WIND AND FLIGHT 129 



which familiar sport includes for human beings one 

 thing that is not enjoyable, viz., the lugging of the 

 toboggan to the top of the slope again. This part 

 of the performance is laborious for the bird also, 

 unless he can get help from the wind. This help 

 he gets when he faces it. When he has risen high 

 enough, he can plane down in whatever direction 

 he may choose to go. If he chooses to go with the 

 wind, he generally chooses the sideways method 

 that I have described. If he were to go head leading 

 and if his line of descent made only a slight angle 

 with the horizontal, there would probably be a 

 ruffling of his plumage, the thing that he abhors. It 

 could not happen were he to take vigorous strokes, 

 though the backward movement of the wing for the 

 next down-stroke might imaginably, as I have shown, 

 be a difficulty. During the Swallow manoeuvres 

 some Starlings flew past with the wind directly 

 behind, at a considerable height, too, where the wind 

 must have been even stronger. Their pace was no 

 mean one, and they seemed to be suffering no kind 

 of inconvenience. If the wind had freshened to a 

 gale, would it have been no longer a help but a 

 hindrance ? 



Since writing the above I have had a chance of 

 watching Rooks and Starlings flying in so strong a 

 wind that it might fairly be called a gale. The 

 Rooks made use of up-currents and rose to a great 

 height. Some of them flew before the wind, putting 

 in vigorous strokes occasionally in order to outpace 

 it. They seemed not to be in any way inconveni- 

 enced by it. Though Tennyson speaks of Rooks on 

 a wild, windy day being " blown about the skies," 



