BIRDS AND STORM 



ON days of high and blustering wind most of 

 the birds disappear, and it would be a puzzle to 

 the most competent of field naturalists to say 

 where they have gone to. He can do little more 

 than suppose that they are sheltering themselves 

 in their roost ing -places, and as a rule these are 

 very hard to discover. There may be little or 

 no concealment about them, but, like most other 

 living creatures, birds become wonderfully near 

 to invisible when they remain still. A dozen birds 

 in a leafless tree can easily evade even a searching 

 eye by remaining motionless, and what is true 

 of birds in trees is still more true (if that is an 

 allowable expression) of birds on the ground. 

 There even large birds, and birds which would 

 be pronounced conspicuous, merge into their sur- 

 roundings in a way which usually astonishes those 

 who discover without rousing them. Thus I recall 

 how on one occasion when walking through a wood, 

 a friend pointed out a small object and asked what 

 it was. It was actually the eye of a sitting hen 

 pheasant, which he was looking at without seeing. 

 Most animals, birds excepted, know, or act as 

 if they knew, this secret of invisibility. Thanks 



to their flying powers, which can so swiftly 



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