In the Way They Should Go
I
THE barn was fearfully and wonderfully made; for, with scant knowledge of carpentry, I had built it myself. And when a pair of barn swallows came that first May after its completion, they soon discovered its advantages over ordinary barns; not only did they find many an unexpected shoulder on which they could safely place a nest, but random braces and superfluous crossties enough to make a barn swallow’s paradise.
How pleased I was that May morning when this pair of swallows came bustling in to inspect my handiwork, and pronounced it good by promptly starting a nest on a certain coign ol vantage that I had forgotten to knock away from the peak of two rafters. Plenty to do is the true basis of all domestic felicity, human or otherwise, and the bubbling joy that possessed that feathered couple as they built their new home with no spying neighbors to gossip about their occasional demonstrations of affection was a daily Te Deum.
The mud necessary for the nest the birds obtained from a puddle in front of the ‘oat sprouter,’ a device for germinating grain for poultry feed. I am not sure, but as I watched them I got the impression that Mrs. Swallow (I came to know her by a broken tail feather) made more trips to the puddle than her spouse.
The mud shell finished, the pair proceeded to line it as swallow’s nest surely never was lined before; for all about the buildings the ground was strewn with feathers of white Leghorn hens, and with these they filled the nest to overflowing, first one and then another slipping inside and gently working its breast round and round, until the mud foundation was quite hidden under a thick fringe of down.
II
One morning as I stood under the nest, the brown-speckled halves of a tiny eggshell gyrated down before me, and soon the waiting stillness that had reigned for days in the barn loft gave place to joyous twitterings and the beat of eager wrings bearing insects for the five gaping mouths that rose Jack-in-the-box-like from the edge of the nest whenever a parent appeared. For days the two birds skimmed over the surrounding country with a thoroughness that must have made serious inroads into the winged insect life of the neighborhood. With the first flush of dawn, the bird not covering the young left its perch (always near the nest) and soared high into the upper atmosphere, to which insects evidently were attracted by light from the not yet risen sun. As the light increased, it hunted nearer and nearer the ground, until by sunup it was skimming over the tops of the trees. At sundown the procedure was reversed, the bird rising higher and higher as the sun subsided below the horizon, sometimes returning to the barn barely in time to find its way to the nest through the thickening dusk.
As soon as the young were sufficiently feathered to need no protection during the day, both parents entered upon the strenuous and ever-growing business of feeding them. Occasionally I took refuge in the barn from a shower; but never, I soon discovered, did the swallows. Rain or shine, an insect was dropped with machine-like regularity into a gaping red gullet, the feeding progressing, as nearly as I could determine, from the right to the left of the nest with thorough impartiality. Occasionally, though, the second bird from the left, a husky youngster whose mouth was a little larger and whose head rose a little higher than the others, received an extra titbit.
The motion of the birds through the rain was fascinating to watch. They did not proceed as usual, with the rolling curves swift as sword thrusts which every bird lover associates with their flight, but zigzagged with a rapidity that the eye could scarcely follow, or tilted the body on edge until the wings were perpendicular to the earth. On one occasion when the raindrops were scattered and unusually large, the attempt of a bird to slip through between them as it left the shelter of the barn was unmistakable.
The first load of hay brought along with it trouble for the swallows. It was stowed directly under the nest, and the bustling and confusion kept the parent birds darting in and out in alarm for the safety of their brood. As load after load was brought in and the mow rose higher, all entrances to the loft were gradually closed except the narrow passage through which the hay was being forked. For a time the two birds flew back and forth the length of the loft in great distress, twittering continuously in a sharp, high key painful to the ears, and occasionally clinging to the roof with their rapier-like tails outspread, eyeing my every movement (I was working on the mow) with almost human suspicion.
