The Complete Collection. William Wharton

jumping around Alfonso when he’s eating. They’re hopping in and out of the dish full of egg food and then, more by chance than anything, discover they can go directly to the source. This is a critical moment. I decide to leave the door of the breeding cage open and watch what happens.

      As soon as it’s open, of course, Alfonso takes off out into the aviary. He’s been locked in with those babies for five days and is showing signs of going stir crazy. He flies about madly, checking all his systems and giving the old wings a workout. It’s almost as much fun for me watching him through the binoculars as it must be for him. It isn’t long before the little yellow bird who kept falling out of the nest is on the edge of the cage door looking into the aviary. I can almost feel her mind trying to work it out. There’s a perch in front of her and slightly down, about twice as far as she’s ever jumped before. She cocks her head this way and that trying to figure the distance. Birds don’t have stereoscopic vision, and have some difficulty judging distances. She takes off for it after about three minutes pondering and makes a perfect landing. Now, she really looks little. Alfonso, almost as if he’s rewarding her, comes over and feeds her.

      It’s exciting, for me watching, as each of the young birds comes out into the aviary. At first, each flight from one perch to another is a major adventure, there’s lots of falling and fluttering to the bottom. Once they’re on the bottom, it’s a major project flying back up to the lowest perch. This perch is at least two feet from the ground. They all work it out though and in a few days are making experimental test flights. They seem to enjoy fluttering down from one perch to a lower one, more than struggling their way up. It’s a couple of weeks before they catch onto gliding.

      This is the opposite of the way I’ll have to do it. From what I know now, I think I’ll have to be satisfied with gliding first, then work my way to some kind of flapping.

      It’s several days after they’ve left the breeding cage before one of them, the dark one, finds his way back. Birdie has finished laying her fifth egg again and I’ve put all the eggs in the nest. These days, Alfonso has been able to fly into the cage from the aviary and feed Birdie or sit on the eggs when she wants to go out to feed or take some exercise. Now, this young bird comes over to the nest and starts giving the feed-me signal. Birdie hunches down deeper on the nest and ignores him. I’m wondering if I’ll have to lock Birdie in the breeding cage, leaving Alfonso out, something I’d hate to do. Then Alfonso takes care of things himself. It’s almost as if he’d figured it out.

      He flies into the breeding cage and chases that baby bird out. When the baby, all confused at this hostile act from the ever-loving father, is outside, Alfonso feeds him. In this way, he trains all the young birds to stay away from Birdie on the nest.

      But it’s no real problem. They’re all beginning to have such fun flying, they don’t do much of anything but eat and fly all day long. They practice different flying tricks. Now, I’m sure they’re watching Alfonso to learn how to do some things. It would be interesting to see how quickly a bird would learn to fly if it never saw any other bird flying. I decide to try that one out when I have enough birds.

      I’m keeping a notebook of all the things I see. I’m doing a lot of drawings and I write down my observations and thoughts. I’m also writing down all the different experiments I want to try so I can figure out what flying is and how birds learn. I take ten pages of notes alone on how a bird learns to turn around on a perch. It’s definitely something they have to practice; they don’t know how to do it for almost a week after they’re out of the nest. Out in the back yard I’m working on that trick myself and it is not an easy thing to learn.

      Birdie seems happy and well. She’s extraordinary, laying a second clutch of five eggs. The book says a female can have three nests a year without hurting, if she’s in good health. Birdie looks fine to me and as the young birds get more and more independent with their feeding, Alfonso gives her more help. He brings food up to feed her on the nest and sits when she flies out to eat. She takes long exercise periods, completely ignoring the baby birds; they ignore her too. It seems that after baby birds leave a nest, the mother bird just forgets them. At least, that’s Birdie’s way. The weather is getting warmer now, so Birdie isn’t so passionate at sitting as the first time. Sometimes she’ll take as much as fifteen minutes off the nest to preen her feathers. With Alfonso up there anyway, hovering over the nest, there’s no real danger. I don’t think Alfonso really sits on the eggs, not the way Birdie does. He spreads his legs and straddles the eggs, more like he’s protecting them than as if he’s trying to brood. If Birdie abandoned the nest or died, I don’t think Alfonso could hatch the eggs.

      The babies are growing fast. The growth of their tails seems to be stimulated by flight, or maybe it’s the other way around. By the time they’re five weeks old, I can scarcely tell them from grown birds. Some have started cracking seed already. Until all of them can do that, they aren’t really safe. The book says the real test is when they molt their baby feathers and grow in the first adult feathers. I’m not worried too much; they look so healthy.

      It occurs to me one evening as I’m feeding the birds that all I did was put two birds in the aviary, some food and water and nothing else and now there are six of them. I know this is perfectly natural, it’s one of the things life is all about, but to have it happen in my bedroom, under my own eyes, is magic.

      My aviary begins to look and sound like the real thing. There is the continual fluttering of wings, the sounds of birds calling to each other and the sounds of beaks being wiped on the perches. My mother, who hasn’t been paying too much attention, accuses me one night at dinner of having bought more birds. I explain they’re the babies of my first two. She goes Harumph, sneaks a look at my father, who’s putting a piece of baked potato in his mouth, then says they’re beginning to stink up the whole house. It scares me when she talks like that. She has so much power over my life and the world of birds in my bedroom.

      The next day I buy some stuff in a bottle that makes everything smell like pine trees. I put it around in all corners of my room but not in the cage. My room begins to smell like a fake forest. It’s such a terrific thing having birds, I’ll do anything to keep them.

      That afternoon, I stay on again to watch Birdy being fed. I ask Renaldi if I can come in. He says it’s against the rules but it’s OK with him. He opens the door with his keys and I push the cart in behind him.

      Birdy’s squatting there watching us; he’s watching me more than anything. I’m convinced he’s bullshitting me now. Maybe he wasn’t before, but now he is. I push the tray to the side and stand in front of Birdy. Renaldi goes around the cart and lifts covers off the food.

      ‘Well, Birdy; I’m here. This is Al and you know it, you bastard. Are you really going to squat there flapping your arms like a baby canary while this guy feeds you?’

      I say this to him in a quiet voice while Renaldi tinkers with the food. Birdy is looking at me full face, no shifting from eye to eye, none of that bird business. He’s looking at me; his eyes aren’t even wiggling. I can’t say he shows any signs of recognition but he’s definitely looking me over, seeing if he can trust me. It’s Birdy all right, but he’s different. This isn’t the old Birdy who used to believe everything; he looks as if he can’t believe anything anymore. He doesn’t look as if he can even believe in himself.

      Renaldi signals with some cereal and a spoon to me that I can feed him if I want. I reach over and take the bowl and spoon from Renaldi. He’s checking the doors to see if anybody’s looking in. What’re they going to do, fire him? They aren’t paying him or anything; they tried putting him in the army, that didn’t work. They can’t kill him. It’s stupid how most of us get in the habit, looking all the time to see if somebody’s watching us, as if they’re going to catch us doing something wrong. Somewhere, when we’re kids, our parents and the shits at school get us all feeling guilty about almost everything.

      I hold the food and the spoon out in front of Birdy’s face. He keeps looking at my eyes, not at the food.

      – All right now, Birdy. It’s time to start flipping your wings and peeping. I don’t believe it.

      He doesn’t move.

      ‘OK.