An Appreciation of Swallows...and of Edward Howe Forbush

Tree Swallow, West Kennebunk, ME

One day late in the summer of 1984 I was mowing a nice crop of rowen in the upper part of the big field that we called the Drake Lot, on the family farm in western Massachusetts. It was a gorgeous, damn-near perfect August day; sunny, with a few white puffy clouds in an otherwise clear blue sky, temperature in the mid-70s, just a bit of a breeze blowing. The air was crisp and dry; I knew that the grass I was cutting would be ready for raking and baling by the next afternoon. It was the kind of day when riding a tractor for a several hours was as pleasant an activity as anything else I might have been doing.

After I'd been around the field three or four times I was delighted to find myself accompanied by a sizable flock of swallows. They were constantly in motion, swooping and diving gracefully as they feasted on the insects that the mower was stirring up. Birds would come in low over the field behind me, flying swiftly over the swath I'd just cut. They'd snatch up a few morsels as the grass fell, go into a vertical climb over the mower, bank sharply to the right or left, then loop back to make another circuit. Others would come in from the sides, or the front, sweeping as many bugs as they could into their open mouths as they flew. With all the activity it was impossible to get anything approaching a precise count but there were at least a couple of dozen birds following me. Their numbers swelled with each successive lap I made around the field.

Their aerial acrobatics were such a joy to watch that it was all I could do to keep my mind on the mowing. The grace, speed, and precision of their flight was enthralling. George Lucas and his cohorts must have had the flight of swallows in mind when they developed some of the maneuvers of the tie fighters and other small spacecraft in the battle scenes of the Star Wars movies.

As the multitude of birds around me grew, I started to pay more attention to just what kinds of swallows they were. The familiar Barn Swallows, with their blue backs, reddish-orange bellies, and long forked tails, were much in evidence. They were equaled or perhaps surpassed in number by Tree Swallows, whose iridescent gunmetal blue-green backs and pristine white undersides flashed brilliantly in the afternoon sun.

I eventually realized, however, that there were a couple of other, much less-familiar species in the mix. Some had brown backs, and white bellies similar to the Tree Swallows but with brown bands across their upper chests. Their tails had a bit of a fork in them, though nowhere near as pronounced as those of the Barn Swallows. Others had coloration somewhat similar to Barn Swallows but were chunkier, and lacked the classic forked "swallowtail." I scratched my head about these two and resigned myself to having to look them up when I got back to the house for dinner.

Upon reaching home I turned to one of the few bird books I owned at the time: A Natural History of American Birds of Eastern and Central North America. This is essentially an abridged version of Edward Howe Forbush's monumental three volume work, Birds of Massachusetts and other New England States (1925-1929). I quickly learned that the brown birds with the chest stripes were Bank Swallows, a species I knew about but had seen only rarely. Cool. Even cooler was learning that the more colorful ones were Cliff Swallows, a species that was entirely new to me. I had not yet begun keeping a life list at this time but it was still a great treat to have spotted, and learned about, a new bird.

The real joy of doing this bit of research, however, came when I turned to Forbush's description of the Barn Swallow: 
No bird in North America is better known or more truly the friend and companion of man than the swift and graceful Barn Swallow. It nests within his buildings, and with a flight that seems the very 'poetry of motion' it follows the cattle afield or swoops about the house dog as he rushes through the tall grass, and gathers up the flying insects disturbed by his clumsy progress. When the mowing machine takes the field, there is a continual rush of flashing wings over the rattling cutter-bar just where the grass is trembling to its fall. The Barn Swallow delights to follow everybody and everything that stirs up flying insects--even the rush and roar of the modern juggernaut, the motor-car, has no terrors for it.

Wow. It was as if he'd not only been riding along with me on the tractor as I mowed, but had crawled inside my head and described what I'd been seeing. It was more than a little spooky to read something that I felt as if I could have written myself...though Forbush said it better than I could have.