At length the young ones, missing the continuous supply of insects that dropped into their mouths like manna from heaven, began to clamor and stretch their necks over the side of the nest. As in most domestic crises, it was mother who solved the problem. In sheer desperation, she of the broken tail feather darted down the narrow passage up which the hay was being shoved by the man on the load, and in a short time returned to her hungry brood with a fly. When she again departed her mate followed, and soon the pair were passing in and out without fear, sometimes ascending the passage along with a forkful of hay.
As the haymow rose higher I saw the birds from above as they came and went. It was a novel and unforgettable experience — such, possibly, as an aviator has when he looks down for the first time on a spot of earth he has viewed all his life from the ground. They would hover with outstretched wings just below my eyes, and the exquisite beauty of outline and color revealed to me was one of those experiences which we put on the credit side of life and draw upon for spiritual sustenance when it becomes hard to justify the ways of God to man.
III
Day after day the five mouths grew larger and the five bodies projected farther over the rim of the nest, until the home was so overcrowded that pushing and quarreling began. For some days the parents endured the bickering, fetching in insects with everincreasing frequency. Then began a series of happenings in the swallow family that were to me the most remarkable of anything I have ever witnessed in the feathered world.
The middle of one forenoon the mother arrived with a long-legged and wriggling orange-colored fly. At her approach, there was the usual ‘roughhouse,’ the expectant craning of necks; but the parent, instead of depositing the fly in one of the cavernous mouths, suddenly banked her wings and held it within an inch of the big fellow second from the left. As he reached for it she retreated, and he shrank back into the nest in evident alarm. But hunger made him bold, and on the second attempt to get it, when she had prudently shut off his view of the emptiness below with her body, he leaned too far out for the tempting morsel and toppled over the side. He dropped like a stone until he was within a few feet of the now greatly shrunken mow, when he spread his wings and flew drunkenly up to a board projecting from a rafter. Here he readjusted his wings with numerous little hitches, looked about in a dazed way, and then settled down with an air of ‘See what I did!’ comical to behold. By noon, after much tempting with orangecolored flies, the mother bird had her five young sitting side by side on the board. Here she fed them again as usual, although they jostled each other shamelessly whenever a fly was brought.
Some days passed, but the youngsters never left their perch, although there was a deal of wing testing, accomplished by thrusting their wings jerkily high over their backs. Then one morning I heard a humming that brought me into the barn with a rush. The unusual sound, I soon discovered, came from the mother’s wings. She would fly to the end of the barn loft, and then swoop down upon her brood in a truly alarming fashion, as if she fully intended to knock them off their perch. But at the last split second she would shoot upward, barely missing their cowering little bodies. The sharp banking of her wings at this juncture produced the unusual sound. Then Father Swallow joined in the strange performance, and between the two of them they kept the young birds in a state of perpetual panic.
The attacks, I noticed, always came a little to the left of the five, edging them nearer and nearer to the end of the board. Then the two bore down together with a vicious snapping of bills and a hissing sound very different from the usual pleasant twitter. This time the entire brood sidled over so far that the big fellow on the end was forced off the perch into space, soon to be followed by the others as the assaults, now directed anywhere along the line, increased in frequency and fury. The five young ones circled tipsily about the loft for a little, and then were skillfully shepherded by the parents into the open air.
Soon the seven of them were wheeling over the barn, the old ones catching flies, the youngsters imitating them with headlong and uncertain rushes. At the end of ten minutes or so they all returned to the top of the barn, sitting in a decorous row along the ridge. Here the young ones had their first sun bath, luxuriously stretching a wing or extending a tiny foot as the parents set them an example.
IV
From day to day the flights of the swallow family grew longer, although the young birds, occasionally unaccompanied by their parents, always returned to the roof of the barn to rest. Then one morning I found the seven of them down in the straw-littered yard in front of the barn. The mother walked leisurely up to a straw, took it daintily in her mouth, and, flying a few feet into the air, dropped it. The bright-eyed youngsters followed her every movement with a slow turning of the head, and when she had repeated the performance several times one of them tried to imitate her. He had raised a straw as high as the top of the fence, when it slipped from his bill; but the watchful mother darted toward it, and, seizing it before it reached the ground, carried it some ten feet into the air before, with a slight turn of the head, she let it fall. As it circled downward another youngster caught it, and soon the whole family was taking part in the merry game.
