SIDE LIGHTS ON BIRDS 



the curlew moving in the misty distance over the 

 wild and lonely moor, seems nothing less than 

 the embodied spirit of the place ; and a subtle 

 relation will be seen at once to exist between 

 the stern gaunt form of the eagle and the dark 

 rocky fastnesses over which it presides. 



So, as the bird-artist roams over the country 

 side, he finds every bird in its own proper setting 

 and he cannot fail to recognise the sympathetic 

 bond that links every living form with its natural 

 environment. 



But what is even of more importance to the 

 artist than anatomy, colour, or surroundings, is 

 the soul of the creature itself. The ancient 

 Eastern occultists taught that birds and mammals 

 had not yet attained to the highly specialised 

 individual soul found in the human ; that every 

 man had become a species in himself, and had 

 acquired characteristics, habits, tricks of manner 

 which none but he possessed. On the other 

 hand, the bird belonging to each marked group 

 shared the soul common to the group, and thus 

 all of a given species had the same little peculiari- 

 ties, and acted in a like manner in any given 

 circumstances. 



Thus, if one robin be observed in a South- 

 country garden and another in a wayside hedge 

 in Scotland, all the instinctive movements, the 

 mode of alighting, the turn of head and flick of 

 tail will be seen to be identical in each, and it is 

 to this robin-soul that the artist must direct his 

 attention if he would depict the bird as it lives and 

 moves. So he will study the animating principle 

 which leads the blue tit to hang head downwards, 

 the creeper to move spirally around the tree- 

 trunk, and the kestrel to hang suspended in the 

 air. It is here, perhaps, that the Japanese 

 artist excels in the matter of bird portraiture. 



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