Corvus (13 page)

He passed from infancy to the equivalent of a toddler, a clearly intelligent, nosy, meddling, small, flying toddler. He outgrew his first cardboard box and we assigned him a larger one through which we cut holes and slotted a branch as perch. We put him in every evening. When he learned to fly, he’d fly there himself. ‘Spike, bed!’ we’d say and he’d fly the length of the kitchen, dive into his box and settle down. We’d fold over the flaps and close him in. Like a toddler, he’d escape sometimes and appear triumphantly in the kitchen, the avian equivalent of ‘I want a drink!’ wailing complaint as he was thrust back.

I no longer remember the point at which Han and I again discussed Spike’s future, whether he was fully feathered or not, whether he was able to fly. We were standing by the kitchen stove discussing it, when we might think of taking him to Kevin’s. Spike formed a triangle with us, part of the conversation, standing, as he had just learned
to do, on the ears of the wooden rabbit on the mantelpiece, when he joined the discourse, gave forth his opinion, sealed the argument.

‘Hello!’ he said very suddenly, loudly, with astonishing clarity. Han and I stared, gaped. Then, even louder: ‘Spike!’ He was pleased with his effort. ‘Spike, Spikey. Hello! Spikey? SPIKE!’ His voice was a voice so human as to be shocking.

Our discussion ended. We had, whether by neglect or design, kept him too long. Like the child taught by Jesuits before the age of seven or one of Miss Jean Brodie’s pupils, he was ours for life.

A
lways the most fastidious of birds, hygiene – or possibly cosmetic considerations – was of the greatest importance to Spike. Bearer of a set of sparkling white breast feathers, he ensured, with some effort and attention, that they were never less than perfect. On the rare occasions when his feathers were besmirched in any way, he became distressed; as when, during an attempt to drink the water from a vase of lilies (accomplished by clinging with his toes to the edge of the vase), the white of his feathers became stained bright pollen-yellow. Those who have encountered the persistent staining power of lily pollen will appreciate the near-miraculous removal, within ten minutes, of every sign of pollen from his feathers, a feat accomplished by a frenzied, earnest engagement of beak with feather, accompanied by low muttering and squeaking as he expressed disgust and displeasure.

Many birds appear to bathe for social reasons, or for enjoyment rather than for solely hygienic purposes. For Chicken, it may be either, as she bathes with the cleansing fervour of the
pujah
, of the Hassid at the Friday-afternoon
mikveh
, in a process of purification that recalls every notion of religious and cultural concepts of keeping at bay the mental and physical dangers of impurity:
haram, tehora,
niddah, mahrime
. Both the timing and the thoroughness with which it’s undertaken reduce one to the humbling suspicion that the purpose is not only one of cleansing, but there might be a symbolic purpose too, that of the removal of the soiling contamination of humanity.

Chicken’s water dish is a large bowl with the word DOG insultingly integrated into the light brown of its side, the only vessel sufficiently heavy to prevent her from tipping it over and sufficiently wide to allow her to bathe with the ease she requires. With grace she steps in, bows, bends, lowers herself into the water, flaps her wings. Cascading drops fly across the room, drenching the wooden floor, towards the furniture, the books on the low table, me. Grunting and creaking with the delight of it all, she digs her beak deeply into the furthest reaches of wing and chest, through every feather, searching, scouring, before hopping out and shaking herself beak to tail (distributing a further volley of droplets to the extremities of the room), after which she repeats it all, once, twice, thrice. Stretching, she lifts one leg
behind her, the wing on the same side extended backwards, a balletic posture of elegance and grace. Scratching is less so. She crouches, raises her leg to extend over her wing, her beak open as she scratches her face, the hard sounds of nail on tough skin,
crik, crik, crik, crik
.

There follows a post-bathing period of reflection and ease, a moment of luxury as she hops onto the sofa to stand on a cushion of her choosing, where she rests awhile, shaking herself occasionally, until she is dry. At other times she prefers, while still soaking, to jump onto my foot under my desk, grunting. She shakes herself vigorously, sifting her feathers one by one through the cleansing sieve of her beak, continuing to shake herself from time to time, showering the remainder of the water across my legs. A waft of wet feather seeps up from under my desk, the inimitable scent of damp rook, almost wet-dog but not quite. The smell is stronger, sweeter. The sound she makes as she cleans her wings is a long, rolling, satisfied half-grunt, half-growl,
wrrrrrrrrrrrr
. Being dry is more than a matter of comfort. The weight of clinging water hampers wet birds in their attempts to fly, making them vulnerable to predators, and whilst Chicken might be free from this particular threat, she none the less carries out the behaviour that has kept her species safe.

In most gardens where there is water in any receptacle – birdbath, puddle, wheelbarrow – small birds will be seen in the midst of a frenzied spray of drops. The doves will bathe outdoors on fearsome days of grim northern winter, days when sleet, snow and rain vie for precedence, when daylight wins marginally, briefly, over total darkness. I can’t imagine why but these days are their favourite, their
most chosen of days, when they rush out of their house to line up in unruly progression beside their washing-up-bowl bath, bickering for their turn to splash and bob in the ice-cold water. In their eagerness and excitement they jump on each other’s heads, bite and peck, squeezing themselves into any empty corner; then afterwards, as if reclining on sun-loungers in a spa resort, they lie siren-style on their sides on the rain-slicked slates of the roof, often streaming with half-melting hail, raising their wings to allow further ice-cold water to penetrate to the very roots of their feathers.

