That’s the way of June.
—Pall Mall Gazette.
THE SWALLOW-TAILED KITE.
(Elanoides forficatus.)
Hawks in highest heaven hover,
Soar in sight of all their victims:
None can charge them with deception,
All their crimes are deeds of daring.
—Frank Bolles, “The Blue Jay.”
The late Dr. Coues enthusiastically writes of the beauty of the Swallow-tailed Kite in the following words:
“Marked among its kind by no ordinary beauty of form and brilliancy of color, the Kite courses through the air with a grace and buoyancy it would be vain to rival. By a stroke of the thin-bladed wings and a lashing of the cleft tail, its flight is swayed to this or that side in a moment, or instantly arrested. Now it swoops with incredible swiftness, seizes without a pause, and bears its struggling captive aloft, feeding from its talons as it flies. Now it mounts in airy circles till it is a speck in the blue ether and disappears. All its actions, in wantonness or in severity of the chase, display the dash of the athletic bird, which, if lacking the brute strength and brutal ferocity of some, becomes their peer in prowess—like the trained gymnast, whose tight-strung thews, supple joints, and swelling muscles, under marvelous control, enable him to execute feats that to the more massive or not so well conditioned frame would be impossible. One cannot watch the flight of the Kite without comparing it with the thorough-bred racer.”