Although I'd been familiar with Forbush's work for some time, up until that afternoon I had not fully appreciated what a fine descriptive writer he was. This was far from the last time that I would turn to him for information about some bird or bit of behavior that had aroused my curiosity, and have him describe exactly what it was that I had just seen. In an earlier post I wrote about watching a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers working away on a pine tree near my house. Forbush, writing roughly ninety years earlier, summed up what I saw quite well:
Pileated Woodpeckers are such powerful birds that they can split off large slabs from decaying stumps, strip bushels of bark from dead trees, and chisel out large holes in either sound, dead, or decaying wood. They like to strip the bark from dead pines, spruces, and especially hemlocks. Their size and strength and their long spear-like tongues enable them to penetrate large trees and draw out borers from the very heart of the tree.

Where I live now, on the banks of the Mousam River in southern Maine, I often enjoy the sight of Wood Ducks cruising past on the open stream, or paddling around the boggy backwaters. Again, Forbush's description of watching these striking ducks matches exactly what I have observed myself. He writes with such grace, beauty, and affection that reading his words brings another whole level of enjoyment and appreciation to the experience: 

Male Wood Duck, Murfreesboro, TN

See that mating pair on the dark and shaded flood of a little woodland river; they seem to float as lightly as the drifting leaves. The male glides along proudly, his head ruffled and his crest distended, his scapular feathers raised and lowered at will, while his plumes flash with metallic luster wherever the sun's rays sifting through the foliage intercept his course. She coyly retires; he daintily follows, exhibiting all his graces, the darkling colors of his plumage relieved by the pure white markings of head and breast and the bright reds of feet and bill and large lustrous eye.

Forbush wrote with knowledge and affection in equal measure. I will repeat the quote from Joseph Kastner about Forbush that I included in a previous post: "Going through his volumes is like going along on a long bird walk, getting to know birds through the eyes and ears and feelings of scores of birders--all their perceptions filtered through the mind of one of the finest and most literate ornithologists the country has ever known." Would that I could tag along with him on such a walk.

Forbush, who lived from 1858 to 1929, was writing in and of a New England that has now largely vanished, the New England of family farms, open country, and minimal suburban sprawl. It was a quieter world, a world in which "the rush and roar of the modern juggernaut, the motor-car" had only begun to make incursions. Although my bird-loving, farming father was of a generation after Forbush, he still lived much of his life in this same world.

I came along only at the tail end of this era but it has, in many ways defined me as well, particularly in my relationship with, and love for, birds. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to grow up doing things like mowing hay in the summer while swallows swarmed around me, and fixing fence in the spring when the woods and pastures were filled with the sights and sounds of warblers and other returning migrants, and hauling wood in the fall with flocks of southbound Canada Geese honking overhead. I am grateful also to have had a father who had an interest in, and was knowledgeable about, birds. As I have written previously, my father's copy of volume 3 of Forbush's Birds of Massachusetts was one of the books that set me on the path of my own efforts to learn about birds. These factors combine to give me an attachment to Forbush and his work that I simply do not get from any modern field guide or smartphone birding app.

I intend to write more about Forbush in the future, and examine some of his books, but for now I'll wrap up this post by returning to swallows. Tree Swallows this time. Forbush wrote of them:
In August, thousands of Tree Swallows, with other species, arrive at the seashore, where they roost in the marshes. They scatter about in the daytime, feeding on insects and berries. Their numbers continue to grow by accessions from the interior, until many thousands are gathered along the coast. Sometimes they alight on telegraph wires, covering them for miles, or they may light on the beaches until the sand is black with their hosts.

I experienced this phenomenon first-hand while visiting Plum Island, near Newburyport, Massachusetts, in September of 2012. Tree Swallows filled the air around me--many hundreds more than had accompanied me while I was mowing back in 1984! It was hard to believe that these were birds; it felt more as if I was caught in a swarm of very large insects.

I had my camera with me that day and captured a bit of the experience:

The human world may, indeed, have undergone vast changes between the time Forbush wrote about the late summer gathering of Tree Swallows and the day I found myself in the midst of a virtual cloud of them, but this seasonal behavior of the birds continues. The timelessness of this annual mustering of swallows makes Forbush's description of it equally timeless; his words are just as apt today as they were when he wrote them decades ago. I take comfort in this.

Birder's Bookshelf 2: Joseph Kastner, "A World of Watchers"

Joseph Kastner, A World of Watchers, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.

