flies down to the floor on the outside of the aviary and looks through the wire at him. He keeps singing and slowly struts over to her, giving her the full tenor treatment. She doesn’t move. He gets to the edge of the wire and they aren’t an inch apart. He’s singing wildly. Birdie looks and listens then starts giving her little whimpering ‘feed-me’ signal. She squats and flips her wings quickly, opening her mouth and pressing it through the wires.
Alfonso stops singing and looks at her. He can’t seem to figure what this is all about. He cocks his head and looks down into her mouth, listens to her and starts singing again. Poor Birdie. He begins rocking back and forth, leaning down till his throat is touching the floor. He lifts his head up and down with the power of his passion. When, at last, he can’t bear it anymore, he throws himself against the bars of the aviary.
This frightens Birdie and she flies away. He climbs up the bars of the aviary trying to watch her. She flies over to the mirror on the dresser and looks at herself. He hangs there for a while, then flies down onto the floor again and takes a drink. All that passion must’ve made him thirsty.
This whole ritual happens over and over, all day long. At the critical moment, Birdie wants to be fed and Alfonso can’t bring himself to do it or doesn’t know how. Frustrated, I put Birdie back in her cage and leave the room.
That evening, I let Birdie out while I’m drawing a new design for my wing. I’m at my desk, my desk lamp is the only light and it’s practically dark in the aviary. Still, there’s enough light so I can see Alfonso hanging on the side of the cage. He starts singing, low, smoothly. When he stops, Birdie begins whimpering again, fanning her wings. At last he does it. He feeds her through the bars. It sounds so satisfying. He throws back his head to bring up food from his crop, then gently puts it into her open beak. With each beakful, there’s a rise in tiny peeps from Birdie, and then, a moment’s pause while she swallows. He keeps it up till he’s given all he has. Birdie continues her insistent peeping and shimmying around so he flies down for more food. He comes back and does it all again.
After this, he flies onto the top of her cage and sings. He sings as if he’s trying to say something. There’s all of asking in his voice and not the ‘Come here, Baby’ sound he’d been giving us up till now. Birdie sits perfectly still and listens. I do too. There’s tremendous variety in the paths of his singing. There are certain kinds of things he does well; these he repeats but at different volumes or different tones and in all kinds of variations.
There’s open air in his song, the power of wings and the softness of feathers. He’s telling how it will be if she’ll only let him put his little dong into her little hole. It’s clear as any love song. He sings of things he could never have seen or known in the aviary at Mr Lincoln’s. These things must be memories in his blood carried through in his song. There’s the song of rivers and the sound of water and the song of fields and seeds in their natural places. It’s a song I’ll never forget. It’s with this song I began to understand something of canary. Canary isn’t a language like ours with individual words, or words put into sentences. In the singing, you let your mind go, not think, and it comes to you, clearer than words. It comes as if you’d thought it yourself. Canary is much more feeling, more abstract than any language. Listening to Alfonso that night I found out things I knew must be but I’d never known. It was the song of someone who knows how to fly.
The next day’s Sunday and after mass I let Birdie into the aviary. She glides down and hops over to the food. Alfonso sees her and swoops down immediately. I think it’s going to start all over again, but he stands on the other side of the food dish and eats a few seeds. Birdie hops to the bath and starts her morning ablutions. Alfonso stands near by to watch and when she sprinkles water she showers him. He flies up to the first perch, then flies down again. He hops to the bath dish and jumps in. He really splashes, scattering water all over the aviary, tossing it up over his back with his beak in a way Birdie’d never done. Then, they get in the water together, in and out, until there’s no water left in the dish. They both fly around the aviary wildly, drying off. Birdie’s entered into the spirit of this frantic bathing style. The feathers around Alfonso’s beak are ruffled and you can barely see his eyes. He’s gotten himself so wet, his feathers are heavy, hanging from his body. He looks really bedraggled. He keeps flying back and forth long after Birdie’s quit and is cleaning up. He rubs his wet face against the perch and against the bars of the cage. He flies down and rubs his face on the wall, of all things. It’s obvious he doesn’t bathe of ten and doesn’t like it when he does.
At last he’s clean and dry. They both eat again and she starts whimpering and giving her ‘feed-me’ signal. He starts to feed her but this gets him so excited he begins singing and then goes into a little dance. He dances around in circles beside her while he holds a single note. He dips his head up and down, stomping his feet to some hidden rhythm. I figure, here we go again.
While he’s doing this, Birdie begins her own little dance. She’s squatting, whimpering, twisting around to keep lined up with him while he dances. All in one movement, Alfonso flies up over her and hovers while he lowers his dong under her upraised tail and into her hole. It lasts only a few seconds and he’s hovering in the air all the time. The only real point of contact is where he fits in.
When he’s finished, he lands beside her, squats and starts giving the ‘feed-me’ signal himself. They twirl beside each other for half a minute alternately feeding and being fed. Then he does it again. This time he doesn’t sing and there’s only the pleased whimpering of Birdie and the sounds of his wings as he pumps the air to hold himself over her. Her wings beat in a counterpoint to his and there’s a great trembling of air. It’s something to think how much a bird can flap its wings without moving an inch and how, when he wants to fly, the quickest, simplest flick of wings transports him straight up, twenty, thirty times his length. Flying is much more than flapping wings.
Now Birdie goes berserk. She flies around the cage, peeping little peeps and flapping her wings as if she can’t stand still. She seems too excited even to eat properly. She goes down, eats one seed, then looking as if she’s forgotten something, flies madly all over again. She ducks into the old cage about every five minutes, inspecting and making sure. Then she starts tearing paper up from the bottom of the cage and carrying pieces of it around. She begins storing these pieces of paper in the corners of the aviary and in her cage. Every half hour or so, Alfonso recovers enough to chase after Birdie, feed her and they do it again. It’s a hectic Sunday afternoon.
The next day, Monday, I buy a wire strainer without a handle, about four inches in diameter at the top. I wire this into the small cage. All the books say this makes the best kind of nest because it doesn’t harbor lice. Then I scissor off the top of a burlap bag, cut it into squares about two inches each way and shred it into two-inch length strings. I put bunches of this stuff in different corners of the aviary. Birdie attacks this new challenge with vigor. She starts by scattering it all over the aviary, then she picks up a piece and flies back and forth till she forgets she has it in her beak and drops it. She seems to think it’s some kind of new game. She’s interested but has no idea what practical use she can make of it.
Two days pass and I begin to get worried. Usually, the egg will be laid within four days of fertilization. I’d read about birds who lay their eggs on the floor; all kinds of crazy things. Birds, like people, have been living in cages so long they’ve forgotten many things they should do naturally.
On the third day Alfonso takes over. For the first time he picks up a piece of burlap. He flies straight to the nest and drops it in. Birdie watches with obvious incomprehension. Then Alfonso jumps into the strainer-nest and wiggles himself around as if he’s taking a bath. He jumps out. Birdie’s followed him into the cage. She has a piece of burlap in her beak. Alfonso jumps into the nest and demonstrates again. Birdie jumps into the nest holding the string in her beak. She jumps out again. Alfonso pulls the string out of her beak and drops it into the nest. Birdie looks at him as if he’s some kind of nut and flies out of the
