40 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



flocks darkened the sun at noon read like the veriest 

 fables — inventions as wild as those of the crested 

 screamer congregations in my La Plata book, and of the 

 migration of fishes in the Pacific described by Herman 

 Melville. 



To return to the subject which was uppermost in my 

 mind when I sat down to write this chapter, or this 

 digression. It was the peculiar delight produced in us 

 by the sight and sound of birds, especially those of large 

 size, in flocks and multitudes. The bird itself is a thing 

 of beauty, supreme in this respect among living forms, 

 therefore, as we have seen, the symbol in art of all that 

 is highest in the spiritual world. Nevertheless we find 

 that the pleasure of seeing a single bird is as nothing 

 compared to that of seeing a numerous company of 

 birds. Take this case of the wild grey goose — a large, 

 handsome bird, a joy to look at whether flying or stand- 

 ing motionless and statuesque with head raised, on the 

 wide level flats and marshes. But the pleasure is infi- 

 nitely greater when I see a flock of a thousand or of 

 two or three thousands as I do here where I am writing 

 this on the East Coast. They come over me, seen first 

 very far off as a black line, wavering, breaking, and 

 re-forming, increasing like a coming cloud and changing 

 its form, till it resolves itself into the host of great 

 broad-winged birds, now black against the pale immense 

 sky, now flashing white in the sun. I hear them too, 

 even before they become visible, a distant faint clan- 

 gour which grows and changes as it comes and is a 

 beautiful noise of many shrill and deep sounds, as of 



