It is easily tamed, and becomes very much
attached to its master and mistress, but it is apt to die in
confinement before very long. It fights all others of its own
species; it is now a rare bird, and is doomed, I fear, ere long to
extinction, to the regret of all who have had the pleasure of its
acquaintance. The Italians are very fond of them, and Professor
Vela told me they will even act like a house dog and set up a cry
if any strangers come. The one I saw flew instantly at my finger
when I put it near its cage, but I was not sure whether it did so
in anger or play. I thought it liked being listened to, and as
long as it chose to sing I was delighted to stay, whereas as a
general rule I want singing birds to leave off. {32}
People say the nightingale's song is so beautiful; I am ashamed to
own it, but I do not like it. It does not use the diatonic scale.
A bird should either make no attempt to sing in tune, or it should
succeed in doing so. Larks are Wordsworth, and as for canaries, I
would almost sooner hear a pig having its nose ringed, or the
grinding of an axe. Cuckoos are all right; they sing in tune.
Rooks are lovely; they do not pretend to tune. Seagulls again, and
the plaintive creatures that pity themselves on moorlands, as the
plover and the curlew, or the birds that lift up their voices and
cry at eventide when there is an eager air blowing upon the
mountains and the last yellow in the sky is fading - I have no words
with which to praise the music of these people. Or listen to the
chuckling of a string of soft young ducks, as they glide single-
file beside a ditch under a hedgerow, so close together that they
look like some long brown serpent, and say what sound can be more
seductive.
Many years ago I remember thinking that the birds in New Zealand
approached the diatonic scale more nearly than European birds do.
There was one bird, I think it was the New Zealand thrush, but am
not sure, which used to sing thus:-
[At this point in the book a music score is given]
I was always wanting it to go on:-
[At this point in the book a music score is given]
But it never got beyond the first four bars. Then there was
another which I noticed the first day I landed, more than twenty
years since, and whose song descended by very nearly perfect
semitones as follows:-
[At this point in the book a music score is given]
but the semitones are here and there in this bird's song a trifle
out of tune, whereas in that of the other there was no departure
from the diatonic scale.
