A Hay-Barn Idyl

EVERY farm boy knows how much wild life ebbs and flows about a country hay-barn the whole round year. It is a point in the landscape where the wild and the domestic meet. The foxes prowl around it in winter, the squirrels visit it, mice and rats make their homes in it and cut their roads through the hay. In summer, swallows, phœbe birds, and robins love to shelter their nests beneath its roof, bumble-bees build their rude combs in the abandoned mice nests, and yellow jackets often hang their paper habitations from its timbers.

For several summers I have had my study in one of these empty or partly filled hay-barns on the farm where I was born, and the wild life about me that used to interest me as a boy now engages me as a student and observer of outdoor nature. While I am busy with my books and my writing, the birds are busy with their nest-building or brood-rearing. Now, in early July, a pair of barn swallows have a nest in the peak at one end, and a pair of phœbe birds have a nest in the peak at the other end. The phœbes, remembering perhaps their ill luck last year when their nest and eggs were buried by the hay-gatherers, have established themselves in an old swallow’s nest far above any possibility of being engulfed by the rising tide of hay. They have evidently refurnished the nest, but its exterior is quite destitute of the customary moss. I see the row of heads of the young swallows above the brim of their nest. The swallows evidently look upon the phœbes as intruders. Perhaps the fact that the phoebes have appropriated a swallow’s last year’s nest rankles a little. At any rate, many times during the day the male swallow swoops spitefully down at the phœbes as they sit upon the beams, hesitating, in my presence, to approach their nest with food in their beaks.

The swallow is not armed for battle; in both beak and claw he is about the weakest of the weak; only in speed and skill of wing is he almost unrivaled; and he flashes those long, slender, sabre-colored wings about the heads of his plain unwelcome neighbors in a way that keeps them on the alert, but never provokes them to retaliation. The phœbes incline this way and that to avoid the blows, but make no sound and raise no wing in defense. They seem to know what a big ‘ bluff’ the swallows are putting up, or else how unequal a wing contest with them would be. The phœbes are much more sensitive to my presence than are the swallows; they will not betray the secret of their nest to me while I am watching them: whereas the swallows sweep in boldly over my head through the wide-open doors, and, in a swift upward curve, touch at the nest and are out again like spirits, the phœbes enter slyly through small openings in the weather boards, and alight upon a beam and look the ground over before they approach the nest.

The other day in my walk I came upon two phœbes’ nests under overhanging rocks, both with half-fledged young in them, and in neither case were the parent birds in evidence. They did not give their secret away by setting up the hue and cry that nesting birds usually set up on such occasions. I finally saw them, as silent as shadows, perched near by, with food in their beaks, which they finally swallowed as my stay was prolonged. And the nests, both on a level with my eye, were apparently filled only with a motionless mass of bluish mould. As I gently touched them, instead of four or five heads with open mouths springing up, the young only settled lower in the nest and disposed themselves in a headless, shapeless mass. The phoebe is evidently a very cautious bird, though no birds are more familiar about our porches and outbuildings.

What a contrast they present in habits and manners to the swallows! A plebeian bird is the phœbe, plain of dress, homely of speech, with neither grace of form nor of movement, yet endeared to us by a hundred associations. The swallow has the grace of form and power of wing of the tireless sea-birds, and is almost as helpless and awkward on its feet as are some of the latter. The pair I am watching flash in and out of the old barn like streaks of steel-blue lightning. I watch them hawking for insects over a broad meadow of timothy grass that slopes up to the woods that crown the hill. The mother-bird is the more industrious; she makes at least three times as many trips in the course of an hour as does her mate; whether she returns with as loaded a beak or not, I have no means of knowing, but would wager that she does.

Among nearly all species of birds the mother is the main bread-winner. I have recently had under observation a nest of young bluebirds, in a cavity made by a downy woodpecker in a section of a small birch tree, which I brought from the woods last fall and fastened up to one corner of my porch. The mother-bird had entire care of the brood, bringing food every few minutes all the day long. Not till the last day that the young were in the nest did the male appear, and then he took entire charge, and the mother either went off on a holiday, or else some untoward fate befell her.

