24 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



sky in great spiral curves, sweeping outwards from the 

 loop in long crescentic lines and exposing the under 

 surface of the wings and body when the circles are made, 

 and the delicate silver marginations of the brown feathers 

 when the back is slanted towards you. 



It appears a very slow flight, but the continuity of 

 rounded design in the ascent makes the speed deceptive, 

 and in a minute or two the bird is a speck in the sky. 

 As the bird climbs the sky, its pinions are expanded 

 quite motionless, and the piloting, both in a strong wind 

 and a light breeze, though preferably the former, appears 

 to be done by the swinging of the body and deflecting 

 of the fanned tail, whose twelve transverse bars are 

 conspicuous at not too far a distance. When the grand 

 fellow is some way up there is no flapping of the wings, 

 which serve it in immobility better than our legs do us, 

 running over the solid earth. Until the bird outranges 

 the detailed visibility of a field glass, it is quite easy to 

 test this, the primary quills overlapping and shutting 

 out the sky when the wings are moved. As Darwin says, 

 in The Voyage of the Beagle, when he was watching condors 

 soaring over Lima : 



" I intently watched the outlines of the separate and terminal 

 feathers of the wings : if there had been the least vibratory move- 

 ment these would have blended together, but they were seen 

 distinct against the blue sky." 



The same applies to our buzzard. 



If one lies on one's back and watches these great birds, 

 who have learned the secret of travelling the air without 

 a stir, tracing out their smooth patterns upon the vault 

 of heaven directly above one, they exercise an emotional 

 appeal which is a medicine for us living in these gloomy 

 and turbulent days. They seem to impress not only 

 a consolation and peace upon the mind, but a confidence 

 in the stability and eternal fitness of the universe, a 

 sense of its breadth and grandeur and permanence 

 beyond all transient phenomena, and to open the spiritual 

 ear to the " onward advancing melody," as Lotze called 

 it, of the whole of creation. Our western world may 

 crack and even be shattered, but the cosmos still goes on. 



