My pets

The year was 1899, and I was studying boy life in the charming Belmont School, twenty-five miles from San Francisco. The grounds of the school lie on the lower slope of hills th...

Betsy and Solomon lived happily through that winter and spring, and before summer came we had made up our minds to return to the East. What should we do with the owls? They woul...

Bob the First, at the head of my long list of robins, having been killed by my pet owl, I very soon bought another. This one was not so gentle nor so handsome as Bob the First,...

I was delighted with the success of my experiment, but received a shock a little later on going into the basement to find the wet, bedraggled body of my poor baby robin in the p...

My grosbeak was a greenish-gray bird, with a stout beak and intelligent eyes. More than any bird I had ever had, did her expression remind me of that on the face of a human bein...

When Dixie was about three weeks old he became afflicted by a cough. He had a mania for bathing. I could not keep him out of the water dishes. He was soaked from morning till ni...

I had always been fond of rabbits. My parents had kept them for my brothers when we were children, and during my stay in California I had had a pet pair that I obtained one day...

To return to the guineapigs--to those persons who insist on saying they are stupid, I would like to state that I never saw any animal or any bird kinder to the young of other an...

I was very much interested in these baby guineapigs, and was very much surprised to find them so fully developed at birth. Tiny and Guinea had families about the same time, and...

I got a little uneasy as the rats continued to grow, and to grow, and to grow. However, I reflected that they were not of pet stock. They were common sewer rats, and if they wer...

Shortly after parting from my rabbits and rats I became much interested in hearing from a naturalist friend, of the arrival of a strange bird on our coast. A pitiless gale had b...

I had bought two little birds--a linnet and a goldfinch. These birds came with large numbers of other birds from Europe to New York, which is the great market for foreign birds.

Soon after starting my aviary in Halifax, I began to think of keeping pigeons. I had always admired the tame birds about the streets, but I had never studied them. I knew nothin...

One day when the poor little squeaker, in attempting to fly, got one leg over the perch and could go neither forward nor backward, and hung with flapping wings, the father flew...

The little kingdom of Belgium waxes most enthusiastic over pigeons. This is the great breeding center, this is the real home of the modern, thoroughbred homer. Pigeon-flying is...

As Sukey grew older her indifference to other birds became stronger. I never saw her watch a bird or follow its motions with any interest, unless it was to get out of the way of...

The winter after Sukey went up to the farm I had some anxiety about her. She had a poor digestion; she always was a small eater, and she seemed to feel the cold of the unusually...

During the six years that I have had Sukey she has spent all her winters, except the one on the farm, in her warm, furnace-heated room upstairs. Last winter I became worried abo...

He said that we see in life what we look for, and told of Thoreau who had a great faculty for finding arrow-heads. A friend with whom he was walking one day asked him how he fou...

My canaries with their bites, and nips, and blows, reminded me of naughty children. However, it does not do for a bird to be too meek in an aviary. The bird that, when struck on...

While I had my farm I let all my wild birds fly away, except old Bob, the robin. I deliberated about the hybrids, and finally decided to let them take their choice, so after kee...

Soon after starting my aviary I bought a pair of large green parrakeets, and consequently became interested in the whole parrot tribe. I found that there are two hundred varieti...

I stood in a Boston bird-dealer’s shop, looking about me at the great variety of birds. I knew but few of them by name, but I loved them all and wanted them all.

Bird-lovers who have long waited for the advent of certain young birds will understand my interest in this little fellow. I called him or her, for I did not know the sex, Natal...

Poor little brown immigrants, how many enemies and how few friends they have, and yet what have they done to deserve so hard a fate? Merely following out the biblical instructio...

Perhaps the strangest pet I had in my aviary was a black bird that was brought to the door one evening by a boy. He said that a young man had picked up this pigeon on the common...

Among the books that I bought when I started my aviary was one that amused me immensely. It was a clever book, but the description of each bird almost always began with the asse...

The bird that paid the briefest visit to my aviary was a hummingbird. I had him for a day, then there was a rush of wings and he was gone. My first experience with this interest...

I have not up to this time said much about the birds in my collection that were usually most remarked by strangers. They were the Japanese robins, or Peking nightingales.