it as it passes, sometimes beneath, alighting again immediately afterwards. This may continue for some little time, the one bird passing backwards and forwards over or under the other as long as he is received in the same way. Gradually, however, these little sorties against him from being at first hardly more than balloon-jumps—springs with aid of wings—become more and more prolonged, and extended outwards into his own radius of flight. The bird making them no longer alights in the same or nearly the same place as where he went up, but farther and farther away from it, the figure is lost, or becomes indistinct, "as water is in water," till at last the two are flying and chasing each other again.
This upward sweep from near the ground—sometimes from nearly touching it—with its attendant sweep back again, is one of the greatest beauties of the peewit's flight—a flight that is full of beauties. He does it often, but not always in quite the same way; it is a varying perfection, for each time it is perfect, and sometimes it seems to vie with almost any aerial master-stroke. The bird's wings, as it shoots aloft, are spread half open, and remain thus without being moved at all. The body is turned sideways—sometimes more, sometimes less—and the light glancing on the pure soft white of the under part, makes it look like the crest of foam on an invisible and swiftly-moving wave. As the uprush attains its zenith, there is a lovely, soft, effortless curling over of the body, and the foam sinks again with the wave. Such motions are not flight, they are passive abandonings and givings-up-to, driftings on unseen currents, bird-swirls and feathered eddies in the thin
