Читать книгу Gray Lady and the Birds: Stories of the Bird Year for Home and School - Mabel Osgood Wright - Страница 29

Table of Contents

Five Swallows and a Changeling

“I wonder if there is a child living in the real country who does not know a Swallow by sight the moment its eyes rest upon the bird? I think not, and a great many people who are only in the country at midsummer and in early autumn also know the Swallows, even though they cannot tell the different kinds apart, for during the nesting time, as well as the flocking period that follows, Swallows are conspicuous birds of the air and leaders of the birds that might be grouped as “The Fleetwings.” For not only do Swallows get their food while on the wing, now pursuing it through the upper air if the day is fair, now sweeping low over meadow, pond, and river if the clouds hang heavy and insect life keeps near to the ground, but during the flocking season, when the separate families join in the community life that they live through the winter, the Swallows are constantly on the wing.

“The day that we had the orchard party you all noticed the Swallows flying over the pond between the orchard and river woods, sometimes alighting so close together on the bushes as to be as thick as the leaves, and then again stringing along the telegraph wires, above the highway, some heading one way and some another until, evidently at a signal, they flew off again and disappeared in the distance, until they seemed but a cloud of smoke.

“We agreed, I think, some time ago, that it is much better to learn the real names of people, animals, and flowers than to simply give general names. It is more definite to say, “I saw a Swallow” flying over the moor or meadow, than to say, “I saw a bird” flying over the meadow; but it would be more interesting still if we tell the name of the particular kind of Swallow that was seen, for among the many kinds that exist at least five are quite common, according to the part of the United States in which one lives.

“Can any of you tell me the names of these Swallows, how they differ in plumage, and where they live? I can see by Dave’s face that he knows something about them and I think Sarah Barnes does also, while as for Tommy Todd, both hands are up in spite of jack-knife and the windmill he is making and he can hardly wait for me to stop.

“Now, Tommy, how many kinds of Swallows do you know?”

“Three!” he replied promptly. “Barn Swallows, and Chimney Swallows, and Dirt Swallows!”

“I have heard of Barn and Chimney Swallows, but never of a Dirt Swallow. Please describe it to me,” said Gray Lady, looking interested.

Tommy hesitated for a minute, for it is one thing to know a bird by sight, but quite another to carry a correct picture of it in your mind’s eye and then put it into words.

“A Dirt Swallow is pretty small and a kind of a dirty colour on top and a stripe across his chest, the rest white, and his tail hasn’t sharp points, and he isn’t blue and shiny like a Barn Swallow. He doesn’t build a nice nest like the others, but bores a hole right into a dirt bank, ever so far in, like a Kingfisher does, just like he was a ground-hog, and puts feathers in at the end for a nest. That’s why we call ’em Dirt Swallows. There’s a bank above Uncle Hill’s gravel-pit that’s full of the holes, and another bank full right at Farm’s End above the sand beach where we camped a week last summer. The way I found out about the holes was by diggin’ down a piece back of the edge of the bank, for sometimes they bore as much as four feet. The eggs are real white, not spotted like Barn Swallows’, ’cause we found a couple of bad ones, that hadn’t hatched, among the feathers.” Here Tommy paused for breath, his face all aglow with eagerness.

“That,” said Gray Lady, “is a very good and clear description of the Bank Swallow, which is the English name that the Wise Men have given the little bird that you call the Dirt Swallow. As the bird always burrows its nesting-hole in a bank and never in field earth or the flat ground as a woodchuck does, Bank Swallow is decidedly the better name.”

Meanwhile Tommy had glanced hastily out of the window to where birds were constantly leaving and settling on the long-distance telephone wires that strung together the long poles that walked by the door, and up the hillside, striding across lots where they chose, regardless of the road. Slipping from his seat to the window, he took a second look and then said in a harsh whisper, as if afraid that the birds would hear him and take fright, “Gray Lady, there’s Bank Swallows mixed in with the Barn Swallows on the wires, and I’m sure there’s another kind besides, with a shiny back and all white in the breast. Wouldn’t you please come out and look? If we go around the schoolhouse, they won’t notice us from the other side, but we can see them.”

Gray Lady gave a signal and the girls and boys dropped the sewing and whittling quickly on their desks and, following her lead, stole out on tiptoe, one after the other, like the little pickaninnies when they sing, “The bogey man’ll ketch yer if yer doant watch out!”

There, to be sure, were the Swallows, hundreds of them, all twittering cheerfully and none of them sitting still even though they were perching, but pluming themselves, and stretching their wings, the feathers of which they seemed to comb with a peculiar backward movement of one claw.

As Gray Lady scanned the rows she saw brilliant Barn Swallows in little groups alternating with the sober-cloaked Bank Swallows, and then half a dozen each of two other species that were not so familiar.

“Bring me the opera-glasses from the little bag that is with my hat and gloves,” she said softly to Sarah Barnes. Then, motioning the children to keep still, she crossed the road to a point where, the sunlight falling behind her, she could look up at the wires without becoming dazzled, but as she did so the entire flock left the wires, and wheeling went down over the corn-field toward the reeds and low woods that bordered the mill-pond.

“You were quite right, Tommy,” said Gray Lady, as they still stood looking at the wires in the hope that the birds might return; “there were not only three but four kinds of Swallows in that flock. The birds with the slightly forked tails, beautiful shining steel-blue and green cloaks, and satiny white underparts are Tree Swallows that do not nest near here, but stop with us on their spring and fall journeys, and the others that you did not notice, because in the distance they look somewhat like Barn Swallows, except that they lack the forked tail, are Cliff or Eaves Swallows, as they are called in this part of the country, where they are rather uncommon.

“Now we will go in and I will ask Tommy Todd, who writes very clearly, to put on the board the names of these four Swallows, and the particular thing about them that will help you to tell them apart.

“No, I am afraid that they are not coming back,” said Gray Lady, after they had waited a couple of minutes more, “and they may all leave us suddenly any day now, though the Barn Swallow often stays into October and the White-Breasted almost to November.”

A wagon loaded with rye straw and drawn by a yoke of oxen came creaking up the hill and paused on the level place in front of the school. The teamster was Jared Hill’s grandfather,—the man who did not believe in play or playthings. As his far-sight was rather poor, he did not notice that the lady with the children was not Miss Wilde.

“Wal, teacher,” he called, as he leaned against his load, and tried in vain to discover the object at which the group was gazing, “what’s up thet there pole, a possum or a runaway hand-orgin monkey, or mebbe it’s the balloon got loose from Newbury Fair grounds?”

“No, nothing so unusual as that; we have been watching the flocking of the Swallows,” said Gray Lady, her silvery voice sounding clearly even in these deaf ears.

“Swallers!—out er school watchin’ Swallers?” exclaimed old Mr. Hill, taking the long straw that he was chewing from between his teeth in questioning amazement. “Shucks! what’s Swallers good fer, anyhow? Gee—haw, Cain! Shish, Abel! We’d best move on; I reckon this isn’t any place fer folks with something to do!” And thus addressing his oxen, the load went slowly on.

With the mischievous twinkle still lingering in her eyes, Gray Lady asked Tommy Todd to go to the blackboard as soon as the children settled down to their work again, and this is what he wrote at Gray Lady’s dictation:—