The barn swallows.

When we first moved to this house, there was a nest of barn swallows on the front porch. The nest was up high, hidden from the wind, safe from the rain (if we had had any rain). There were five tiny baby birds in that nest, all screaming at once for dinner. Back and forth the mama bird went...... and we think her mate was also feeding the birds because there were clearly two adult barn swallows flying back and forth all day long with food for those tiny birds.

As busy as we were with the unpacking and settling-in, we made sure to keep watching those birds. I was thrilled one day when I unpacked the box with the binoculars-- we could see the baby birds up close, which is how we realized there were five babies, not three, as we originally thought.

The five babies weren't all that cute at first... just a mass of wet feathers and huge yellow beaks that seemed to always be wide open. Every few days, however, their feathers got more fluffy and they looked as if they were growing into those big Angelina Jolie-beaks. Still, the adult birds would fly back and forth, back and forth....... and they got to trust us as we sat out on the front porch having lunch and taking a break from unpacking the boxes that never seemed to end.

One day as we sat out there, we saw two of the baby birds perched on the rim of their nest. "Today's the day.... those birds are going to fly out." Before mid-afternoon that day, two of the baby birds were out of the nest and on top of the wide woodwork on the inside of the porch. Two others were on one of the fan-lights on the porch ceiling... and one bird was sitting next to the nest, as close as he could get without still being inside the twig-and-mud nest. The baby birds flew back and forth, from the woodwork to the nest, from the fan to the nest.... not going much further on that first day.

The next morning, as we had been doing every morning since the day the birds hatched, we looked out the window and into the nest. That particular morning, all five baby birds were on the fan-light... each baby bird sitting on top of a fan blade, and the breeze was blowing the fan-blades in a slow circle. The baby barn swallows were just sitting there, enjoying the ride, enjoying the view. Their own private carousel, free as little birds can be, without being too far away from their safe little nest.

The baby birds got to flying around the yard during the day and would come back to the nest every night to sleep. As they grew, the nest got a bit crowded, but they stuffed themselves in there, with the last one landing being the luckiest bird in the nest because he was on top of all the others. With the binoculars, we could see the smooshed ones near the bottom. But they were very content, very close, and I'm sure they all felt very safe.

For the past few weeks now, we haven't seen the birds go near that nest.... neither the adults nor the babies. The nest is still intact, and we'll leave it where it is even though it's empty. The baby birds, however, are still hanging around the property, I think. Every afternoon, along with some brown sparrows and a cardinal or two, there are five blue and brown birds in the water fountain, which sometimes I mistakenly call the birdbath. I call it that, not meaning to, for the simple reason that the birds are having a grand old time splashing around in each of the levels every day, whether the fountain is turned on or not.

If the fountain is on, the birds stay closer to the edges, getting sprayed with the falling water rather than actually sitting in the water itself. When the birds are properly bathed, they will fly to the fence in front of the house, spreading and fluffing their wings to let the sun dry their feathers while they enjoy the view.

I can't be sure if those birds out there in the fountain are the same baby birds that were in the nest on our porch, but I like to think they are. Our neighbors tell us that the barn swallows will return to their nesting area year after year, even though they may not use the same nest. It seems silly to me to build a new nest from scratch when there's a perfectly good one right up there, but I guess everyone likes to re-decorate now and then.



A quote from Anais Nin-- "We don't see things as they are... we see them as we are."