On Whatever
Little birds
Two weeks ago, a baby house martin made a wobbly landing on the rail of the balcony outside the upstairs patio doors. It was still fluffy and had no tail to speak of, and seemed extremely startled – which was understandable, since it had just tumbled out of its clay nest high in the eaves and discovered that it had to fly. I thought it must have siblings, and sure enough, three more little birds arrived, having done a longer maiden flight. The four of them sat side by side, fidgeting and preening and staring about at the sky that had suddenly become their world. They were only a couple of metres from me as I sat at the computer, but seemed oblivious to the close presence of a human. I took a photo of them through the glass.
They stayed there all that day, going on experimental flights from time to time and occasionally tucking their heads under their wings for a little sleep. I watched, fascinated, and slowly started to perceive which one was which. The littlest one that had arrived first looked younger than the others, with more white fluff among its feathers and less skill in the air. The next one up was less fluffy and was growing reasonable tail feathers, the third was more mature and the fourth and strongest looked almost grown up. I can only suppose that the four eggs were laid at a rate of one a day, and because they all hatch together there’s a variation of in-shell development time. Certainly the parent birds knew which one was the most needy, because as they zoomed in to push an insect into one of the gaping beaks, there was obvious care for the most vulnerable one. At one point the mother bird – a little thinner than the male – came to rest on the rail and almost fed the nearest fledgling, then looked again and gave the fly to the smallest one instead. Most of the time, the parents didn’t pause in their flying, just banked up to the rail, popped a morsel into a beak and curved away again.
Martins are talkative birds. A lot of twittering went on, and at one point when a big black-backed gull zoomed over, there was a shriek almost too high to hear and the four baby birds vanished. It happened so fast that I couldn’t see where they’d gone, but after a few minutes they started to return. This time, instead of perching on the open centre of the balcony rail, they all settled at the end where the slant of the projecting roof hid them from the sky. How did they know about that? The parents didn’t guide them, as far as I could see – the little ones had simply understood the danger warning and had picked a safer place.
By this time, of course, I’d been into house martins on the Internet and was full of information about them. An adult bird weighs 63 grammes. About two ounces, for old-fashioned souls like myself. All that strength and speed and intelligence, packed into the weight of a small poke of sweeties. No design engineer could produce anything that worked like that. The remit would be impossible. ‘It has to be self-supporting, living on tiny insects that it catches at a speed of 36 feet per second. It will be five inches long and ten inches across the wing-span. It must be able to fly to Africa and back every year and will build a nest at the junction of a building’s wall and roof, using mud that it scoops from an exposed river- bed. It will be self-replicating, producing and rearing an average of eight new ones of its kind each summer. The new birds will grow in eggs for 14-16 days and are bald and helpless when hatched but the adults feed them for between three and four weeks. After that the new birds will fly and fend for themselves.’ Huh? Even Honda engineers, who are pretty good at robots, would shake their heads at that one. Impossible.
As evening came on my martin-watching day, the four little birds were still there, and the parents were visibly tired. I wondered where they would go for the night. No way could the youngsters, with wings expanded and strong for flying, cram back into the little clay nest. I had to go out that evening, so I never had any answer to that one. Returning in the half-light after the wonderful school production of A Mid Summer Night’s Dream (what could be more suitable?) I looked up at the balcony, but the martins were not there. They haven’t been back since, and I don’t know one from another among the numbers that swoop through the daytime air.
Yesterday the male bird was again sitting on the wire outside the nest under the eaves. I think he and his mate have set about rearing a second brood. Apparently the hatchlings of the first brood often help to feed the second lot, which is a nice thought. During the day when I watched them, the adult birds were working so hard, I felt quite concerned for them – but it’s work or perish, there is no choice. That’s how the species keeps up its success. I wonder if the smallest of the nestlings made it, but I’ll never know. It doesn’t matter. That day of watching the four little birds was magic, and that’s enough.