I look up from my writing scores of times during the day to see the two swallows coursing low over the meadow of rippling daisies and timothy, tacking, darting, rising, falling, now turning abruptly, now sweeping in wide circles, and, having secured the invisible morsel, coming down-grade into the barn with the speed of arrows. A row of expectant, heads, four or five of them, arranged in a row at the wide opening of the nest, await them. It is touch and go, no tarrying; the gnat or fly is deposited in an open mouth as swiftly as it is caught. The beaks of all the young open as the wings of the parent-bird are heard, and a subdued chippering and squeaking follows. That there is any method in the feeding, or that they are fed in regular order, I cannot believe. Which of the young will get the next morsel is probably a matter of chance, but doubtless the result averages up very evenly in the course of an hour or two.

The wing-power expended by the parent birds in this incessant and rapid flight must be very great, and one would think that all the insects captured would be required to keep it up. How fine and slight their prey seems to be! I may follow their course through the meadows with my head about as high above the grass as is their flight, and not see anything but an occasional butterfly or two — a game the swallows are not looking for. They hunt out something invisible to my eyes, something almost as intangible as the drifting flower-pollen. Probably the finer it is, the more potent it is; a meal of gnats may be highly concentrated food. Now and then they probably capture a house-fly, or other large insect.

The phœbe and all the true flycatchers hunt in a much less haphazard way; like the hawks, they see their prey before they make their swoop; they are true sportsmen and their aim is sure. Perched here and there, they wait for their game to appear. But the swallows hurl themselves through the air with tremendous speed and capture what chances to cross their paths — a feat quite impossible to the regular fly-catcher.

On calm days they hawk high; on windy days their prey flies near the earth and they hunt low. How random and wayward their course is, but what freedom and power of wing it discloses! A poet has called them skaters in the fields of air, but what skater can perform such gyrations or attain such speed? Occasionally on windy days they seem to dip and turn, or check themselves, as if they saw an individual insect and paused to seize it. But for the most part they seem to strain the air through their beaks and seize what it leaves them.

As the days pass the young swallows begin to grow restless. I see them stretching their wings with their bodies half out of the nest. A day or two later I hear a fluttering sound over my head, and look up to see one of them clinging to the outside of the nest and exercising his wings vigorously; for a few seconds he clings there and makes his wings hum; the flying impulse is working on him, and soon it will launch him forth upon the air. Two or three times a day now I see this feat repeated. The young are doubtless all taking turns in trying their wings to see if they are as recommended. Then the parent swallows come in, evidently with empty beaks, and take turns in hovering in front of the nest and saying, ‘Wit, wit,’ approvingly and encouragingly, and then flying about the empty barn or making a dash at Phœbe as she sits with flipping tail on a beam. Presently they resume their feeding.

The next day there is more wing exercise by the young, and more hovering and chirping about the nest by the parents. Sometimes the latter sit quietly upon a beam, and then presently the male flies up and clings for a moment to the side of the nest, and squeaks softly and lovingly. I think the great event, the first flight of the young, is near at hand. I go to dinner, and when I return and am about to enter the barn, the mother swallow sweeps down toward me and calls ‘Sleet, sleet,’ which I take to be her way of saying ‘Scat, scat’; and I know something has happened. Looking up to the roof I see one of the young perched upon it a few inches from the lower edge. He looks scared and ill at ease. I cast a pebble above him and away he goes into the free air, his parents wheeling about him, and leading him on in an evident state of excitement. How well he uses his wings on that first flight, swooping and soaring with but little appearance of awkwardness or hesitation! After a few moments he comes back to the barn roof and lights on the other side beyond my sight. During the afternoon the other three ventured out at intervals and flew about the interior of the barn for some time before venturing outside, their parents flying with them and cheering encouragingly.

When once launched on the wing, the next great problem with the birds seemed to be how to alight and come to rest. It was evidently a trying problem. They would make feints at stopping upon this beam or that, but could not quite manage it until, in a kind of desperation, they would flop down somewhere. In a good many things we ourselves find it more difficult to stop than to start. In the course of the afternoon they all went forth into the air with their parents, and, I think, never returned to the interior of the barn. At five o’clock I saw them perched upon the tops of dry mullein stalks in the pasture. As I approached them they took flight and coursed through the air, high and low, over the tree-tops and above the valley, with wonderful ease and freedom. After a while they returned to the mullein stalks, and again betrayed their inexperience by their awkwardness in alighting. It would be interesting to know how long they were on the wing before they began capturing their own food. I have seen the parentbirds feeding the young in the air. In August they will be perching upon telegraph wires, and upon the ridgepoles of hay-barns, with the instinct of migration working in their little bodies.