But the youngsters at length grew tired of playing with straws, and there was only one response to a spirited maternal example. One of the brood that had been most enthusiastic a little while before picked up a bright yellow wheat straw, but, instead of rising into the air with it, turned his head listlessly and deposited it on his shimmering steel-blue back. Then the mother showed real tact and resourcefulness. With a rolling motion delightful to look upon, she approached a downy feather from the breast of a white Leghorn hen, picked it up with a grace that made the beholder catch his breath, and, rising as high as the eaves of the barn, dropped it. The young birds followed each motion with bright, unwinking eyes, until one of them darted after the feather, which was now oscillating slowly downward, and bore it triumphantly aloft. With a jaunty air he dropped it as the parent had done, and soon a game of ‘Feather, feather, who’s got the feather?’ was in full swing. Clearly the youngsters were having their first lesson in the art of gathering material for nest building.
V
Now comes the part of this narrative that I hesitate to set down. Of the facts there is not the slightest doubt. My interpretation of them may be in error, but I do not think so. When the youngsters tired of playing with feathers as they had tired of playing with straws, the two old birds flew up to the fence, and, sitting close beside each other, went through all the endearing motions preliminary to mating, the young ones looking gravely on. Again and again the parents flew to the ground and back to the fence, each time repeating their demonstrations of affection. Then two young birds flew up beside them and proceeded to go through the same demonstrations. After a little a second couple joined them, and there sat three pairs of loving swallows in a row. The odd one, the smallest of the brood, flew up also, but sat soberly by itself — a spinster, perhaps, not from choice but from necessity.
Two pertinent questions arise here. Was this permanent mating, or just a lesson in courtship? Only banding and the fortunate return of the young to the nesting place of the parents could determine this.
Also, was the odd bird a mere chance happening, — the result of superfluous energy on the part of the parents, — or was it a provision for the average mortality that attends the raising of a brood of swallows, leaving two couples after death had taken its usual toll? Many other birds lay an even number of eggs. Are their chances of survival greater than those of barn swallows, thus relieving nature of this safeguard against extinction?
If this were permanent mating, the sex of the young would have to be predetermined. In the case of hens, I know from long experience that a hatch of a thousand chicks will always give very close to five hundred of each sex — clearly an argument in favor of the assumption that the young swallows were permanently mated.
On the other hand, if this were not permanent mating, the odd bird might find a partner in another brood similarcircumstanced, thus providing against too close inbreeding. But where, and under what circumstances, would there be an opportunity for this selection? While massed on the roof of barns, or perched by thousands on telegraph wires, I have never seen the slightest indication of pairing off. Do the birds find an opportunity for selecting a mate during their winter sojourn in the South? Or is my conjecture that the mating I saw on the fence that morning was permanent the answer to the question?
In a few days swallows gathered in such numbers that, when they settled down to rest, the roof of the barn was dark with them. Then they departed for the many telegraph wires that follow the trunk railways in the adjacent Puyallup Valley. For a few days the barn was silent. Then one morning while I was milking I heard a familiar twittering in the loft, and, going round, found the two old swallows busy relining their nest. Clearly they had renewed their youth, gone off on a honeymoon, and were now ready to start a second family. At the end of a week I put up a ladder and counted the eggs. There were three — not five, as marked the result of the first honeymoon. Ah, Father Time!
I was passing the barn one morning a few days later, when five swallows darted into the loft, and with a joyous swoop made for the old familiar nest. But at its edge they paused, abruptly banking their wings. For they were met by a perfect fury of a mother, who sprang from the nest and drove them out of the barn.
She had brought them up in the way they should go, — line upon line, precept upon precept, so to speak, — and after that thorough preparation for the fight of life they must shift for themselves.