Nobody in "The Favorite Little Bird" is a villain. The bird parents are ordinary, even tender, and that is what makes the poem's lesson sting. They love all five of their chicks, yet one gets the best of everything, and the poem says plainly that they "knew it was wrong." What Mary Carolyn Davies gives us is a small fable about unfairness that comes from affection rather than cruelty, and about how quickly a family repairs itself once the unfairness is named and stopped.
The story moves in four neat steps, one per stanza. First comes the setup: two parents, five nestlings, one favorite. Then the favoritism in action, in the form of worms. Then the consequence, when the pampered chick falls ill. Finally the correction and its reward: equal shares, and a nest happier than any other. It is a miniature cause-and-effect chain, and the pleasure of the poem lies in how lightly it walks us down it.
The sound is where the poem shows its wit. Davies loads the second stanza with invented-feeling, mouth-filling comparatives: "munchiest," "scrunchiest," "slidiest," "glidiest." These are not quite proper words, and that is the point. They are the words a child might make up while eating, and they pair off into rhymes that sound like the worms themselves, crunchy and then slippery. The doubled sounds ("munchiest/scrunchiest," "slidiest/glidiest") also pile up like the food in the favorite's bill. The very language is overfed. Notice, too, how the stanza stops to apologize: "(Though they knew it was unfair) still." That parenthesis is a guilty little aside, the parents' conscience muttering while their behavior carries on regardless.
The rhythm supports this playfulness. The lines run on a bouncy, nursery-rhyme beat, and each stanza alternates short, quick lines with longer, indented ones. The short lines ("And a little bird mother") skip along; the longer ones ("Had five little birds in a nest") settle with a thud, like a bird landing. The rhyme scheme is tidy enough to feel like a song, which suits the poem's gentle, teaching tone. Yet the form also carries a quiet joke: the poem about fair shares is itself carefully balanced, each stanza the same shape as the last.
The turning point is the colic, and Davies handles it with a light touch. "As I have heard" makes the narrator a friendly gossip passing on a story, which keeps the mood comic even as the favorite "nearly died." The word "nearly" matters. This is a children's poem, so the danger is real enough to teach a lesson but never tips into tragedy. The sentence is quietly pointed, too: the chick who received the most is the one who suffers. Favoritism, the poem implies, does not even serve the favorite. Too much of a good thing makes him sick.
Then the image shifts. The parents "both sat on a bough and cried," a small, tender picture of shared remorse. They are no longer dispensing worms from above but sitting together, vulnerable, on a branch. From that moment the poem turns generous: "Each child got equal shares."
The last two lines carry the idea that makes the poem worth reading. "For some strange reason, / No nest was as happy as theirs!" The word "strange" is delightfully ironic. The reason is not strange at all; the poem has spent three stanzas showing it. But the narrator pretends to be puzzled, nudging the reader to supply the answer: fairness is not a sacrifice that costs a family happiness, it is where the happiness comes from.
What makes the poem significant is how much moral clarity fits into so few lines without sounding like a lecture. It trusts its readers, young ones especially, to notice that favoritism hurts everyone, including the loved one, and that kindness spread evenly is worth more than kindness piled high. Wrapped in nonsense-sweet words and a bird family's small drama, it makes a lesson about fairness feel like a treat rather than a rule.