40 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



gone the accounts given by Audubon and Fenimore 

 Cooper of its numbers when its migrating 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 mi- 

 gration 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 standing motionless and 

 statuesque with head raised, on the wide level flats 

 and marshes. But the pleasure is infinitely 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 



