Flight School

The pole barn where I keep my planter tractor has a nest of barn swallows. The nest is new this year. You can see where, along the truss, they started three different ones, mud foundations they found unsuitable, before settling on the fourth that they built to its complete cup.

Barn swallows trail a row crop farmer’s every move, and it is hard not to construct a relationship. The birds arrive at about the same time flying insects do, and they stay the season in constant patrol of our fields.

A lot of people are under the impression that birds are gentle, mere artistry, God’s dalliance to mark the sky for man’s meal and pleasure.

As I enter the barn, I am rebuffed by a defending parent. She flies straight for me and, with her two-tone assault call, she berates me. Very much like a jet fighter, she swoops down over me, then banks a hard reverse turn; still angrily crying, she comes back for another pass.

In a few weeks’ time, four mouths appear at the rim of the nest. Then just three.

With no ability to help, I monitor the brood. As I change the seed plates in the planter — from winter squash back to carrots — I kneel behind the tractor and listen to the frequency with which the adults return with food. Every 30 to 45 seconds, the nest erupts in a begging chorus of peeping.

The babies rapidly turn from mouths that gape and wildly strain at the flit of its parent’s returning wing, and then close and quickly settle back to sleep, to mouths with beady, black eyes. They sleep less as they mature. They watch me watching them.

They are quickly fully feathered; it seems impossible that anything can grow so fast. I see their shoulders as they jostle for position. Soon, the nest is no longer big enough to hold them, and this day they are out, along the rafter.

The parents’ trips are less frequent than before, but the young ones’ begging is hardly diminished. As I look up from my task, I realize that the commotion today is flight school. The adult has food, but rather than give it to any of her charges, she lands near them and then alights on the adjacent rafter. She demonstrates flight and tempts with food.

It is an animated classroom. The young protest, they lift and stretch their wings, they flutter a little and nearly fall off. Reaching toward her, they bump into each other. Everyone is chortling, and I am guessing that’s the dad sitting a little higher up; those calls must be shouts of encouragement.

Finally, one makes the leap. I could watch this for hours, though it probably won’t take them hours to master those wings.

Farmers might be able to get some help with pests from the birds, but the birds do not pull weeds. For that, I need to develop relationships with people, in particular teenagers who want summer jobs.

As I walk behind my young employee, I am explaining the virtues and the importance of weeding. I stand beside him and demonstrate technique. My efforts are not met with much success.

I consider the birds. Their advantage is literal: If the young want to eat, they must learn to fly.