He suggested a parrot.

His experience of them was that they had no regular hours and would willingly sit up all night, if encouraged, and talk all the time.

Joan's objection to running a parrot was that it stamped you as an old maid; and she wasn't that, at least, not yet.

She wondered if she could make an owl really happy.

Minerva had an owl.
He told her how one spring, walking across a common, after a fire, he had found a mother thrush burnt to death upon her nest, her charred wings spread out in a vain endeavour to protect her brood.