ii8 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



a small one and as enthusiastic in their pursuit as other 

 open-air men are apt to be about hunting the fox, 

 golfing, fishing, cricketing, shooting, motoring, and 

 other forms of sport. 



Call them sportsmen, ornithologists, or bird-lovers 

 pure and simple, I envy them their magnificent freedom 

 and could ask for no happier life than theirs. It is 

 like that of the person whose delight is in anthropology 

 in passing from land to land, seeing many and various 

 races of men, visiting remote districts whose inhabitants 

 through long centuries of isolation have preserved the 

 features and mental characteristics of their remote 

 progenitors. To pursue wild birds in that way — to 

 follow knowledge like a sinking star, to be and to 

 know much until I became a name for always wander- 

 ing with a hungry heart — that was my one desire ; but 

 alas ! it was never in my power. Compared with the 

 disencumbered ones I am like an ordinary man, walk- 

 ing on the earth, to men of lighter bodies and nimbler 

 minds who have found out how to fly and are like 

 birds chasing birds. 



Nevertheless there are compensations. The very 

 restraints which annoy us may not be without their 

 advantages. The rare experience of finding myself at 

 last in the presence of some long-v/ished-for bird, 

 comparing it with its imaginary mental portrait and 

 with the mental images of its nearest relations, and 

 finally of being able to add this one new portrait to the 

 gallery existing in the mind — my best possession and 

 chief delight — perhaps affords me a keener pleasure 



