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WE

THE BIRDS OF THE AIR

By REV. P. G. KENNEDY, S.J.

E have all learned in our young days the signs that foretell the nature of an approaching winter. If in autumn the hedges are laden with hips and haws and berries, then we are to prepare ourselves for frost and snow and biting winds; but if the wild fruits are scant and meagre in brake and scrub, we may be sure that only mild weather is in store for us. For Providence never sends very hard winters without having furnished a large supply of food for the birds. This is in accordance with Our Divine Lord's own doctrine, so beautifully expressed in His Sermon on the Mount: "Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns, and your Heavenly Father feedeth them." It is, indeed, a marvellous disposition of Divine Providence by which birds are supplied with food that is as varied as their own plumage. Each class of birds has its own particular taste, yet all tastes are gratified. It is not, of course, implied that the nature of the food of any species never changes. For it has been known to change with time and circumstance. There is a notable example in the case of the Nestor notabilis, a species of New Zealand parrot, the Kea" of the Maories. This bird has, within recent times, incurred the enmity of flockmasters by developing an extraordinary penchant for sheep's liver in preference to its old food of fruit and carrion. With its powerful beak it will pick a hole in the sheep's side, wounding the intestines, and causing the animal's death. The lacerations are made so uniformly in the one place, that the habit seems to have become one of the bird's instincts. There are, no doubt, other such accidental changes in the nature of the food they seek. But birds are very conservative, and unless they are forced by external circumstances, they will not part with one iota of the manners and customs of their ancestors. Of course one hears and reads a good deal of the origin and transformation of species in birds, but it is well to bear in mind that in most of this talk and writing one thing only is matter of fact, namely, that there are different species of birds.

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"The birds of the air was, no doubt, meant to be a general expression for the common and well-known birds, and as such it would be understood by the audience on the Mount. But the phrase would, perhaps, at first sight turn our attention to the swift and the swallow, which are pre-eminently birds of the air. Perhaps some one will say: Is not the swift a swallow? Formerly, indeed, it was regarded as a species of swallow, but modern ornithologists have discovered that it has only an outward resemblance and no near affinity to the swallow family. Indeed, though so like the swallows in many respects there is scarcely any part of the swift's structure which is not formed on a different plan from that of the swallow, and instead of any near affinity existing between the two groups it cannot be doubted that the swift differs far more from the swallow than from any other family of birds.

Our swift-for there are many swifts of other nationalities— lives more in the air than any of our birds. It takes all its meals on the wing, or rather its one meal which lasts every day from dawn to dusk. For fully sixteen, and sometimes eighteen, hours, it will continue to dine, and, notwithstanding, be as brisk and alert when it retires to rest at nine o'clock in the evening, as when it arose at three in the morning. A high wind is the only thing that will mar the peace and happiness of its feasting. Rain it disregards, remaining out all day in wet weather; "from whence," says Gilbert White, in his Natural History of Selborne, "two things may be gathered: first, that many insects abide high in the air, even in rain; and next, that the feathers of these birds must be well preened to resist so much wet." It speeds through the upper air, and woe betide the gnat or insect that has the ill fortune to cross its path. Even after sunset, when swifts assemble for play, and with gleeful screams circle round and round the building where they sleep, they ever combine business with pleasure. With a kind of unconscious or reflex action they sweep their playing space clear of all winged things, devouring such moths or flies as keep late hours.

Swifts are singular among birds in this that they can never settle on the ground. If down through accident, they can neither walk nor arise on account of the shortness of their legs and the great length of their wings. People often come across a swift thus struggling helplessly on the ground and think that the bird is wounded or disabled, and when they hold it up to the air they are startled by its vigorous flight, and what seems to them

the wonderful effects of their healing touch. It is strange that these birds that are so powerful on the wing, and that circle with such ease and grace and speed when a thousand feet above the ground, are rendered so powerless by contact with earth. What an apt illustration the swift would furnish of the clogging effects of mundane things on the soul, and one is surprised that the ancient ascetical writers, who were very fond of confirming their doctrine by examples "pat to our purpose from natural history, did not include this among many others, as interesting indeed, but not always so true to nature!

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Like the cuckoos, swifts depart early in summer from these countries. The main body of them has retired by the 10th of August. This early retreat is mysterious, for they cannot be influenced by any defect of heat, nor, as one might suppose, by failure of food. Perhaps they are moved by an irresistible desire of tasting the flavour of the midges tha!, at that time of the year, are worrying the lions and hippopotami and black people south of the Equator.

The swallows, of which we have three species-the chimney swallow, the house martin, and the sand martin-live, like the swift, on insects, and they also feed altogether on the wing. The chimney swallow has kindly and homely qualities, but its principal virtue for us is that it is voracity incarnate and that it moves as a consuming and cleansing power. Formerly it used to be said of a humane person that he would not kill a fly, but nowadays one shows one's humanitarianism by joining in the crusade that has for its motto, "kill that fly." Now, when you consider that from seven hundred to a thousand flies a day are a moderate allowance for a baby swallow, you will readily understand what a philanthropic bird, in the modern sense, the parent swallow is. What a pity no one ever had the enterprise to start a domesticating school for swallows, for assuredly the birds would oust from the market the "Tanglefoot" and all other fly-catching papers!