Whereas Kastner's first book, A Species of Eternity, was a broad survey of the development of the study of natural history in North America, A World of Watchers, his second, is a focused look at the history of bird watching.* Chronologically, Watchers picks up more or less where Eternity left off, i.e., in the latter half of the 19th century. Which makes sense. The men whose work was chronicled in the first book laid the broad foundation of knowledge in all the various areas that can be said to comprise the study of natural history. In this book, Kastner writes of the men--and now also some women--who built on this foundation and began to delve deeply into one particular branch of the field, i.e., the study of birds and bird life.

In today's world, bird watching, or birding, is among the most popular forms of outdoor activity. According to one study from 2011, there currently are an estimated 47 million bird watchers over the age of sixteen in the U.S. Birding clubs are numerous; anyone who develops an interest in birds and wants to flock together with similar-minded folks can find a local club without much difficulty.**

Things were not always so, of course. Early avian enthusiasts were, by and large, few and far between, folks who pursued their passion in relative isolation. Kastner tells us (p. 4 and Chapter 3) that the first organized bird club was not established until 1873, when the Nuttall Ornithological Club was founded in Cambridge, Mass. The formal organization was an outgrowth of the activities of two young ornithologists from that city, William Brewster and Henry Henshaw. Other clubs in other areas soon followed, and there was a concomitant growth in the number of bird watchers.

Kastner goes on to provide accounts both of professional ornithologists and amateur enthusiasts who made contributions to the growth of our knowledge about birds. Among the pros to whom Kastner devotes a chapter is one of my personal favorites, Edward Howe Forbush (1858-1929). Forbush was the state ornithologist in his native Massachusetts from 1891 until his death. His magnum opus was the three-volume Birds of Massachusetts, which was published by the Mass. Dept. of Agriculture from 1925-1929.

I mentioned this work in an earlier post, and will write more about Forbush in the future. For now I will just note that Kastner's chapter on Forbush, "A Friend of Bird and Birder," is a marvelous, affectionate portrait of a man who I wish I had known, and had had the opportunity to learn from. Kastner writes: "Going through his volumes is like going along on a long bird walk, getting to know birds through the eyes and ears and feelings of scores of birders--all their perceptions filtered through the mind of one of the finest and most literate ornithologists the country has ever known."

Amen to that. Many's the time I've observed a bird in the field, and noted some particular aspect of its behavior or appearance. Then, upon returning to the house and consulting Forbush, been delighted to find a perfect description of what it was that I had just seen, a description written in prose so lovely that it bordered on the poetic. It was as if he had been looking over my shoulder as I watched and made my own observations.

Apart from his own stellar work, Forbush's Massachusetts volumes are notable for the magnificent paintings by Louis Agassiz Fuertes that illustrate them. Fuertes (1874-1927) was a brilliant artist, the most important bird painter after Audubon, and arguably the best ever. Kastner employs small field sketches by Fuertes as epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter, and includes a special section of color plates with a few samples of Fuertes' paintings. Fuertes' oeuvre was immense; his paintings graced the pages of many other bird books in addition to Forbush's. His story is as much a part of Kastner's narrative as is that of any ornithologist. I intend to devote a future post or two to him. For now I will just include a sample of his work, the small falcons--Kestrel and Merlin--from the Birds of New York, by Elon Howard Eaton.

Kastner writes also of the growth of the conservation movement; of the change from specimen collection to sight records; of numerous eminent pioneer ornithologists such as Elliot Coues, Witmer Stone, Frank Chapman, and Lowell Griscom; of the influential female writers such as Mabel Osgood Wright, Olive Miller, and Neltje Blanchan; and numerous other topics. His own prose is a delight to read. This, coupled with the evident comprehensive research that underlies the writing, makes A World of Watchers a much-valued item on my bookshelves. Like A Species of Eternity, it is also out of print, but copies are easy to come by on the used-book market. Definitely worth looking for.

*Given the importance of various optical devices to birdwatching--note the design of the book's dust jacket--there's probably a bad joke about focusing lurking in there somewhere, but I'll be damned if I can find it.

