I 4 WILD BIRDS 



Yet these crakes and rails migrate. The landrail, 

 slowest of fliers as we know it, does the great African 

 tour each year. The landrail cannot lag in the air 

 during its long journeys as it lags when we flush 

 it in an English field; if it did, it could never 

 reach its goal. It must fly far quicker, it must be 

 able to keep a-wing hours at a stretch. But seeing 

 that its life, save for these few grand occasions, is 

 all hide and skulk amid dense undergrowth, how is 

 it the landrail's power of strong flight has not been 

 impaired ? How has the power ever been developed ? 

 Gatke held that for these migrations birds are vested 

 with an exceptional, glorious power so that they 

 can move much faster and keep a-wing far longer 

 than they can in their every-day lives. It is a 

 beautiful idea this which imagines for the bird a 

 mystical, unknown afflatus to sustain and drive it 

 through space. Superbird indeed ! But we ought 

 to be careful not to get entangled between prose 

 and poetry in this, and here it seems as if the two 

 might be confused. 



THE BUGLE FIELD 



I went to an open sun-steeped spot at the edge 

 of the tree pipit's coppice where is an acre of bugle 

 in full bloom. Bits of ground ten yards, twenty 

 yards square are sheeted with its purple blue in 

 three tints, the strongest being a blue that in depth 

 approaches lapis lazuli. 



This whole field brimming with bugle, which 

 rarely allows any other blossom, however trifling, 



