THE PALACE IN THE PIG-PEN
“You have taken a handful of my wooded acres,” says Nature to me, “and
if you have not improved them, you at least have changed them greatly.
But they are mine still. Be friendly now, go softly, and you shall
have them all--and I shall have them all, too. We will share them
together.”
And we do. Every part of the fourteen acres is mine, yielding some
kind of food or fuel or shelter. And every foot, yes, every foot, is
Nature’s; as entirely hers as when the thick primeval forest stood
here. The apple trees are hers as much as mine, and she has ten
different bird families that I know of, living in them this spring. A
pair of crows and a pair of red-tailed hawks are nesting in the
wood-lot; there are at least three families of chipmunks in as many of
my stone-piles; a fine old tree-toad sleeps on the porch under the
climbing rose; a hornet’s nest hangs in a corner of the eaves; a small
colony of swifts thunder in the chimney; swallows twitter in the
hay-loft; a chipmunk and a half-tame gray squirrel feed in the barn;
and--to bring an end to this bare beginning--under the roof of the
pig-pen dwell a pair of phœbes.
To make a bird-house of a pig-pen, to divide it between the pig and
the bird--this is as far as Nature can go, and this is certainly
enough to redeem the whole farm. For she has not sent an outcast or a
scavenger to dwell in the pen, but a bird of character, however much
he may lack in song or color. Phœbe does not make up well in a
picture; neither does he perform well as a singer; there is little to
him, in fact, but personality--personality of a kind and (may I say?)
quantity, sufficient to make the pig-pen a decent and respectable
neighborhood.
Phœbe is altogether more than his surroundings. Every time I go to
feed the pig, he lights upon a post near by and says to me, “It’s what
you are! Not what you do, but how you do it!”--with a launch into the
air, a whirl, an unerring snap at a cabbage butterfly, and an easy
drop to the post again, by way of illustration. “Not where you live,
but how you live there; not the feathers you wear, but how you wear
them--it is what you are that counts!”
There is a difference between being a “character” and having one. My
phœbe “lives over the pig,” but I cannot feel familiar with a bird
of his air and carriage, who faces the world so squarely, who settles
upon a stake as if he owned it, who lives a prince in my pig-pen.
Look at him! How alert, able, free! Notice the limber drop of his
tail, the ready energy it suggests. By that one sign you would know
the bird had force. He is afraid of nothing, not even the cold; and he
migrates only because he is a flycatcher, and is thus compelled to.
The earliest spring day, however, that you find the flies buzzing in
the sun, look for phœbe. He is back, coming alone and long before
it is safe. He was one of the first of my birds to return this spring.
And it was a fearful spring, this of which I am telling you. How
Phœbe managed to exist those miserable March days is a mystery. He
came directly to the pen as he had come the year before, and his
presence in that bleakest of Marches gave the weather its only touch
of spring.
The same force and promptness are manifest in the domestic affairs of
the bird. One of the first to arrive this spring, he was the first to
build and bring off a brood--or, perhaps, _she_ was. And the size of
the brood--of the broods, for there was a second, and a third!
Phœbe appeared without his mate, and for nearly three weeks he
hunted in the vicinity of the pen, calling the day long, and, toward
the end of the second week, occasionally soaring into the air,
fluttering, and pouring forth a small, ecstatic song that seemed
fairly forced from him.
These aerial bursts meant just one thing: _she_ was coming, was coming
soon! Was she coming or was he getting ready to go for her? Here he
had been for nearly three weeks, his house-lot chosen, his mind at
rest, his heart beating faster with every sunrise. It was as plain as
day that he knew--was certain--just how and just when something lovely
was going to happen. I wished I knew. I was half in love with her
myself; and I, too, watched for her.
On the evening of April 14th, he was alone as usual. The next morning
a pair of phœbes flitted in and out of the windows of the pen. Here
she was. Will some one tell me all about it? Had she just come along
and fallen instantly in love with him and his fine pig-pen? It is
pretty evident that he nested here last year. Was she, then, his old
mate? Did they keep together all through the autumn and winter? If so,
then why not together all the way back from Florida to Massachusetts?