**Talk about bad jokes...

Birder's Bookshelf 1: Joseph Kastner, "A Species of Eternity"

With this post I begin a series of reviews--though perhaps "discussions" would be a more apt term--of books from my personal library, books that I have found to be particularly influential, useful, or simply interesting. Don't look here for reviews of the latest and greatest new field guides, though that might happen at some point. Most of the works that I will be writing about will either be old, out-of-print books about birds (mostly), or newer ones that deal in some way with the history of ornithology, bird painting, and of humans' relationship with birds. I begin with a book not specifically about birds, but one that had an enormous impact on me when I read it (c. 1982). I will follow up this post with a look at a related work (that is just on birds) by the same author, Joseph Kastner, a long-time writer and editor at Life magazine. Both Kastner books played a big role in sparking the interest that led to the acquisition of many of the other books that I will be writing about.
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Joseph Kastner. A Species of Eternity. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.

It would be overly dramatic, but not entirely inaccurate, to say that this book changed the course of my life. It certainly sent me down paths that I had not previously traveled and started me on a journey that continues today, more than thirty years after I read it.

Kastner's book is a chronicle of the lives, work, and adventures of the men--and they were all men--from the Colonial Era to roughly the middle of the 19th century who laid the groundwork for the study of natural history in North America. It was a colorful cast of characters -- some rich, some poor; some with extensive formal education, others entirely self-taught; some eccentric and flamboyant, some staid and introverted; some working within the structure of an institution, others pursing their interests on their own. All were blessed (cursed?) with passionate curiosity about the natural world and had the drive to probe its mysteries.

Painter and ornithologist John James Audubon is the only one among them whose name is likely to be familiar to most people today, but the cohort included many others: Mark Catesby, an Englishman who made some of the earliest depictions of American flora and fauna; the Bartrams, John and William, a father-and-son pair known best for their contributions to the study of botany; Charles Willson Peale, painter, naturalist, and father not only to one of the first museums in America but also to a large family that included several more painters and naturalists; Alexander Wilson, a Scottish immigrant who is regarded as "the father of American ornithology" and whose own monumental collection of bird paintings preceded Audubon's by just a few years but has been forever overshadowed by it; and on and on. Their stories are invariably fascinating and Kastner relates them in engaging, eminently readable prose.

As noted in an earlier post, my own interest in the natural world extends back to my childhood growing up on a farm. Even as a youngster I had often wondered about how the plants and animals that I saw around me, and read about in guide books, had come to be named, and who had first identified them. A Species of Eternity opened the door to the world and work of those who began the task of making sense of the complexities of the natural world, those who charted the previously uncharted. How strange and wonderful and overwhelming it must have been to live at a time when so much about the world around us was unknown, when there were no books to tell people what they were seeing.

As eye-opening and fascinating as it was to read about the adventures and contributions of Catesby, Alexander Garden, Cadwallader Colden, Constantine Rafinesque, et al, what really hooked me in to wanting to find out more about some of these characters was learning that both Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon were musicians! Aha -- a link between the two worlds that I love the most! Sweet.

Audubon played fiddle and flute, and also worked as a dancing master for a time before he began work on Birds of America, his magnum opus. Through subsequent reading of his published journals I learned that he often played with local musicians on his travels--which encompassed a huge swath of territory, from New Orleans to Labrador. We know less about Wilson's musical activities. Kastner quotes a letter Wilson wrote to William Bartram in 1803 in which he says: "I have had many pursuits, Mathematics, the German language, music, drawing, etc..." (p. 163). Audubon himself gives us a glimpse into Wilson as a musician. The two men met only one time during their lives, in 1807 when the Scotsman happened to stop into the store near Louisville, Kentucky, that Audubon ran for a time. Audubon wrote of Wilson: "His retired habits exhibited a strong discontent or a decided melancholy," and further, "The Scotch airs that he played sweetly on his flute made me melancholy too." (p. 178). I will write more about both Audubon and Wilson, and what is known of their musical activities, in future posts.

The door that Joseph Kastner opened for me with A Species of Eternity has never closed. In the three decades since reading it I have continued my explorations into the history of natural history (as it were), with a focus on the development of ornithology and the activity of bird-watching. A second book by Kastner, A World of Watchers, that deals specifically with the history of (as the jacket blurb puts it) the "history of the American passion for birds," fed this interest. It introduced me to the literature of many early writers about birds and, as noted earlier, was in large measure responsible for me seeking out and acquiring many of the well-worn volumes that crowd the bookshelves in our living room. It, and the books it inspired me to collect, will be the subjects of future posts.