THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS 65 



grackle as there is between an Irishman 

 and a Norwegian. 



This bird disposition is manifested in 

 things as far apart as call notes are from 

 nest building, and not the least interesting 

 of these things is the style of flight. Keep- 

 ing within my own limited experience I 

 can say, not that all birds express tem- 

 perament in flying, but that some birds 

 do so. 



For example, take the red-headed 

 woodpecker, "a blaze of white, steel-blue 

 and scarlet." In disposition this bird is, 

 as one naturalist has said, "distinctly 

 bourgeois." Turn one of Matthew 

 Arnold's "Philistines" into a bird and 

 you would have precisely this efficient 

 woodpecker. In any weather his practi- 

 cal motto is, "Business as usual." No hour 

 is well spent which does not see an acorn 

 saved and hammered into its hole, snugly. 

 And this businesslike disposition is per- 

 fectly expressed in the Red-Head's flight. 

 There are heavy movements and clumsy 



