powerful-winged

Updated: May 24, 2025

There are the clumsy-looking but powerful-winged birds, the brown pelicans, usually in a line of five or six, skimming low over the waves, shaping their course to the "hilly sea," often gliding on set wings for a long distance, rising and falling to clear the water coasting, at it were, on a horizontal surface, and only at intervals beating the air for more power.

John Burroughs - Under the Maples