Chapter I: Front Matter

BIRDS IN FLIGHT

BIRDS IN FLIGHT

BY
W. P. PYCRAFT

Zoological Department, British Museum (Natural History).
Fellow of the Zoological Society of London.
Hon. Member of the American Ornithologists' Union.
Associate of the Linnean Society.
Member of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom.
Member of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Author of "A History of Birds," "The Infancy of Animals," "The
Courtship of Animals," "The Sea-shore," Etc., Etc., Etc.

_Illustrated by_
ROLAND GREEN, F.Z.S.

LONDON
GAY & HANCOCK LIMITED
34 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.2.
1922

_All Rights Reserved._

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Concerning Wings 1

What a wing is--The quill feathers and their function--The
skeleton of the wing--The muscles of the wing--The
great air-chambers of the body--The Bat's wing--The
wing of flying Dragons--The wings of Dragon-flies
and beetles.

II. The First Bird 15

The ancestors of birds--The first known bird and its
many remarkable features--The gradual evolution of the
birds of to-day.

III. The Sizes and Shapes of Wings and
their relation to Flight 21

The evasiveness of flight--The size of the wing in relation
to that of the body--Noisy flight--"Muffled" flight--The
swoop of the sparrow-hawk--The "flighting" of
ducks--The autumn gatherings of starlings and swallows--"Soaring"
flights of storks and vultures--The wonderful
"sailing" feats of the albatross--The "soaring" of the
skylark--The "plunging" flight of the gannet, tern, and
kingfisher.

IV. Modes of Flight 35

The movements of the wing in flight--Marey's
experiments--Stopping and turning
movements--Alighting--"Taking off"--Hovering--The use of the
tail in flight--The carriage of the neck in flight--And of the
legs--The flight of petrels--The speed of flight--The height
at which birds fly--Flight with burdens--Experiments on the
sizes of the wing in relation to flight--Flight in "troops."

V. Courtship Flights 53

The wing-play of black-game and grouse--The "musical
ride" of the snipe--The "roding" of the woodcock--The
musical flights of redshank and curlew--The "tumbling"
of the lapwing--The raven's somersaults--The
courting flight of the wood pigeon--The mannikin's
"castanets"--Wings as lures--The strange pose of the
sun-bittern--The "wooing" of the chaffinch and the
grasshopper-warbler--Darwin and wing-displays--The
wonderful wings of the argus-pheasant.

VI. How to tell Birds on the Wing 71

The small perching-birds and the difficulty of distinguishing
them--The wagtails--The finches--The buntings--The
redstart-wheatear, Stonechat--The thrushes--The
warblers--The tit-mice--The nuthatch, and tree-creeper--The
spotted flycatcher--The red-backed shrike--Swallows,
martins, and swifts--The night-jar--Owls--Woodpeckers.

VII. How to tell Birds on the Wing 97
(_continued_)

Falcons--Golden eagle--Harriers and sparrow-hawk--The
heron--The cormorant, shag, and gannet--The petrels--Guillemots,
razor-bills, and puffins--The ducks--The
great crested grebe and dabchick--The pigeons--The
"plover tribe"--The gulls and terns--The game birds.

VIII. The Wings of Nestling Birds 117

The wing of the unhatched bird--Of the coots and water-hen--The
hoatzin's wings--The wing of Archæopteryx--Moulting--The
nestling game-birds and ducks--Teaching
the young to fly.

IX. Flightless Birds 127

The steamer duck--The owl parrot--The flightless grebe
of Titicaca--The dodo and solitaire--The ostrich tribe--The
penguin's wings.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Coloured Plates

Kingfisher and Young _Frontispiece_
Jays _Facing Page_ 6
Pheasants " " 22
Brown Owl " " 30
Wild Duck " " 38
Woodcock carrying Young " " 54
Herons " " 64
Chaffinch and Young " " 76
Gold-crested Wrens " " 86
Great Spotted Woodpeckers " " 92
Some Types of Wings and Tails " " 102
Grouse " " 118

Black and White Plates

Swans, Heron, Geese _Facing Page_ 4
Black-game " " 26
Ducks " " 42
Lapwings " " 58
Some Common Birds _Facing Page_ 72
Some Types of Birds in Flight " " 80
Birds of Prey " " 106
Flightless Birds " " 130

Line Illustrations

Wings _Page_ 13
Archæopteryx and Pterodactyles " 19
Bat, Beetle, Dragon Fly, etc. " 33
Peregrine chasing Duck " 51
Sunbittern Displaying " 69
Drumming Snipe " 95
Buzzard Soaring " 115
Gulls " 125
Vultures " 133

Preface.

There are hosts of people who have a genuine love of our native birds without yearning to possess their skins, or desiring to acquire the reputation of being "Ornithologists." They would call them all by name if they could, but seek, alas! in vain, for some book wherein they will find some magic phrase which will enable them to identify every bird they meet by the wayside.

Most of our native birds have learnt that "discretion is the better part of valour," when in the neighbourhood of Man. Hence one gets but too often no more than a fleeting glance at their retreating forms, which, from frequent encounters, have become familiar, yet they leave no more than a vague image in the memory. "What bird _was_ that? I have often seen it but have never succeeded in taking it unawares." This is a question, and its comment, often put to me.

Those who are in this quandary, and they are many, are always hoping to find some book which will enable them to correctly name the retreating forms. That book will never be written. In the following pages an attempt is made to aid such enquirers, and at the same time the difficulties of the task are pointed out.

It is hoped, however, that this attempt will find a welcome among those for whom it is made. If it helps them to understand something, at least, of the absorbing and fascinating problems which the study of flight in the animal kingdom presents, it will at least have served some useful purpose.

The pursuit of the flying bird will inevitably stimulate a desire to know more about the bewildering changes of plumage presented at different seasons of the year, as well as by the striking differences which often distinguish the two sexes, and the immature birds. The endeavour to satisfy this desire will open up a new world. Those who would pass to this knowledge should possess themselves of the "Practical Handbook of British Birds." Though most severely practical, and designed for the serious student alone, even the beginner will find interest in the description of these several plumages, and much else beside that it is essential to know.

Now that the study of flight is so much to the fore, some may turn to these pages in the hope of gaining useful information on the theme of mechanical flight. Some help they may find. But it was not for this that they were written. The flight of an aeroplane and the flight of a bird have little in common--at present; though something may be learned by the study of gliding flight and soaring, which of course have their place in this book. But anatomical details and mechanical formulæ, necessary to the serious student of flight, would have been entirely out of place here, and they have been omitted.

My task has been by no means easy. But it has been enormously helped by the extremely skilful and beautiful work of the artist, Mr. Roland Green. Where birds are concerned, few artists in the past, and very few in the present, have shown any ability to combine accuracy in drawing with ingenuity of composition and faithfulness in colouring. Mr. Green has shown this rare combination; his coloured plates and line-drawings speak for themselves.

W. P. PYCRAFT.

_London_,
_September, 1922_