164
BIRD HARMONIES.
from the joyous carolling of the merry woodland tribes; as if the
spirit of the nature around had entered into and found a voice
through them.
On the wet sands close to the edge of the ebbing sea, there are
busy hosts of sea snipe and other little waders, busy with the
"flotsam and jetsam." Out at sea we catch a glimpse of gracefully
wheeling gulls, and the long black piratical looking cormorants, flying
low with straight strong flight. On the cliffs of the headland are
rows of quaint little puffins and guillemots, and all the fisher folk are
filling the air with wild harsh cries. And there is the life of the
night as well as of the day. The owl is the type of the former, as
the swallow is of the latter. The owl, ghostly looking, with soft
downy feathers and noiseless sweep of wing; the swallow, burnished
like a little machine, with swift arrowy flight, cutting through the air
as if his wings were scimitars. These are only a very few notes out
of the great symphony of nature.
If we take the great brown and grey eagle on the crag of brown
rock amidst the grey mountain mists; the white ptarmigan amongst
the snowdrifts, or the heather-coloured moorfowl on the moorlands ;
the black and grey and silver heron in the silvery shallows of the
loch or river side; the brown and white sandpipers at the edge of
the brown sand and the white water fringe; the green-backed peewits
on the marshes; the grey and white gulls on the white-flecked sea;
the swarthy cormorants on the dark jugged rocks ; or if we take the
ghostly white owl with his downy wings flitting through the darkness;
the twittering swallows and swifts darting to and fro in the bright
sunshine, or the lonely bittern crouching amidst the rustling dogbent
and rushes of the desolate fens; in all these pictures we may see that
there is most true harmony between the animate and the inanimate
parts of nature.
The plate which accompanies this epitome of my lecture explains
itself. Each of the several scenes of nature—the mountain, the
moor, the lake, the woods, the marshes, the sands, and the sea cliffs,
is suggested with its appropriate types of bird life. The central
drawing illustrates a not uncommon incident; a white owl has been
caught napping in the daylight, and the swallows are hunting the
ghostly bogey-looking night creature away into his proper place
amongst the bats and cobwebs.
[The photo-etching was kindly prepared for and presented to the
Club by Mr. Gould.—Ed.]