On Wings

No thinking man can watch the flight of birds, especially of big birds, without grave thoughts of wonder and delight rising in him. Their ease and grace and strength of movement, their light and sure supremacy over the medium which they navigate with such consummate facility, their speed and dropping swiftness, are all so incomparably superior to any mechanical motor skill that we possess ourselves. No other living organisms, perhaps, express so well the joy of motion. It is difficult to watch the circling seagulls, the poised and hovering hawk, the darting swallows, or the soaring lark, without feeling that here is life really enjoying itself in the best possible form of free, unimpeded motion. No wonder that poets give the angels wings, and that the symbolism of wings is found in the most vital thoughts of all religions. The wings of the soul, the wings of the imagination, these are more than mere empty phrases! The choice of the air to illustrate some imagined spiritual region, of course, is obvious enough, for air will most certainly be the last department of Nature men will conquer; and, apart from unwieldy mechanical contrivances, men will never really fly⁠—as birds do. To pass through and across the air is quite another thing to flying as the birds know flying. The religious temperament made a wise, instinctive selection of flying to describe the motion of a “spirit,” for nothing could be further from possible corporeal achievement. The weight of men’s bodies in proportion to their muscular development forever blocks the way; whereas the power of the muscles that drive the wings of birds, compared to the weight of their slender, delicate frames, their tiny bones, their hollow quills, is overwhelmingly to their advantage. A drumming partridge can flap its sturdy wings four hundred times to the minute. It is doubtful if the supplest man can “flap” ’ his arms at a quarter of this speed, and a broad wing offers far more resistance to the air than the thin line of a human arm. The eye cannot even follow the beats of a flying pigeon’s wings to count their number. To watch the seagulls from the stern of some steamer is a keen delight. One notes the cunningly-contrived arrangement of the feathers, which lie one upon another in such a way that the downward stroke is not exactly counterbalanced by the upward. In the former the air presses them closer together, thus supplying the resistance necessary to rise; whereas in the upward stroke they open out, letting the air slip through. With what minimum of effort, too, they compass the maximum of movement; with how tiny a tilting of the body they steer to avoid collision; how rapid, almost instantaneous, is their judgment when to dive, seizing an opening in the flash of an eye, or rising, swerving, swooping for a plunge! There is nothing in all Nature to compare with their consummate skill and lightning ease. The accuracy of a marten’s or a swallow’s aim in darting through midair to snap at a zigzag-flying insect is an exhibition of surpassing skill. And equally fascinating to watch, perhaps, is the adroit and wonderful balancing a bird displays in hovering with motionless wings outstretched, and the way it uses every current of air to sustain or propel its perfectly-adjusted weight. One could almost imagine that there ran through every feather down to the very tips some exquisite system of nerves more delicate even than those of human beings. They seem to feel the wind, to be forewarned of every slightest change, to sense the advance and retreat of every little current. It was always the seabirds that, as a boy, I envied most. Their mastery over two elements seemed so unfair, They are free of more of the earth than is their right, as it were. But one never grudged the birds their happiness and powers for long. Childhood always loves the birds⁠—their mystery lies closer to the dreams of imaginative childhood, perhaps, than the mystery of four-footed life, and in proportion to their number they contain fewer fierce and savage, certainly fewer dangerous, species. The air would mean to us so little without them; their song and movement seem to interpret all the vault of sky. The passion of a single lark can set a whole spring morning to music; and where would be half the beauty of the summer dusk without the whistle of a blackbird across the lawn, the trill of a thrush in the laurels, the glory of the nightingales in the shrubberies and larches? Scenery for some comes back most vividly to the mind with the memory of the bird-life associated with it. To hear the laughter of the loons, so weirdly human in its note, and see their straight and level flight across wide, lonely lakes, so close that their feet must catch the spray of every wave, recalls for me the Canadian backwoods far more completely than any memory of deer or moose or bear. For me personally the birds divide this reconstructive power about equally with the smells of trees and flowers, or, above all, the odour of wood smoke. A line of dark cormorants, or the storks and herons fishing in the shallows, are more evocative for me of the Hungarian reaches of the Danube, where I once canoed, than any other detail of the banks or landscape I can call to mind. Those circling hawks of giant size above the endless marshes! Those flocks of grey crows rising from some shingled island in midstream as our canoe approached! The great white swans of the upper sections in the Black Forest and Bavaria! All the little pictures of the thousand-mile journey that come back to haunt the mind with their separate bits of loveliness have bird-life in them somewhere. The rest, even the rapids, dangerous rocks and whirlpools, lie indistinct and rather vague; these with the birds, on the contrary, stand out sharply and well defined. Last year, while crossing the Black Sea in early May towards the Caucasus, our steamer had from time to time strange winged visitors who certainly paid no passage-money. Vessels were few and far between, and many birds rested in their long flight from shore to shore upon the rigging. Some accompanied the boat for days together, and one and all were obviously very weary. There were brown birds, like pigeons, only smaller, that rested on the stern rails, flew off for long detours about the ship, then presently returned again to settle; there was a large, dark hawk that perched high up upon the cross-trees watching them hungrily (and, happily, in vain); and there were numerous smaller fry of various kinds, whose names I knew not, forever dodging the cats and passengers. Swallows, evidently belated, came to join them, and would flit up and down in front of the rows of occupied deck-chairs after dinner in search of sleeping-places. There was one in particular that showed no fear of human kind, but calmly fluttered on to my cap and settled itself down comfortably, after a little preliminary fidgeting, for sleep. Being in the middle of a story that necessitated turning the head to neighbours on either side of me, the attention at first was awkward, and the interest in the bird eclipsed all interest in the story. But the compliment, I felt, was greater than that of applause, and I soon found that it was possible to turn the head so carefully that the little creature need not be disturbed. At any rate, it stayed for fully half-an-hour, doubtless sound asleep, and fortunately for its feelings no one on deck wore hats with stuffed birds on them! Several of the brown, pigeon-like birds, however, came to a curious end. Whether in their weariness they dropped into the sea and were drowned, or whether waiting and watching fish pulled them under, as the ship’s doctor affirmed, was hard to say. One saw them skimming beside the steamer, so close to the waves they almost touched their crests, then suddenly⁠—disappear. They went under at once. There certainly was no struggle of any kind, and no attempt to swim or rise again. Without a flutter of the wings they simply vanished.