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Updated: May 31, 2025
I read his description over and over again, till I got the vivid picture he drew by heart, the long-winged hawk circling over the heaving waves, every motion watched by the eagle perched on the top of a crag or dead tree; the fish hawk poising for a moment to take aim at a fish and plunging under the water; the eagle with kindling eye spreading his wings ready for instant flight in case the attack should prove successful; the hawk emerging with a struggling fish in his talons, and proud flight; the eagle launching himself in pursuit; the wonderful wing-work in the sky, the fish hawk, though encumbered with his prey, circling higher, higher, striving hard to keep above the robber eagle; the eagle at length soaring above him, compelling him with a cry of despair to drop his hard-won prey; then the eagle steadying himself for a moment to take aim, descending swift as a lightning-bolt, and seizing the falling fish before it reached the sea.
There were many fine birds in that flight, broad-breasted, bright-eyed, long-winged creatures, formed for swiftest flight, for high unconscious emprise, for these were destined to be messengers in the service of man in times of serious need. Their colors were mostly white, blue, or brown.
The chief falconer, with a long-winged hawk in her hood and jesses upon his wrist, was stationed somewhat near the gateway, and close to him were his attendants, each having on his fist a falcon gentle, a Barbary falcon, a merlin, a goshawk, or a sparrowhawk. Thus all was in readiness, and hound, hawk, and man seemed equally impatient for the sport.
Then up at that question got a long-winged insect like a big fly, and a long-legged insect like a green grasshopper, and both said at once, "I will." Amid low murmurs of "Scab! Scab!" from many of the Wood-birds. "You. I forgot that you two had any voices at all!" said Mother Carey.
We were evidently in for a fair specimen of Western Ocean weather, but the clumsy-looking, old-fashioned CACHALOT made no more fuss over it than one of the long-winged sea-birds that floated around, intent only upon snapping up any stray scraps that might escape from us.
When the shouting died away into a silence of the human voices, the bells were still quietly chiming with that far-away voice of theirs, and the long-winged dusky swifts, by no means scared by the concourse, swung round about the cross with their wild squeals; and the man stood still for a little, eyeing the throng, or rather looking first at one and then another man in it, as though he were trying to think what such an one was thinking of, or what he were fit for.
All this while he had seen no four-footed beast, save now and again a hill-fox, and once some outlandish kind of hare; and of fowl but very few: a crow or two, a long-winged hawk, and twice an eagle high up aloft. Again, the third night, he slept in the stony wilderness, which still led him up and up.
I lifted my eyes in the relief of the thought, and saw how the sun of the autumn hung above the waters oppressed with a mist of his own glory; far away to the left a man who had been clambering on a low rock, inaccessible save in such a tide, gathering mussels, threw himself into the sea and swam ashore; above his head the storm-tower stood in the stormless air; the sea glittered and shone, and the long-winged birds knew not which to choose, the balmy air or the cool deep, now flitting like arrow-heads through the one, now alighting eagerly upon the other, to forsake it anew for the thinner element.
From a chalk bed near Maidstone, have likewise been extracted some remains of a bird, supposed to have been of the long-winged swimmer family, and equal in size to the albatross.
Harvey took from a shelf several large pictures of insects, and laying one on the table, asked his son what he thought it was. "It looks like a large grasshopper," said John. "It is the locust of the East," replied his father. "These locusts are shaped almost exactly like the long-winged grasshoppers that fly about our fields; but they are two or three times larger.
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