly to eat.

  And this continued. When Striped Male ate egg no one ate egg. When Striped Male ate banana no one ate banana. When Striped Male thought he liked one special perch whoever was on got off. The Community did not understand him, but it behaved.

  Late that first evening, an hour or two after dark, having dined a good many times and having lubricated his wings with a good many flights, he mounted to the heights of the book-closet, stepped to the edge, crashed into song. And the song was like the rest of him—shrill, over-healthy, unmusical, resembled his legs. Who the song was for, if anyone, I could not see.

  The Teaching of the Lesson

  Through all this Striped Male’s voice still had not changed. The worst was, from my point of view, it was affecting the other voices. Canary voices are affected by anything. In the parts of the year when I am using the typewriter most, all the voices go up.

  And for his private concerts Striped Male continued to mount to the heights of the book-closet, as he did that first night. The book-closet stuck like a platform out over the laboratory, and I had noticed long before this that when a male was feeling particularly male he was apt to go up there to sing. Striped Male might give eight to ten to twenty performances a day.

  This was a matinee.

  The program was already part over when I noticed Hinge fly to the fishpole. That put Hinge higher than Striped Male because the fishpole was higher. After a while Striped Male came to a rest in the music. He stopped, as if to clear his throat. Then he began again—and instantly Hinge began. This in itself was not unusual except for how Hinge’s trill came right on top of Striped Male’s trill, and except—and this was the amazing—how Hinge’s exactly reproduced Striped Male’s own harsh high-pitched quality. And Hinge’s kept up. It kept up for as long as Striped Male’s kept up, and when Striped Male’s couldn’t any longer, still kept up. This Hinge could do because he had big lungs by nature, and because for all his laziness I suspect he had learned considerable from Father. Then, with great skill, Hinge dropped from Striped Male’s quality down to his own, lingered on that a while too. Thumbed his nose, it seemed.

  This was only the sample. In fact, had it occurred but once I would not have believed it. Every time now that Striped Male began to sing Hinge began to sing. I think there can be no question what it meant. Whoever in those days visited the laboratory thought the scene farce. I too, and I was happy besides because I believed I could once more detect a change in the Community singing—as though Hinge’s lessons were bringing back a courage for the singing of the old days. But even had it only been that I was wanting this to be true, and therefore made myself think I saw signs that it was, what clinched it for me was the effect on Striped Male. That anyone could see. He had lost his dominance. He was very changed. He was as quiet as the quietest. He worried me. I tried to think it was his time for moulting, but it was not. You could see the change in his walk. His head feathers scarce ever rose up now.

  All this transpired less than a year after the birth of Junior, Penguin, and Candy. Junior began to look more drum-major than his father. From Striped Male the drum-major was faded out. He would even, like one of the duller birds, go up on the window-sash and stand long periods in the sun—a sick old man taking his constitutional. His long legs looked longer. Anybody could eat egg when he ate egg. Anybody could eat banana.

  Toscanini’s Concert

  Sundays when the New York Philharmonic would begin to come over the radio the whole spirit of the place would change. Rossini, Beethoven, Wagner, would make a happy canary program, particularly if the Beethoven happened to be the Pastorale. And that would make a happy Toscanini program also.

  The radio stands against the south wall between the windows, and after a while you always believed that the orchestra was literally down in that box. This gave to the laboratory out in front of the box the feeling of having grown much bigger—of being a great hall with the singing canary audience all around the edges of the balconies of it. Hinge would be high to the back on the fishpole. Hinge always occupied the same place. Sometimes he would sing uninterruptedly through an entire concert, which meant the full two hours, because Hinge sang also through most of the intermission. There would be Sundays when there were breaks in his concentration, when he could not get his mind off some female, or some annoyance at a male, anything, but on those Sundays when his being was calm he would surpass the others to a point that made him seem another species of bird. Father, you always would decide then, had not wasted his time on Hinge in spite of Hinge’s lazy ways.