Here is a pretty story. But who will tell it to me?
For several days after she came, the weather continued raw and wet, so
that nest-building was greatly delayed. The scar of an old, last
year’s nest still showed on a stringer, and I wondered if they had
decided on this or some other site for the new nest. They had not made
up their minds, for when they did start it was to make three
beginnings in as many places.
Then I offered a suggestion. Out of a bit of stick, branching at right
angles, I made a little bracket and tacked it up on one of the
stringers. It appealed to them at once, and from that moment the
building went steadily on.
Saddled upon this bracket, and well mortared to the stringer, the
nest, when finished, was as safe as a castle. And how perfect a thing
it was! Few nests, indeed, combine the solidity, the softness, and the
exquisite inside curve of Phœbe’s.
In placing the bracket, I had carelessly nailed it under one of the
cracks in the loose board roof. The nest was receiving its first
linings when there came a long, hard rain that beat through the crack
and soaked the little cradle. This was serious, for a great deal of
mud had been worked into the thick foundation, and here, in the
constant shade, the dampness would be long in drying out.
The builders saw the mistake, too, and with their great good sense
immediately began to remedy it. They built the bottom up thicker,
carried the walls over on a slant that brought the outermost point
within the line of the crack, then raised them until the cup was as
round-rimmed and hollow as the mould of Mrs. Phœbe’s breast could
make it.
The outside of the nest, its base, is broad and rough and shapeless
enough; but nothing could be softer and lovelier than the inside, the
cradle, and nothing drier, for the slanting walls of the nest shed
every drop from the leafy crack above.
Wet weather followed the heavy rain until long after the nest was
finished. The whole structure was as damp and cold as a newly
plastered house. It felt wet to my touch. Yet I noticed that the birds
were already brooding. Every night and often during the day I would
see one of them in the nest--so deep in, that only a head or a tail
showed over the round rim.
After several days I looked to see the eggs, but to my surprise found
the nest empty. It had been robbed, I thought, yet by what creature I
could not imagine. Then down cuddled one of the birds again--and I
understood. Instead of wet and cold, the nest to-day was warm to my
hand, and dry almost to the bottom. It had changed color, too, all the
upper part having turned a soft silver-gray. She (I am sure it was
she) had not been brooding her eggs at all; she had been brooding her
mother’s thought of them; and for them had been nestling here these
days and nights, _drying and warming_ their damp cradle with the fire
of her life and love.
In due time the eggs came,--five of them, white, spotless, and
shapely. While the little phœbe hen was hatching them, I gave my
attention further to the cock.
Our intimate friendship revealed a most pleasing nature in phœbe.
Perhaps such close and continued association would show like qualities
in every bird, even in the kingbird; but I fear only a woman, like
Mrs. Olive Thorne Miller, could find them in him. Not much can be said
of this flycatcher family, except that it is useful--a kind of virtue
that gets its chief reward in heaven. I am acquainted with only four
of the other nine Eastern members,--crested flycatcher, kingbird, wood
pewee, and chebec,--and each of these has some redeeming attribute
besides the habit of catching flies.
They are all good nest-builders, good parents, and brave, independent
birds; but aside from phœbe and pewee--the latter in his small way
the sweetest voice of the oak woods--the whole family is an odd lot,
cross-grained, cross-looking, and about as musical as a family of
ducks. A duck seems to know that he cannot sing. A flycatcher knows
nothing of his shortcomings. He believes he can sing, and in time he
will prove it. If desire and effort count for anything, he certainly
must prove it in time. How long the family has already been training,
no one knows. Everybody knows, however, the success each flycatcher of
them has thus far attained. It would make a good minstrel show,
doubtless, if the family would appear together. In chorus, surely,
they would be far from a tuneful choir. Yet individually, in the wide
universal chorus of the out-of-doors, how much we should miss the
kingbird’s metallic twitter and the chebec’s insistent call!
