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Updated: May 29, 2025
The hen-bird, as is the case with all birds of prey, was considerably larger and stronger than her brother, though the latter had the finer head and eyes. A week after their capture they were "feathered" for the first time. This process consists in pulling out the long down-like plumes situated on the under side of the strong tail-feathers.
Alec lingered behind. An unknown emotion drew his heart towards the earth. He would see her go to sleep in the twilight, which was now beginning to brood over her, as with the brown wings of a lovely dull-hued hen-bird.
"There's a hen-bird in the hole, sitting," said Harry, "and he has been to feed her, I know. Let's try." Saying which, he took a piece of stick, and began to insert it gently into the hole. "Don't hurt it," said Philip. "Don't poke the stick in." "Oh! I shan't hurt anything," said Harry brusquely. "Do you think I don't know what I'm about?
It is they who make the necessary arrangements, and provide the pheasants that appear in the recess; which signify that the hanna-moko, like the cock-pheasant, will always jealously guard his charmer, who, like the shy hen-bird, will readily respond to the call of her mate.
Perhaps the hen-bird is sitting somewhere close by." The boys then set to work searching the bushes of the little rivulet that flowed from the basin, and no doubt their search would have been in vain, but for the timid hen-bird, who flew out from the hole where, sure enough, she was sitting, and betrayed the place in which her nest had been made.
Beautifully adorned as is the male, the hen-bird possesses neither crest nor neck-plumes, her colour being of a dull, bronze-green, and greyish-white sprinkled with green on the under part of the body.
On leaving the spot where a number had perched not far from their nests, he observed them shoot suddenly and perpendicularly into the air till they had got out of sight. After a time, down came the hen-bird, like a fiery aerolite from the sky, upon the very spot where she had built her nest, so rapidly, as almost to escape observation.
But the bereaved "parient" was not slender and active, in fact, was rather a tame, confiding, dumpy and dull, pepper-and-salt-colored dame. Her complaints were not touching, but rather ludicrous, so much so, indeed, as to suggest to the human hen-bird that "Biddy was laughing to think what a nice breakfast little Carrie would have off her nice eggs!"
His circlings about the hen-bird; his numberless advances and retreats, and little soarings above her when his voice swells with importunate passion; his fluttering lapses back to earth, where he lies prone with outspread, tremulous wings, a suppliant at her feet, his languishing voice meanwhile dying down to lispings all these apt and graceful motions seem to express the very sickness of the heart.
"Why, Freckles, if it's the hen-bird ye are missing, it's ten to one she's safe," she said. "She's laid, and is setting, ye silly! Watch him and mark whaur he lichts. Then follow and find the nest. Some Sabbath we'll all gang see it." Accepting this theory, Freckles began searching for the nest.
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