STEERING 61 



and get into the right attitude for settling. It is 

 a clumsy performance. 



The movement of the head to one side or the 

 other has, no doubt, some slight influence on the 

 balance. But the skull is very light, a great part 

 of it as thin as paper, and one may occasionally 

 see a Gull look to the left while he steers to the right 

 (PI. ix ), just as a skater, who is quite at home 

 on his skates, can make such minor movements 

 without in any way upsetting his balance. This 

 subject naturally brings to mind the wonderful 

 way in which Mr. Cody showed the lateral stability 

 of his biplane. He carried a passenger who stood 

 at a distance of ten and a half feet from the centre 

 where he himself was piloting. When a bird 

 turns his head, it is far more probable that he is 

 directing his eyes, to right or left, towards some 

 object that has attracted his attention, than that 

 he is regulating his balance. Mr. Bentley Beetham 

 has a capital photograph* in which he has caught 

 five Gulls in the act of turning their heads to the 

 right. This may possibly be due, as he suggests, 

 to a local current of air with which they all equally 

 have to cope. But it seems far more likely that 

 they have all suddenly caught sight of some object 

 of interest, a fish or shoal of fish, at no great 

 distance. What would one not give for a photograph 

 of a large flock of birds scudding through the air 

 high aloft — for a photograph taken at the moment 

 when by some common impulse, as if following some 

 leader, they each and all change their course ? Might 

 we not see, if we could obtain such a photograph, 



* British Birds, Dec, 1910. 