There was little excitement for phœbe during this period of
incubation. He hunted in the neighborhood and occasionally called to
his mate, contented enough perhaps, but certainly sometimes appearing
tired.
[Illustration: PHŒBE AND HER YOUNG]
One rainy day he sat in the pig-pen window looking out at the gray,
wet world. He was humped and silent and meditative, his whole attitude
speaking the extreme length of his day, the monotony of the drip,
drip, drip from the eaves, and the sitting, the ceaseless sitting, of
his brooding wife. He might have hastened the time by catching a few
flies for her or by taking her place on the nest; but I never saw him
do it.
Things were livelier when the eggs hatched, for it required a good
many flies a day to keep the five young ones growing. And how they
grew! Like bread sponge in a pan, they began to rise, pushing the
mother up so that she was forced to stand over them; then pushing her
out until she could cling only to the side of the nest at night; then
pushing her off altogether. By this time they were hanging to the
outside themselves, covering the nest from sight almost, until finally
they spilled off upon their wings.
Out of the nest upon the air! Out of the pen and into a sweet, wide
world of green and blue and of golden light! I saw one of the broods
take this first flight, and it was thrilling.
The nest was placed back from the window and below it, so that in
leaving the nest the young would have to drop, then turn and fly up to
get out. Below was the pig.
As they grew, I began to fear that they might try their wings before
this feat could be accomplished, and so fall to the pig below. But
Nature, in this case, was careful of her pearls. Day after day they
clung to the nest, even after they might have flown; and when they did
go, it was with a sure and long flight that carried them out and away
to the tops of the neighboring trees.
They left the nest one at a time and were met in the air by their
mother, who, darting to them, calling loudly, and, whirling about
them, helped them as high and as far away as they could go.
I wish the simple record of these family affairs could be closed
without one tragic entry. But that can rarely be of any family. Seven
days after the first brood were awing, I found the new eggs in the
nest. Soon after that the male bird disappeared. The second brood had
now been out a week, and in all that time no sight or sound was had of
the father.
What happened? Was he killed? Caught by a cat or a hawk? It is
possible; and this is an easy and kindly way to think of him. It is
not impossible that he may have remained as leader and protector to
the first brood; or (perish the thought!) might he have grown weary at
sight of the second lot of five eggs, of the long days and the neglect
that they meant for him, and out of jealousy and fickleness wickedly
deserted?
I hope it was death, a stainless, even ignominious death by one of my
neighbor’s many cats.
Death or desertion, it involved a second tragedy. Five such young ones
at this time were too many for the mother. She fought nobly; no mother
could have done more. All five were brought within a few days of
flight; then, one day, I saw a little wing hanging listlessly over the
side of the nest. I went closer. One had died. It had starved to
death. There were none of the parasites in the nest that often kill
whole broods. It was a plain case of sacrifice,--by the mother,
perhaps; by the other young, maybe--one for the other four.
But she did well. Nine such young birds to her credit since April. Who
shall measure her actual use to the world? How does she compare in
value with the pig? Weeks later I saw several of her brood along the
meadow fence hawking for flies. They were not far from my
cabbage-patch.
I hope a pair of them will return to me next spring and that they will
come early. Any bird that deigns to dwell under roof of mine commands
my friendship. But no other bird takes Phœbe’s place in my
affections; there is so much in him to like, and he speaks for so much
of the friendship of nature.
“Humble and inoffensive bird” he has been called by one of our leading
ornithologies--because he comes to my pig-pen! Inoffensive! this bird
with the cabbage butterfly in his beak! The faint and damning praise!
And humble? There is not a humble feather on his body. Humble to
those who see the pen and not the bird. But to me--why, the bird has
made a palace of my pig-pen!
The very pig seems less a pig because of this exquisite association;
and the lowly work of feeding the creature has been turned for me by
Phœbe into a poetic course in bird study.