On days when I’m indoors and wish to be nowhere else, in late January, February, when Chicken and I hide from the weather, when wind leaks upwards eerily through the floorboards, through the invisible gaps at the margins of windows and doors, they’re lining up, capering in the queue under the steady fall of rain and semi-liquid ice, squabbling and hopping with perverse, determined joy.

Preening too is a major preoccupation for birds. All our birds – parrots, rook, magpie, doves, starling – have been dedicated preeners. For wild birds, keeping their feathers free from parasites is vital and though Chicken cleans herself in the same way, with the same frequency, she does not have, and never has as far as I can tell, the insidious population commonly inhabiting the feathers of rooks and other birds in the wild, the hippoboscids; the louse flies, flat and insinuating; the mallophaga, the chewing lice; the mites and nematodes; the gapeworms, a particularly nasty kind of worm that attaches itself to the trachea of birds, preventing them from breathing.

In addition to her own grooming efforts, Chicken requires a little
help, the odd trimming of an over-long toenail, frequent attention to her beak, the upper part of which grows to protrude beyond her lower one, making it difficult for her to pick things up. When it’s too long (although she anticipates it with scary prescience and runs away to hide) I attempt to take action. Clandestinely, I provide myself with the necessary equipment while she evades me by running under the table, diving between chair legs, niftily escaping. Eventually, though, I corner her, grab her and tuck her under my arm and sandpaper or emery-board the over-extending portion of her beak. She squawks, struggles, tries to peck me, grunting protest. When it’s done I let her go and she shakes wildly, remaining angry and resentful until she has carried out a ritual session of purification bathing, after which she returns to stand on my knee, talking to me again, ultimately forgiving.

I don’t know if this beak-growing is common to all rooks, or if, in the wild, constant foraging for food has the effect of keeping the beak in good condition, although in his book
The Crows
, Franklin Coombs suggests that bill abnormalities are common in corvids, particularly the over-extension of one or other mandible, making it difficult for the bird to eat normally or maintain its feathers adequately. Without filing, Chicken’s beak would be too long. Might her life have been shortened by the absence of my much-resented nailfile?

Each evening Chicken prepares to roost, a process remarkably similar to our own pre-bedtime routines (although possibly more thorough). By now, her timing has little to do with the natural hours
of darkness and winter or summer; she chooses her own time to prepare for bed, usually around quarter to ten. Her night-time preparation is one of permanent fascination, the way in which ritually, with deepest concentration, she begins her prolonged
toilette
, a process she likes to carry out while standing on top of her house. It’s similar to her bathing but carried out with more concentration. The cleaning is exacting, beak on feather, in feather, over feather, under feather, inside the interstices of wings, the join of wing to body, the length of the tail, legs, then feet.
Click, click, click
, beak among toenails, down the length of legs, nibble, click, nibble, click. Her tail gets special attention: ferocious diggings, the running of feathers through the beak time and again, each session ending with a swift, vibrating, horizontal shaking of the tail feathers, followed by a quick vertical shake, a fanning – reminiscent of a card player’s dextrous shuffling of a pack of cards – accompanied by sounds of clacking and whirring and grunting. There are sounds more of fabric than feather, rustlings and cracklings and snappings, summoning visions of deep crinkled taffeta in the hand, silk whirled through the air, bolts of satin, a Fortuny world of texture, richness, elegance. On finishing her preparations with a series of profound shakes, she settles herself on her top branch and tucks her head underneath her wing. After a short while, she takes her head from under her wing to glare at the assembled disturbers of her peace. Since this takes place in the room in which visitors are most often entertained, her preparations can be embarrassing, a far from subtle intimation that one of us, at least, considers the pleasures of the evening to be exhausted.

cleansing fervour

(Over time, people apart from us have become used to Chicken. Most visiting friends accept being observed, walked around, being deemed acceptable according to some criterion I don’t know, after which they’re wooed for attention. Some don’t mind in the least having trouser legs tugged, or finding a rook launching itself onto their foot or knee as we all sit chatting, although some regard this with more equanimity than others.)

Most people who see Chicken, or those with whom I talk about birds, are interested in their defecatory habits. ‘Can you house-train them?’ they ask. The only answer is that I don’t yet know. If you can, I’ve failed. But, I reply (in a display of rampant self-justification), there are worse things, many of them found on the pavements of our major cities. Bird excrement is, or at least seems, innocuous when swiftly dealt with (as it is, by me, in a moment’s bending and wiping which by now is almost automatic). In quantity, as produced by the doves, it’s useful, although powerfully strong, and has to be administered with caution when shovelled into the garden soil. (With enormous generosity, I hand it out in measured amounts to the select among my friends who are gardeners.) As for the general question of the hygiene of my household, which I realise is always to the fore, I just have to work a little harder. I’m far from certain what the repercussions of my neglect might be, but all the same I steam floors and carpets and whatever else I can steam, wash cushions, rugs, clothes, anything that requires it, frequently. In
King Solomon’s Ring
, Konrad Lorenz writes of a visit by twenty-four greylag geese, the subjects of much of his work, to his father’s study. His elderly father, who was
fond of the geese and unwilling to discourage them, was found drinking tea and reading his newspaper while feeding the geese pieces of bread and butter. The effect of their visit upon the beautiful Persian carpet, he says, was still evident, though faded, eleven years later. (He writes too of the parrot, a Blumenau’s parakeet, owned by his colleague, the scientist Karl von Frisch, who learned that only by evacuating his bowels would he be allowed out of his cage, a feat he accomplished, sometimes only with considerable effort, ensuring that for a short time at least the Herr Professor’s furniture was safe from attack.)