Frithjof Tidemand-Johannessen, "Birds in a landscape." Via le jardin robo.
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Maynard F. Reece: Plate XI, "Forney Lake." An illustration from Waterfowl in Iowa by Jack W. Musgrove, 1940. Via le jardin robo.*
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From a conversation between leaves in Bambi: A Life in the Woods, by Felix Salten, 1923.
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Communists and socialists demonstrating against the far right in Paris, February 12, 1934. Via The London Review of Books.
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In the autumn of 1813, I left my house at Henderson, on the banks of the Ohio, on my way to Louisville. In passing over the Barrens a few miles beyond Hardensburgh, I observed the Pigeons flying from north-east to south-west, in greater numbers than I thought I had ever seen them before, and feeling an inclination to count the flocks that might pass within the reach of my eye in one hour, I dismounted, seated myself on an eminence, and began to mark with my pencil, making a dot for every flock that passed. In a short time finding the task which I had undertaken impracticable, as the birds poured in in countless multitudes, I rose, and counting the dots then put down, found that 163 had been made in twenty-one minutes. I travelled on, and still met more the farther I proceeded. The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse, the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow; and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose.
Whilst waiting for dinner at YOUNG'S inn at the confluence of Salt river with the Ohio, I saw, at my leisure, immense legions still going by, with a front reaching far beyond the Ohio on the west, and the beech-wood forests directly on the east of me. Not a single bird alighted; for not a nut or acorn was that year to be seen in the neighbourhood. They consequently flew so high, that different trials to reach them with a capital rifle proved ineffectual; nor did the reports disturb them in the least. I cannot describe to you the extreme beauty of their aerial evolutions, when a Hawk chanced to press upon the rear of a flock. At once, like a torrent, and with a noise like thunder, they rushed into a compact mass, pressing upon each other towards the centre. In these almost solid masses, they darted forward in undulating and angular lines, descended and swept close over the earth with inconceivable velocity, mounted perpendicularly so as to resemble a vast column, and, when high, were seen wheeling and twisting within their continued lines, which then resembled the coils of a gigantic serpent.
John James Audubon, from "Plate 62: The Passenger Pigeon" in Birds of America.
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Every afternoon [the pigeons] came sweeping across the lawn, positively in clouds, and with a swiftness and softness of winged motion, more beautiful than anything of the kind I ever knew. Had I been a musician, such as Mendelssohn, I felt that I could have improvised a music quite peculiar, from the sound they made, which should have indicated all the beauty over which their wings bore them.
Margaret Fuller of Oregon, Illinois, writing in 1843. Quoted at the Friends of the Nachusa Grasslands blog.
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BETWEEN the years 1872 and 1875 or 1876, eastern Iowa, for a distance of sixty or more miles west of the Mississippi River, witnessed many intermittent flights of the fast dwindling flocks of the Passenger Pigeon. At that time I was not familiar with the stories of the pigeon flights over Ohio and Kentucky territory east of the Mississippi, related by Wilson and Audubon, or, probably, I should have been impressed with the difference between flights occurring prior to 1845 and those between 1870 and 1880. It will be recalled that Wilson and Audubon described the pigeon flocks as being so vast in extent that they darkened the sky for several successive days. As I read their descriptions, the pigeons literally spread a dark blanket of roaring wings over the earth, interfering with the light from the sun to the extent that a twilight condition prevailed not only all day but for several days in succession.The rapid destruction of the pigeons between the dates mentioned should, one would think, have warned thoughtful students of wild life of the complete destruction of this edible species at an early date, but if fears existed the publications of the period do not appear to have been utilized for the purpose of arousing public interest and concern therein. So to us in the 70's the flights of pigeons seemed tremendous and were wholly without a warning thought or suggestion that the hundreds of thousands, or possibly millions, we saw passing over were but the fast disappearing remnants of the billions that turned day into night much less than fifty years before.
Then he would go out for a walk, wander through the countryside while reciting Sacred scripture to the crows in the fields, the dark murmurations of starlings against the clouds, and as he wandered through the orchards near the river he would think of the miracle of flowing water from the book of Ezekiel: And it shall come to pass, that every living thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither; for they shall be healed; and every thing shall live whither the river cometh ... And by the river upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed: it shall bring forth new fruit according to his months, because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary: and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine, a passage he had read so often in church, and he would pick a few familiar leaves to make a tisane, then, at length, having made a tour of the village, wondering how all things could so sweetly sing the praises of the Creator and yet also be the mark of His abandonment, he would head back to the presbytery, there to surrender to the gathering night, to dereliction and to hooch.
Mathias Énard, from The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild, translated by Frank Wynne.
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To find a stronger word for love, a word that would be like the wind, but come from beneath the earth, a word that doesn't need mountains, but dwells in immense caves from whence it travels through the valleys and the plains like water that is not water, like fire that doesn't burn, but shines through and through, like a crystal, which doesn't cut and is instead transparent, pure form, a word like the voices of animals, as if they understand one another, a word like the dead, but all alive again.
Elias Canetti, from The Book Against Death, translated by Peter Filkins.
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