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MANY pet birds escape from captivity every year, and their distressed owners wonder how they fare. For it is generally understood that the wild creatures resent one who has had long association with man, and usually do their best to kill it. But this, I think, is merely a fiction. It is said that should a canary join a flock of goldfinches, they will taboo it, and even fall upon it and eventually kill it with their beaks. Cases that I have known prove exactly the reverse. I know that a canary among sparrows meets with kindly treatment, perhaps because its appearance is so much more striking than their own dull plumage that like primitive savages seeing a white man for the first time, they are inclined to fall down and worship it.
In Hyde Park one summer I saw a little green love-bird feeding on seeds of the grass. Now lovebirds are often born in captivity, and their wings are feeble. But in this case the bird had the full power of its wings, and when a boy tried to capture it, it flew away with the speed and agility of a mothflitsie, or jack-snipe.
Even such a bird as the parrot can support itself. There is a rookery in the Lewisham Infirmary Gardens, and for some years past a gray and red African parrot has been flying about with rooks, who seem to welcome its presence.
In flight it resembles a pigeon and a hawk, and its presence among them is all the more mystifying, because the antipathy of rooks to a hawk is well known; they mob one and drive it away whenever seen. The Lewisham parrot escaped before the war, and survived many winters, for I saw it feeding with them in the Recreation Grounds during 1919.
Its curved beak prevents it from digging in the ground, and in the spring and summer seasons there are few seeds for it to feed on, especially in a crowded suburb like Lewisham. I have watched to see if the rooks feed it, but have never been able to discover.
It would be interesting to know how the spirit of fraternity is born between birds of such widely divergent characteristics. The parrot, however, cannot change its plumage, although it squawks like a young rook and caws like an old one. This may be the explanation of the phenomenon—it can speak the language like a native!