It may occur to one to think in this connexion of the reason of the bird's name. For, as Ruskin says, it is interesting as a piece of language study to consider the different power on our minds, and the different sweetness to the ear which, from association, the same two syllables receive when one reads. them as a noun or as a verb. Also, the word is a curious instance of the traps which are continually open for rash etymologists. At first nothing would appear more natural than that the name should be given to the bird from its reckless function

of devouring. But on looking up the Dictionary of Birds, one finds, to one's better satisfaction, that the name simply means bird of porticos" or porches, from the Gothic "swale."

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Besides the swift and the swallows there is a large number of birds that live on insects. Who has not seen that small dust-coloured bird, the spotted fly-catcher, sitting on the posts and railings of our gardens and fields, ever and anon springing into the air, seizing with an audible snap of its bill some passing insect and returning to the spot it has quitted? Most of these insectivorous birds of ours are summer migrants that never await the season when there are no flies about. But some remain all the winter, and these subsist chiefly on insects in their chrysalis state. The chrysalides of butterflies and moths are to be found fastened to the twigs of trees and their trunks, to the poles and walls of gardens and buildings, and even in the ground itself. It is interesting, in winter, to watch either the tiny gold crest inspecting the under surface of the leaves of our evergreens, or the blue tit clinging to a wall and searching every cleft and cranny. Both seem to fare well and to find stores that escape the human vision.

Then there are the various classes of seed-eating birds, such as the finches and buntings. Everyone has seen the familiar chaffinch on the roadside sift and shell, with discriminating beak, the seeds of the wildflowers and weeds that have been blown about by the wind. No doubt, owing to the birdcatchers, fewer people will have observed the goldfinch alighting on the top of a prickly thistle and making the down fly round about while it secures the seed at the centre. The house sparrow is a finch which, though it does a certain amount of scavenging work, enjoys no enviable reputation. A well-known authority writes: Wherever this bird is met with his character is much the same-bold, pert, mischievous. Voluble he is and gregarious, so that the sparrow that sitteth alone on the house-top has been well selected by the Psalmist as an emblem of forlorn melancholy." Readers of Henry Harland will recall some beautiful passages in The Cardinal's Snuff-Box, in which the sparrows and the goldfinches are contrasted. They are, respectively, the villains and the heroes, the snatchers and the snatched from in that struggle for existence in which the most unscrupulous survive. The snatchers are pirates, daredevils, brigands, unprincipled little monsters, ubiquitous, ugly cacophonous brown sparrows."

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Along our streams and rivers we find all the year round two

interesting and pretty birds, the water-ousel or dipper and the kingfisher. The dippers are the more numerous, and every angier must be familiar with the plump bira "that wears a white waistcoat and a dark-brown coat." Yet, strange to say, Yarrell, who aid so much for ornithology in the middle of the last century, is fain to acknowledge that he must depend for his account of the habits of the bird on the testimony of others, having never had the opportunity of watching it himself; while still more strangely such a companion of nature as Ruskin regretfully declares: "I am sixty-two years and have passed as much time out of these years by torrent sides as most people. But I have never seen a water-ousel alive."

The dipper loves especially the precipitous reaches of the river where the water curls over hidden rocks or flows round moss-grown boulders. It flies from rock to rock, inspecting the the water all round. Suddenly it disappears into the rushing torrent and when we begin to think that such a light bird could not but be carried away by the current it again appears on the rock and curtsies to the world at large. It is a most indefatigable fisher, and never tires of diving for molluscs, larvæ of insects, ova of fish, minnows, and such small fry.

The kingfisher prefers rather deep and sluggish rivers. This bird is more common than is usually thought. It wisely keeps out of the view of man-and woman; for if it has any such thing as family tradition it must know what numbers of its ancestors were sacrificed for bonnets. Though the kingfisher gets all its food from the water it is not a water-bird, for its body is without that thick coat of down so remarkable in those birds that are classified under the name of waterfowl. Again, it can neither swim with the duck, nor dive with the dipper, nor wade with the heron. Its act of immersion in the water is quite momentary. The bird may be seen perched on a rock or on the branch of a tree or poised on the wing like a kestrel, and the moment it sights a fish in the water below it drops like a falling stone. If it miss the mark, which is rarely the case, it comes up immediately without further exertion. Thus it escapes with impunity from the water in which, were it to remain for a little time, it would be reduced to a condition of bedraggled uselessness. The kingfisher is somewhat of an exception in this, that it seems to be ill-equipped for its business in life. Perhaps the deficiency in the plumage from the fishing point of view is made up for by its deadly accuracy of aim and the efficiency of its strong heron-like bill. At any rate the bird

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