  As the Toscanini program mounted to its glory Hinge would show an increasing freedom. He would not look like a canary anymore. It was inspiration. A splendor would come over us all. There was something of sky and ocean—in the face of the scientists.

  Below Hinge on the book-closet would be Striped Male, in his old place, from which he sang that fatal concert five years before, but no thought of equaling Hinge now, just a modest pleasure in singing along with the others. To the right of the hall on the desk might be Chicken, usually to be joined after a while by Chicken-like—much less dramatic singers but listening very carefully to what the orchestra was playing, keeping very close to it, especially Chicken who had a finer and finer voice. On the other side of the hall, on the instrument case, many Sundays the striped ones all together—Junior, Penguin, Striped Male, with the striped females on and off joining them, Junior and Penguin facing partly toward each other and partly down toward Mr. Toscanini. A tier lower than they, on the chemical bench, would be Crusty’s Son, born about nine months before, with a voice already so big that you would wonder whether he might not be the off-spring of some secret pledge with Hinge. The other males would be strewn wherever they happened to alight, and there would be a good deal of changing of places during the concert, but the singers on the whole would continue in a great semicircle low on the sides and rising high to Hinge at the back, the hundred-man New York orchestra down in the bowl in front of them.

  Fabulous canary singing on those fabulous Sundays. All the males would sing, often a female. Once Striped Daughter sang through half a concert. It was that heavenly afternoon when great Toscanini played the Ninth Symphony—took Schola Cantorum, Metropolitan soloists, Philharmonic Society, wrenched them out of themselves, or back into themselves, I do not know which, but for that hour made them into something that you did not remember them to have been, something diabolic and mad that cracked the dark and let us who were listening see the outlines of Beethoven and, I feel, even the outlines of God.

  And this canary singing was not speech, not love-making, not the inexorable path of sexual selection. No, these tiny birds with their tiny voices on those Sunday afternoons came very near to man’s own high conception of art for art’s sake, song for song’s sake, the creation of impersonal beauty.

  Lovely and young, out in front of everybody, on the jutting tip of the first tree, quietly, often keeping the same place through the two hours, never a thought of singing, in her brilliant yellow dress—Candy.

 
; VI

  PETER KALM

  THE Linnaean age, which began two hundred years ago, was an epoch in science when the naturalists of Europe were ready and eager to investigate the nature of the ends of the earth. Commerce had opened the road into Asia, there was light even from the Dark Continent, Australia yielded its Erst fruits to natural history. And, from pole to pole, across the tropics, stretched the two Americas, a great bestiary of unique treasures still largely unknown to science.

  What Linnaeus did for plants, Ray and Latham were doing for the classification of birds. Buffon struggled with his ornithological life histories, and Brisson took up comparative anatomy where it had been dropped from the hand of murdered Belon two centuries before.

  Corresponding to this golden age at home was the rise of purely scientific exploration, a new thing in the history of travel. In quest of birds Sonnerat was off to the Indies, Osbeck to China, Pallas over the vast dominions of the Tsar; Forster voyaged round the world with Captain Cook, Richardson to the arctic with Sir John Franklin, and Le Vaillant got into the antipodean world of South Africa.

  Only one of the great scientific explorers of the time, Peter Kalm, turned his attention to temperate North America. To do so was Linnaeus’s idea, obediently executed by his pupil with business-like precision.

  Europe was not unaware of American bird life, but knew it only through dead specimens, or the domesticated turkey or caged songsters like the mockingbird and cardinal. Or it heard reports, which became garbled or grossly superstitious, through early travelers like Mark Catesby or John Lawson. It knew of the exquisite hummingbird, the smallest and most brilliant of all feathered creatures, and the torrential storms of the passenger pigeon. It had heard, but only at third hand, of the ghostly whippoorwill who cries out so strangely on the twilight. Species had been described from skins and feathers, by Forster and Latham. It remained for an honest and a trained scientist to set foot upon these shores and speak, as a modem speaks, of its great avifauna.