the cage to look at the outside. It’s the first time the babies have seen the sky. Their world is expanded a million times. Still, the actual flying space is about the same. Sometimes, wild birds come up against the outside wire of the cage to look in. Alfonso, with some of the young, fights them off. I wish I could find a way so my birds could fly free like pigeons. It’d be great to have them loop and fly all over, singing and roosting in the trees; then come when I called them into the cage.
I paint the outside gray and white. When I’m finished it looks like a true little house. While the birds are in the flight cages I start building the breeding cages. I’ve decided to breed one male to a female. I’m not really in business. The males can help with the babies and it’s too confusing with two females.
I build five rows of cages, three cages in a row; one on top of the other, going from the floor to the roof on the back wall of the center room. Each cage has two parts with a sliding door between. That way, I can separate the male or the young ones, or both, from the female, when she’s started a new nest. I work out automatic feeders and waterers and build sliding trays in the bottoms of the cages for easy cleaning. It’s really fun building the cages; like making my own nest.
I get tremendous advice from Mr Lincoln. He builds his cages himself and has some great ideas that I use. He’s really a genius with birds. I tell him my idea about breeding canaries for flying. He laughs in a circle around his aviary. Tears come into his eyes. When he stops, he says nobody’s going to buy my canaries. He says if I can breed up a canary that can’t fly at all, then I’d really have something. People could keep them on a stick without a cage, like parrots. He says cats’d like my non-flying canaries, too.
I finish the breeding cages before Christmas. The males in the flight cages are singing their heads off. Almost anything is music to a canary. They sing when I hammer or saw or when I run water. The wind blowing is a symphonic concert to a canary.
While I’m working, I keep watching them fly. Alfonso is still the star, but there’re two or three others who have all his tricks; dive-bombing, jumping straight up, turning sharp in midair. One of them even has a new trick. He dive-bombs, then instead of landing, turns just above the ground and shoots straight up again. Somehow, he uses his downspeed to turn up. I watch it a hundred times but can’t figure how he does it. I can see he tilts his body so he’s practically standing on his tail with wings full out at the split second when he pulls out of his dive, then, he hunches his shoulders over and traps the fast air under his wings to give him the thrust up. This bird is yellow like Birdie but has all the hawk look of Alfonso. He’s not as mean as some of the dark birds, but he fights if anybody pushes too hard. Most times he just moves away to another perch. He’s one of the ones who flew with all the weight.
Alfonso II, from the first nest, is almost as mean as old Alfonso himself. The two of them get into some awful battles. Alfonso has a hard time finding any place in the aviary where he isn’t invading the territory of number-one son.
I still haven’t lost any birds. Mr Lincoln gives me some great ideas for tonics. I soak seed and mix it with egg food and cereal. I give them apples, lettuce, and dandelion leaves.
Counting Alfonso and Birdie, there are twenty birds – twelve males and eight females. The only sure breeding pair I have is Alfonso and Birdie. I could line-breed to Alfonso with one of the females but he’s so good with Birdie, I hate to break it up. It’s hard to do, but I decide to sell, or trade off, all the females. I need new blood; I can’t breed brother to sister. Some of these females are beautiful, and I hate to sell them. I feel like a slave trader.
I’m going to run fifteen breeding couples, so I need three more males as well as the females. I hunt around for two months before I find the kind of males I want. The trouble is it’s hard to see how well they fly, even in flight cages. The birds can’t get up any real speed.
One male I buy is what’s called a cinnamon. He’s sort of a golden-brown color. He’s long and slim like Alfonso, but his song type is what is called Saxon; sort of half roller.
Another male is yellow except for a black head and a topknot. A topknot has his hair parted and combed out from the center of his head. He looks as if he’s wearing a hat. This one looks almost like a clown. If you breed two topknots together you get a bald-headed bird. Mr Lincoln is disgusted that I’d buy a topknot. He doesn’t like any of the fancy birds. But this topknot can really fly. Also, he’s incredibly good at hovering. Canaries don’t hover much but this topknot can hover around the top of an aviary like a hawk hunting. He can also do a fair glide. Finches generally aren’t much for gliding, so, I have to have him.
The last one I get from Mr Lincoln. Mr Lincoln gives me the bird for nothing. He’s convinced this bird’s crazy. It keeps flying into the sides of the aviary. Most birds learn fast just what a cage is and how wire is. They get so they fly up against the cage but swing their feet up and grab hold. Only a baby bird will actually butt its head against the wire of a cage.
Now, this bird won’t recognize the cage. It’s full-grown but he’ll fly head-on against the wire as if it isn’t there. As a result he spends a fair amount of time on the bottom of the cage recovering from crashes. Mr Lincoln says he’s born stubborn dumb. I try to trade one of my dark females for him but Mr Lincoln doesn’t even want that. He says he thought of me as soon as he noticed this stupid bird.
I trade away the females one for one. Mrs Prevost takes most of them and gives me the pick of hers. She’s glad I’m going to breed one male to a female. I spend two weeks in her cages trying to pick her best flying females. I work out a system. I borrow a stopwatch from school and watch a particular bird for five minutes. I only count the time the bird is actually in the air. I want my birds to like flying. I check each bird three times then add in such things as gracefulness and speed of flight. When I’m finished I have all the birds ranked on a flying scale. I’m also trying to avoid birds who are plain clumsy. This type will come in for a landing and stumble or crash into other birds. They’ll do a lot of crazy fluttering when they try to land on a perch in a tight space between other birds. I’m also avoiding any female who sings or fights. All the books say these are bad signs for a breeding bird. Singing females have a tendency to abandon the nest. I get my lists finished and give them to Mrs Prevost. There’re a few of her best breeders on the list and she won’t sell or trade those, but I get most of what I want.
When I have all these birds in my flight cages it’s beautiful. It’s great to see a cage full of fine flying birds. These females fly much more than the males.
There’re still two months before the breeding season starts, so I continue with flying experiments. It’s cold out in the aviary now, so I dress up in all my warm clothes when I go out to watch. I’ve got my mother convinced it’s all part of raising canaries.
Now that the birds are full-grown, I experiment with flight feathers. A feather, if you look at it carefully, is incredible. It’s designed so that when pressure is put under it, no air can pass through. At the same time, air can pass through from the top easily. The feather has a hollow shaft with feeders for circulation of blood. On each side of the shaft grow out branches called barbs. These branch again into things called barbules which have little barbicles with hooks on the end. They all interlock and can be pulled apart or put together like a complicated fine-tooled zipper. The feather can be zipped and unzipped by the bird with its beak. This is what birds are doing when they run their feathers through their beaks; rezipping feathers that’ve come apart.
Also, the feathers rotate on an axis, so they can be vertical on the upswing and horizontal on the down. All this complication is built into something weighing practically nothing; light as a feather. The feather is the thing I’m up against. Either I have to make something like it or learn to do without.
I start pulling flight feathers from my hero birds, the ones who flew with their own weight hanging on their legs. I put the weights back on and pull one flight feather out from each wing. One gives up immediately. All that weight and now this. He sits on the bottom of the cage and tries to sleep. I take the weights off and let him free. He flies without trouble after a few minutes. Apparently, missing two flight feathers isn’t much to a canary if he isn’t weighted down. The other one manages flight of