CHAPTER II 



A GIFT OF GOD 



NOTHING in Nature has appealed to me quite so much 

 of late years as the flight of a bird. Here is one of 

 those very familiar sights of every open-air hour of 

 our lives which we take for granted from early child- 

 hood. So familiar is it that even watchers of birds, 

 and those who care greatly for the beauty and wonder 

 of Nature, may pass through life without taking 

 much note of it. True, the breathless-looking balanc- 

 ing feat of the red hawk, its head pointing into the 

 wind with the sureness of a vane, rarely grows quite 

 familiar. It has the constant power to make us 

 wonder. Watching the hover of the hawk, and 

 noting how, after the feat, it would sweep in a spiral 

 flight upward, brought straight home to me one 

 day a sense of the glory and triumph of wings ; and I 

 have found since that there are many common aerial 

 feats of birds and insects as curious and charming 

 to study as the windhover's, if not so striking at the 

 first sight. We no sooner begin to take interest in 

 natural flight than the beauty and diversity of it 

 are seen fourfold. The charm of it grows with the 



watching. Because we are earth-tied, the soaring 

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