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At first I took this for a Himalayan whistling-thrush. I followed its movements through my field-glasses, and saw it alight on part of the gnarled and twisted trunk of a rhododendron tree. Closer inspection showed that the bird was a grey-winged ouzel. He had apparently caught sight of me, for his whole attitude was that of a suspicious bird with a nest in the vicinity.
Both species love to disport themselves on rocks and boulders lapped by the gentle-flowing stream in the valley, or lashed by the torrent on the hillside. Like all redstarts, these constantly flirt the tail. Throughout the early summer the cock makes the wooded hillsides ring with his blackbird-like melody. The grey-winged ouzel is a near relative of the English blackbird.
And so, on and on, these seeming outcasts of God's mercy sailed before the warm breath of the south-east trade wind, above them the blazing tropic sun, around them the wide, sailless expanse of the blue Pacific unbroken in its dreadful loneliness except for a wandering grey-winged booby or flocks of whale-birds floating upon its gentle swell, and within their all but deadened hearts naught but grim despair and a dulled sense of coming dissolution.
A violent south-west gale was blowing, driving scud and sea-foam before it, while ever new armies of rain-clouds advanced threateningly across the shadowy waters mighty, moving mists, whose grey-winged squadrons, swift and irresistible, enveloped and almost blotted from sight the little rock-bound island, against which the forces of nature seemed to be for ever spending themselves in vain.
Two other species allied to the grey-winged ouzel demand our attention. This is not like any bird found in England. The head, chin, and throat of the cock are cobalt blue; there is also a patch of this colour on his wing; the sides of the head and neck are black, as are the back and wing feathers. The rump and lower parts are chestnut.
There is no doubt at all, Olivia had said gravely, that the dusk is patterned, if only one could see it figured in unearthly flowers, in wandering stars, in upper-air sprites, grey-winged, grey-bodied, so that sometimes glimpsing them one fancies them to be little living goblins.
Take a cock blackbird and paint his wings dark grey, and cover his bill with red colouring matter, and you will have to all appearances a grey-winged ouzel. In order to effect the transformation of the brown female, it is only necessary to redden her bill. The nesting operations of this species are described in the essay near the end of Part I.
The end of the chiffon scarf rose to meet a passing breeze, then fell back against the softness of her arm. A great grey-winged night moth fluttered past them. From the high bough of a distant maple came the frightened twitter of little birds, wakeful in the night, and the soft, murmurous voice of the brooding mother, soothing them. "How did you know?" asked Alden, slowly. "Oh, I just knew.
The nests built by grey-winged ouzels vary considerably in structure. The commonest form is that of a massive cup, composed exteriorly of moss and lined with dry grass, a layer of mud being inserted between the moss and the grass lining. This mud layer does not invariably occur. The cock ouzel remained for fully five minutes with one eye on me, and then flew off.
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