30 THE BOOK OF BIRDS 



white birds began a series of most graceful follow-my- 

 leader movements, "winding in and out in a wondrous 

 maze of flight." After these exercises the whole flock 

 would sail off to some distant part of the veldt, where 

 they spent the rest of the hours of daylight. "The im- 

 pressions of these flights," Mr. Bryden says, — flights 

 repeated "night after night, and morning after morning, 

 were so wonderful that they can never be effaced from 

 my memory." 



"When we read such words as these we rub our eyes 

 and ask ourselves whether the traveller can really be 

 describing Pelicans. Yet others have the same surprising 

 story to tell of the soaring powers of this seemingly 

 clumsy bird. 



How is it all explained? Let me mention two or 

 three things which make such wonderful flights easier 

 to understand. 



First, there is the length of wing. A Pelican has not 

 only a very strong wing, but also a very long wing. A 

 well-grown specimen will measure as much as ten, and 

 even twelve, feet across from wing-tip to wing-tip. 



None of you would suspect such a length, however 

 long you watched the bird at rest. You have to see 

 the wing extended, and then — well, seeing is believing. 

 The fact is that Nature has made that part of the wing 

 which answers to your forearm extremely long, but — and 

 this is the point I want you to notice- — its owner keeps 

 it folded flat alongside its body when resting, and the 

 next joint, also a long one, is made to fold backwards. 

 So that, as one writer aptly puts it, "when the whole 

 machine is opened out it is like the opening of a two-foot 

 pocket-rule," and is a perfect surprise in the way of length. 



Another fact is this : heavily built though the bird 



