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 Ihave 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 manceuvres 
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,” 
K 
