Page:BirdWatchingSelous.djvu/79

 in the most graceful manner, alighting on the same branch beside the waiting partner. This is a beautiful thing to see, and especially in the early fresh morning of a clear, lovely day. It seems then as if the bird kept flying up to greet "the early rising sun," or as rejoicing in the beauty of all things. These are the coquetries, the prettinesses of loving couples, as to which—on one side at least—what has not been said by the writers of our clumsy race! But "if the lions were sculptors"—How might a bird novelist expatiate!

Not less beautiful is the nuptial flight of the wood-pigeon. Of this, the clapping of the wings above the back is the most salient feature, a sound which is never heard during the winter or after the breeding-season is fairly over. "In full flight, the bird smites its wings two or three times smartly together above the back, then, holding them extended and motionless, it seems to pause for one instant—if there can be pause in swiftest motion—before sinking and then rising and sinking again, as does a wave, or as though it rested on an aerial switchback. Then continuing his flight—recommencing, that is to say, the strokes of his wings—he may do the same when he has gone a few air-fields farther, and so "pass in music out of sight." Sometimes there will be only a single clap of the wings instead of two or three, but always it is made just before the still-spreading of them, and the hanging pause in the air; for let the speed be never so great—and it hardly seems possible that it could be checked so suddenly, and why should the bird wish to check it?—yet the effect upon the eye of the wings extended and motionless after they have