ESPECIALLY BUZZARDS.
The bird they watched above others was the buzzard, a great hawk that is common in America. I have seen a group of them circling hour after hour above Washington as if they were as much at home there as in Ohio, where Mr. Orville Wright was working in a factory of war machines. Now it is a favourite habit of the buzzards to circle round and round, often in a slightly ascending and rather narrow spiral ; and during considerable periods of this manoeuvre they do not apparently move the wings at all. Nevertheless, like the lesser albatrosses which follow your ship across the Pacific, they maintain speed and even move upwards over unbelievably long periods. The secret is principally the use of upward draughts. Winds move vertically as well as horizontally, and by many slanting courses between the two. The extreme sensitiveness of birds (helped perhaps by the air-sack in their bones ?) enables them to use these currents with the maximum of skill. The airman begins to share this gift, though like " Black Auster " he " toils behind in vain," and will so toil.
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