Birds
Thinking back to my Grandparents Ray and Rebecca Rugg Miner’s farm, I can remember the birds that I would see there. My favorite was the Baltimore orioles that would build its hanging basket nest from a lower branch in one of the huge hemlock trees. The trees guarded the entrance to the front porch of their two story farm house. The limbs almost intertwined over the red brick walkway that sloped down from their red-dog and dirt driveway to the porch. I was able to sit on one of the green painted Adirondack chairs and watch as the parents flew back and forth to feed their babies. Soft squeaks greeted the parents when they landed and slipped down inside.
The other birds that had a home at the front porch were the house wrens. Gram had built a square box with a very small hole to accommodate these little songsters. They would often stop and sit on Gram’s porch-box before giving a flit of its trail and flying up to the nest. Many times they would start singing somewhere in the snowball bush before actually appearing on the porch.
If I sat on the porch nearing sundown at the deepening of the twilight, a whippoorwill would land on a fencepost at the edge of Granddad’s field and would share a few melodies before it disappeared for the night.
I never really cared to hear the raucous calls of blackbirds who would visit the farm as soon as the ears of corn and the heads of oats would start to ripen. I have seen photos of the devastation that blackbirds can cause, but I guess Granddad’s fields were too small to entice a large number of them.
With a voice a little less raucous was the red-winged blackbird. They seemed to be a solitary bird. I can remember seeing only one at a time visiting the fencerow. It would perch on a fencepost and its high-pitched trill of a song would echo several times before it flew off. I never saw the nest.
I imagine there were robins and sparrows, but I can’t see them in my mind’s eye at my grandparents’ home. An occasional crow would fly by, but I can’t remember them coming close to the house. I can remember seeing barn swallow nests in the thick beams of the lower level of the barn, but I can barely remember seeing them swoop in and out.