The exodus of the young phœbes from the nest was much less noticeable. I saw no preliminary stretching or flapping of wings, and no parental solicitude. Flying is not the business of the phœbe, as it is of the swallow, and its life is much more humdrum. The young came out at intervals one afternoon, and they lingered about the barn, going out and in, for several days, the family keeping well together. Later I shall see them about the orchards and fences, bobbing their tails and being fed by their parents.

A mow of last year’s hay in the big bay of the barn holds its pretty secret also. Two years ago a junco, or snowbird, built her nest in its side, and this year she, or another, is back again, a month earlier. It amuses me to see her come in with her beak full of dry grass to build a nest in a mow of dry grass. Her forbears have always built their nests in the sides of weedy or moss-grown banks in secluded fields and woodsides, and have used such material as they could find in these places. She is under the spell of these inherited habits, in all but the selection of the locality of her nest. In this she makes a new departure and, in so doing, shows how adaptive many of the wild creatures are. The bird has probably failed in her attempts to bring out a brood in the old places. I think three out of four of all such attempts on the part of ground-builders do fail. Within a few days, two sparrows’ nests in the pasture below me have been ‘harried ’ as the Scotch say. If they escape the sharp eyes of the crows by day, the skunks and foxes, or other night -prowlers, are pretty sure to smell them out at night. At any rate, my junco has decided on trying the shelter of the old barn. Here she is in danger from rats and cats and red squirrels, but at this season of the year she stands a fair chance of escape.

When she comes in with a wisp of outdoor rubbish in her beak, I should say she shows some nervousness, were it not for the fact that juncos always seem to be nervous. She flits about with her eye on me, and, after a few feints, flies up to her place on the side of the mow and disappears for a moment under the dropping locks of hay. Her nest is completed in two forenoons — a very simple and rude affair compared with the nest in May or June under a mossy bank by the woodside. For two or three days, she is not in evidence, when one morning I discover that the nest holds two eggs. Two days later it holds four, and the next day incubation has evidently begun. As she sits in the shadow of her little cavity in the mow, only her lightcolored beak shows me when she is on her nest. A heavy rope is stretched low across the barn-floor, and it is a pretty sight to see the bird approach the hay-mow along the rope, hopping nervously along, showing the two white quills in her tail, and wiping her beak over and over on the rope as she progresses. I think the beak-wiping, now on this side, now on that, is just another expression of her nervousness, or else of preoccupation, for surely her beak is clean. She gives no heed either to the swallows or the phœbes, nor they to her. Well, she is now fairly launched on her little voyage of maternity, and I shall do all I can to see that its issue is successful.

A week later, alas, it turned out to be the old story of the best-laid schemes of mice and men. Some serious mishap befell my little neighbor. One day she was missing from her nest from morning till night. The following morning her eggs were stone cold and the male bird was flitting about the barn and running along the beams as I entered, no doubt in an anxious state of mind about his mate. I could give him no clew to her whereabouts, and her fate is a mystery — captured, no doubt, by a hawk or a cat while out in quest of food.

The same day ill fortune overtook a queen bumble-bee who had a nest somewhere about the barn. She suddenly appeared on the ground in front, of my door in a great state of excitement. I inferred that she came from under the barn. She seemed suddenly to have discovered that she could not fly, and was making vain attempts to do so, in a state of painful agitation. She buzzed and rushed about amid the dry grass and loose straws like one beside herself. I went to her to give her a lift. She rushed up the twig I profferred her, then up my hand, shaking with excitement. From this coign of vantage she tried to launch herself into the air, but fell ingloriously to the ground. I saw that, her right wing was badly mutilated, not more than half of it remained, and flying was out of the question. But the poor queen would not have it so. She could not be convinced that she could not fly. The oftener she failed in her attempts, the more desperate she became. She always had flown, and now suddenly her wings failed her. She would climb up the taller spears of grass and make the attempt, and on stones and sticks. She could not accept her cruel fate. She finally rushed into the stonework, and I saw her no more. I am not certain that the queen bumble-bee makes a nuptial flight, like the queen of the hive bees, but probably she does, and this one may have left her near-by colony for the purpose, only to flounder ingloriously amid the weeds. Probably some anarchist insect had frayed and clipped her wing in her nest, having no more respect for royalty than for her humble subjects. There is no sphere of life so lowly that such tragedies and failures do not occur in it.