Burroughs, John, 1837-1921 / 2008-09-14 00:00:00

Every sign of life
is welcome at this season. I love to hear dogs bark, hens cackle, and
boys shout; one has no privacy with nature now, and does not wish to
seek her in nooks and hidden ways. She is not at home if he goes there;
her house is shut up and her hearth cold; only the sun and sky, and
perchance the waters, wear the old look, and to-day we will make love
to them, and they shall abundantly return it.
Even the crows and the buzzards draw the eye fondly. The National
Capital is a great place for buzzards, and I make the remark in no
double or allegorical sense either, for the buzzards I mean are black
and harmless as doves, though perhaps hardly dovelike in their tastes.
My vulture is also a bird of leisure, and sails through the ether on
long flexible pinions, as if that was the one delight of his life. Some
birds have wings, others have "pinions." The buzzard enjoys this latter
distinctions. There is something in the sound of the word that suggests
that easy, dignified, undulatory movement. He does not propel himself
along by sheer force of muscle, after the plebeian fashion of the crow,
for instance, but progresses by a kind of royal indirection that
puzzles the eye.
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