The Swarm Spirit 



On they come, hundreds of quivering lines, 

 which are the thin edges of wings, moving as one 

 to a definite goal. Their keen eyes caught the 

 first wave of your handkerchief in the distance; 

 and now they see their own kind on the ground, 

 as they think, and their babel changes as they 

 begin to talk to them. Suddenly, and so in- 

 stantaneously that it makes you blink, there is a 

 change of some kind in every quivering pair of 

 wings. At first, in the soft light of dawn, you are 

 sure that the plover are still coming, for you did not 

 see them turn ; but the lines grow smaller, dimmer, 

 and you know that every bird in the flock has 

 whirled, as if at command, and is now heading 

 straight away. You put your fingers to your lips 

 and send out the eery plover call again and again ; 

 but it goes unheeded in that tumult of better 

 whistling. The quivering lines are now all blurred 

 in one; with a final flicker they disappear below 

 a rise of ground; the birds are gone, and you 

 cease your vain calling. Then, when you are 

 thinking you will never see that flock again, a 

 cloud of wings shoot up from the plain against the 

 horizon; they fall, wheel, rise again in marvelous 

 flight, not as a thousand individuals but as a unit, 

 and the lines grow larger, clearer, as the plover 

 come sweeping back to your decoys once more. 



Such is the phenomenon as I witnessed it re- 

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