Part 19

“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:—

Barn Swallow. You will know it by its glistening steel-blue and chestnut feathers and forked tail. Builds mud nests in barns and outbuildings. Comes in middle April; leaves in September and early October. Nests all through North America up to Arctic regions. Winters in tropics as far south as Brazil.

Tree Swallow. Glistening cloak—pure white breast. Nests in hollow trees or, lacking these, in bird-boxes. Comes in April; leaves in October. Nests in places up to Alaska and Labrador and winters in our southern states south to the tropics.

Bank Swallow. Dull brown cloak with band across chest. Nests in deep horizontal holes in banks. Comes in April; leaves in September and October. Nests like White Breast up to Alaska and Labrador. Winters in the tropics. The smallest Swallow.

Cliff or Eaves Swallow. Pure white band on forehead. Otherwise brightly coloured with steel-blue, chestnut, gray, rusty, and white. Where there are no rocky cliffs for its nesting colonies, they build under the eaves of barns, etc. Nests in North America to Arctic regions. Winters in the tropics.

“Here you have a short description of four Swallows we have seen this afternoon,” said Gray Lady, as Tommy came to the end of the board and only finished by squeezing up the letters. “There is another Swallow, the big cousin of these, called the Purple Martin, with shiny bluish black cloak and light underparts. This beautiful Martin has a soft, musical voice, and is very sociable and affectionate, and even in spring, when the birds have mated, they still like to live in colonies and are very good neighbours among themselves. They were once plentiful and nested in tree holes or houses made purposely for them, but, since the English Sparrow has come, it has pushed its way into their homes and turned them out, so now they are rare, and perhaps you children may never have seen one.

“There was always a high post with a Martin box holding a couple of dozen families up at ‘the General’s’ as far back as I first remember, but during our absence no one watched to keep the Sparrows out, the Martins left, and the house went to decay. Jacob has made a new house, and we will not set it up until next Saturday, so that you can see how it is divided—a room for each family and too high from the ground for cats to reach. We shall keep the house covered with a cloth all winter, so that the Sparrows cannot move in before the Martins return, and in this way we may coax them to come back again and live with us. Then, who knows, perhaps some one of the Kind Hearts’ Club may have patience and take the trouble to build a house and then Purple Martins may become plentiful in Fair Meadow township.

“You heard what Farmer Hill asked a few minutes ago,—‘What’s Swallers good fer, anyhow?’ I want you all to be able to answer this question whenever you hear it asked.

“In the first place Swallows do no manner of harm; they neither eat fruits nor useful berries, nor do they disturb the nests and eggs of other birds. They are beautiful objects in the air, and their laughing twitter when on the wing is a sound that we should miss as much as many real bird songs.

“‘These are pleasant qualities,’ some may say, ‘but not exactly useful.’ Listen! As these Swallows are Fleetwings and always birds of the air, so they are sky sweepers, living upon flying insects that few other birds may take, and the large amount of these that they consume is almost beyond belief; so watch when they come back next spring on their return as they fly over the cattle in the pasture, or over the pond surface teeming with insect life. If they do nothing else, they earn their living one and all by mosquito-killing, and the Wise Men of to-day know that the sting of one sort of mosquito is not merely an annoyance, but that it pushes the germ of malaria and other bad diseases straight into the blood.

“Not only are Swallows harmless and useful in the places where they nest, but are equally useful in all their journeyings through the south. Some birds, like the Bobolink, are both useful and harmless where they nest, but do harm as they travel, for when the Bobolink leaves for the south he goes into the rice-fields, eating the rice grains in late summer and plucking up the young rice in the spring. This, of course, gives him a bad name in the rice-growing regions through which he passes.

“But the Swallow only destroys the evil insects as it journeys through the south, and yet in spite of this, cruel, or at best thoughtless, people kill them for the mere sport of killing, for no white man could pretend to eat Swallow pie, and the great flocks are tempting marks for ‘sportsmen’ of this class. Then, too, the noise made at the places where these birds roost, especially the Martins, has served as an excuse for shooting them in numbers.

“If the people in the southern states would only fully understand that Swallows destroy the boll-weevil that damages the cotton in the pod, they surely would not allow a feather of these little workers to be injured.

“How I wish we could have a Kind Hearts’ Club in every district school in the south, so that the children there might help us to protect the birds during the time that they are beyond our reach.”

Gray Lady paused and turned the leaves of her scrap-book, as if she was searching for something. “Ah! here it is!” she said at last, half to herself. “The Wise Men at Washington who find out for us all the facts about the useful birds have been writing about these Swallows, and say that everything should be done not only to protect them but in every way to aid their increase by providing homes for them. Let us hear what more they say about these five that I have just described to you.”