Incomparable Budgerigars - All about Them, Including Instructions for Keeping, Breeding and Teaching Them to Talk. Percy Gladstone Frudd
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in sheer ecstasy. It was painful yet wonderful to behold; budgies are like swifts in flight, a fact you will soon realize if ever your pet escapes.
It had been early morning when Samson had made his getaway and his crop had been almost empty; so quickly had the dash been planned that he had had no chance to replenish it with seed. His exertions made him hungry, so he fed on grass which was mostly withered and not very palatable, and which he soon found was not very sustaining.
His hunger temporarily abated, he bethought himself of Delilah and his ‘kingdom’, so away to the chimney-stacks he hied in search of her.
Samson did not get the reception he had anticipated. Delilah saw him approaching. “Here comes the little swanker,” she said to her companions. “Let’s give him beans!”
Delilah had betrayed him to the Philistines; they set about him with a will. It was fortunate for Samson that he was quick in flight, for he managed to outwit the attackers, but not before he had received many wounds and lost a few feathers.
He espied a huge tree and paused in his flight to rest; but to his horror a big black bird, a giant to him and possessing a terrible beak, snapped at him as he would have alighted on the bough. Luck again saved him; a side swerve and a nose-dive beneath the branch and he was away, but he left his tail in the beak of a big black crow.
Samson was in a terrible state by eventide. He had been chased hither and thither, and now the rooks coming in to roost frightened the very life out of him; so, seeing an opening at the top of a barn, he flew in and settled on a rafter in the gathering darkness in an endeavour to sleep and so regain his strength.
He did not remain undisturbed very long. As the night closed in, and he was dozing with his head tucked beneath his wing, something ghostly brushed past him and he awoke with a start. A bat had dropped from its inverted position above him and flapped its ungainly wings in flight to the opening through which Samson had entered the barn.
Samson shivered with fright; he thought of the cosy, peaceful aviary which he had left that morning, and felt anything but a king just then. Suddenly the moon broke through the clouds and a dull shaft of light shone through the opening straight on to him—and also on to a pair of flashing eyes belonging to a great barn owl, who had a horrible curved beak much stronger than his, and long sharp talons. The owl was about to seize him, to make supper from his well-nourished body, when that tiny flash of light into his eyes made him blink, and before he had recovered Samson had shot like a bullet from a rifle through that hole—into the night.
He had ‘wind up’ properly now; he flew as though all the devils in Hades were on his tail—or where it used to be. The moon went back behind the clouds, the night was pitch black, the wind bitterly cold, but on went Samson in sheer terror, until at last he could fly no further, and he dropped like a stone . . . he knew not where.
Fortunately, without encountering any obstacle, he fell into some long wet grass, which partially broke his fall, and he lay shivering, too frightened and too weak to move, scarcely daring to breathe.
Sounds of things moving in the darkness filled him with fear; then as the hours passed he realized he was almost dead with hunger, so he nibbled at the wet grass as he lay. It was terrible stuff after the sweet oily seeds to which he had been accustomed before his escape, and he bitterly repented his folly as he cursed the black-hearted traitress who had let him down.
Dawn came at last and with it Samson noticed a number of sparrows flying overhead. He recognized one or two as the ‘swine’ who used to feed at the bird-table and bath, outside his old flight.
A weary, repentant Samson shook the water from his body and flew after the sparrows—‘He would fain have eaten the husks which the swine did eat’—but the sparrows were having none of him and his highfalutin’ airs, so they set upon him and almost murdered him. They chased him round and round . . . few feathers were left upon his neck and back, when suddenly he heard a sound which was sweet music to his ears.
Samson had recognized the voice of his old father in the flight nearby. Pa had just filled his crop with delicious seed and was singing a song of praise and thankfulness. To a truly repentant Samson it was the sweetest sound he had ever heard. He exerted himself to the utmost, shook off the sparrows and made a bee-line to the flight, saying as he flew, “I will go to my father. . . .”
He had had enough of freedom and more luck than he deserved, for during the night he had been flying in circles and had dropped near to his flight. This final effort was almost his last, for a very exhausted Samson fell on to the netting, and he lay there gasping for breath.
Old Pa’s joy was unbounded, and though he could not get his son back into the flight, he did the next best thing—he fed him through the wire netting. In his own fashion he killed ‘the fatted calf’, much to the brother’s disgust.
We found the ‘Prodigal’ there in the early morn and easily netted him, but we did not return him to the flight; we had noticed the danger signs—the pupils of his eyes were contracted, what feathers remained on the top of his skull were stood on end . . . exposure had done its worst, pneumonia was setting in.
The heat was switched on in the hospital cage (a wonderful gadget), and whilst the temperature was getting up a half-dead Samson was given a nip of brandy.
He was put into an electrically-heated, glass-fronted compartment where he could be kept under observation. He was now too ill to eat and he huddled in a corner, wheezing and spluttering; a few drops of ‘Valpine’ in the vaporizer soon began to take effect and his breathing grew easier.
It was a tough battle to save his life. He was fed with ‘liquid vitamins’ from a fountain-pen filler every few hours. A fresh, palatable spray of millet was put to soak in water and chemical food, to be ready if his strength returned and he was able to eat by himself.
By the time he recovered his new feathers were beginning to grow. We had to watch over him carefully to prevent a relapse, and eventually a very subdued Samson was returned to the flight. If the door was left open it is doubtful if he would wander again, for Samson had been cured of wanderlust.
THE AMAZON
CHAPTER V
THE AMAZON
A Story of a Hen-pecked Husband
AT ‘Lintonholme’ my friend Mr. W. W., a notable breeder and exhibitor of budgerigars, had rather a peculiar experience with a very estimable young lady whom we eventually named Gertie the Amazon.
As a very young lady, Gertie was a bit of a puzzle. It was quite a while before Mr. W. knew whether to call her Gertie or Bertie. She was so well developed, even to the extent of causing her features to appear rather masculine. However, in the end her wattle turned deep brown, and so finally established her as Gertie.
Reaching the age of maturity, Gertie adopted a very superior manner towards her sisters and one of aloofness to the young men in the next flight. Instead of hanging about the wires giving ‘glad eyes’ to these gentlemen, she sat on her perch, prim and proper, yet she missed nothing of what went on around.
Gertie said that the young hens in her flight were ‘fast’, and that they cheapened themselves in the eyes of the ‘Don Juans’, who hung on the far side of the netting, calling to them and talking all manner of sentimental nonsense. She was very sedate and did not indulge in acrobatics. “It is most undignified,” she said, “to hang upside down in the sight of gentlemen budgies.”
She also scolded these young ladies of her domicile for their lack of cleanliness in the house. They scattered everything they could about the flight, in their haste to rush meals so that they might have more time to spend on the wire, flirting with their beaux.
Gertie stood primly on the edge of the pot eating her meals with proper decorum. She chose each seed with care, cracked it and then dropped the husk on to a neat little pile outside the pot; her sisters