The Palace in the Pig-pen

It is certainly a humble environment. The delicious spring of water, the plenty of wild, cool air, and the clean pavement of loose stones do not surround this home as they did the home of Mr. Burroughs’s phoebes, nor does this look “out upon some wild scene and overhung by beetling crags.” Instead, this phoebe’s nest is stuck close up to the low board roof in my pig-pen.

“You have taken a handful of my wooded acres,” says Nature, “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 an average of ten different bird families, living in them every spring. A pair of crows and a pair of red-tailed hawks are nesting in the woodlot; there are at least three families of chipmunks in as many of my stone piles; a fine old tree toad (his fourth season now) 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 hayloft; 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 this pair of phoebes.

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. Phoebe 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 quantity, sufficient to make the pig-pen a decent and respectable neighborhood.

Phoebe 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. “Jim” Crow is a character, largely because he has so little. That is why he is “Jim.” My phoebe lives over the pig, but he has no nickname like the crow. 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 phoebe. He is back. The first of my birds to return in the spring is he, often beating the bluebird and robin by almost a week. It was a fearful spring, the spring of 1904. How phoebe 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 made it almost spring.

The same force and promptness are manifest in the domestic affairs of the bird. The first to arrive that spring, he was also the first to build and bring off a brood,—or, perhaps, She was. And the size of the brood—of the broods, for the second one is now a-wing, and there may yet be a third!

Phoebe 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, flapping 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, half jealous of him, and I, too, watched for her.

But she was not for me. On the evening of April 14, he was alone as usual. The next morning a pair of phoebes 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? There are foolish female birds; and there are records of just such love affairs; but this was too early in the season. It is pretty evident that he nested here last year. Was she his old mate, as Wilson believes? Did they keep together all through the autumn and winter, all the way from Massachusetts to Florida and back? Or was she a new bride, who had promised him before he left Florida? If so, then how did she know where to find him?

Here is a pretty story. But who will tell it to me?

What followed is a pretty story, too, had I a lover’s pen with which to write it,—the story of his love, of their love, and of her love especially, which was last and best.

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.

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, down near the lower end of the roof. It appealed to the birds at once, and from that moment the building went steadily on.

Saddled upon this bracket, as well as mortared to the stringer, the nest, when finished, was as safe as a castle. And how perfect a thing! Few nests, indeed, combine the solidity, the softness, and the exquisite curve of phoebe’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 wall over on a slant that brought the outermost point within the crack, then raised the whole nest until the cup was as round-rimmed and hollow as the mould of the bird’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 shed every drop from the leaky crack.

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 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 felt warm to my hand; it was 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 hen was hatching them I gave my attention further to the cock.

I am writing this with a black suspicion overhanging him. But of that later. I hope it is unfounded, and I shall give him the benefit of the doubt. A man is innocent until proved guilty. I have no positive evidence of Mr. Phoebe’s wrong.

Our intimate friendship has revealed a most pleasing nature in phoebe. 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 members,—great-crest, kingbird, pewee, and chebec,—and each of these has some redeeming attributes besides the habit of catching flies.

They are all good nest-builders, good parents, and brave, independent birds; but aside from phoebe 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 any shortcoming. He knows 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. According to Mr. Chapman’s authority, the five rarer members perform as follows: the olive-sided swoops from the tops of the tallest trees uttering “pu-pu” or “pu-pip”; the yellow-bellied sits upon the low twigs and sneezes a song, an abrupt “pse-ek,” explosive and harsh, produced with a painful, convulsive jerk; the Acadian by the help of his tail says “spee” or “peet,” now and then a loud “pee-e-yÚk,” meanwhile trembling violently; Trail’s flycatcher jerks out his notes rapidly, doubling himself up and fairly vibrating with the explosive effort to sing “ee-zee-e-up”; the gray kingbird says a strong, simple “pitirri.”

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.

I should hate to hear the flycatchers all together. 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 phoebe during this period of incubation. He hunted in the neighborhood and occasionally called to his mate, contented enough perhaps, but certainly sometimes appearing tired. 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 golden light! I saw the second brood take their first flight, and it was thrilling.

The nest was placed back from and below the window, so that in leaving it 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 a 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 a-wing, I found the new eggs in the nest. Soon after that the male bird disappeared. The second brood has now been out a week, and in all this time no sight or sound has been 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. Nor is it impossible that he may have remained as leader and protector to the first brood, or (perish the thought!) might he perhaps 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 dozen 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 these birds. 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? Yesterday I saw several of her brood along the meadow fence hawking for flies. They were not far from my cabbage patch.

I hope that a pair of them returns to me another spring, and that they come early. Any bird that deigns to dwell under roof of mine commands my friendship; but no other bird takes phoebe’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 by phoebe into an Æsthetic course in bird study.