270 BIRD WATCHING 



" There is now a continuous straggling stream, form- 

 ing ever so many little troops. The first bird of one 

 troop tends to become the last of the one preceding 

 it, and the last one the leader of the troop following. 

 Then come numbers, flying in a very irregular and 

 widely disseminated formation, yet together in a 

 certain sense. There is much of rising and sinking 

 and again floating upwards, of twists and twirls 

 and sudden, dashing swoops downwards, from side 

 to side, like the car of a falling balloon ; two birds 

 often pursuing each other in this way. 



" And now come two great bands, one flying all 

 abreast, as before described, the other forming a great, 

 irregular, quasi-circular rook-storm. Leadership in 

 the latter case would be an impossibility ; in the 

 former I see no sign of it. All these birds, though 

 at a fair height, are flapping steadily along in the 

 usual prosaical manner ; through them, and far above 

 — at a very great height indeed, the highest I have 

 yet seen, and far beyond anything I should have 

 imagined — I see another band gliding smoothly, 

 majestically on, with scarce an occasional stroke of 

 the eagle-spread pinions. The one black band of 

 birds seen through the others, far, far above them, 

 has a curious, an inspiring effect." 



Rooks, when in continued progress, either fly with 

 a constant, steady flapping of the wings, in a some- 

 what laboured way, though often fairly fast, or they 

 sail along with wings outspread, and flapping only 

 from time to time — this last, however, only when 

 they are at a considerable height. A crowd of rooks, 

 indeed, in the higher regions of air present a very 

 different appearance to what they do when they fly 



