Another minute, and I saw a second bird, farther away. I watched
the nearer one till it faded from sight, soaring and swooping by
turns,--its long, scissors-shaped tail all the while fully spread,--but
never coming down, as its habit is said to be, to skim over the surface
of the water. There is nothing more beautiful on wings, I believe: a
large hawk, with a swallow's grace of form, color, and motion. I saw it
once more (four birds) over the St. Mark's River, and counted the sight
one of the chief rewards of my Southern winter.
At noon we rested and ate our luncheon in the shade of three or four
tall palmetto-trees standing by themselves on a broad prairie, a place
brightened by beds of blue iris and stretches of golden
senecio,--homelike as well as pretty, both of them. Then we set out
again. The day was intensely hot (March 24), and my oarsman was more
than half sick with a sudden cold. I begged him to take things easily,
but he soon experienced an almost miraculous renewal of his forces. In
one of the first of our after-dinner bonnet patches, he seized his gun,
fired, and began to shout, "A purple! a purple!" He drew the bird in, as
proud as a prince. "There, sir!" he said; "didn't I tell you it was
handsome? It has every color there is." And indeed it was handsome,
worthy to be called the "Sultana;" with the most exquisite iridescent
bluish-purple plumage, the legs yellow, or greenish-yellow (a point by
which it may be distinguished from the Florida gallinule, as the bird
flies from you), the bill red tipped with pale green, and the shield (on
the forehead, like a continuation of the upper mandible) light blue, of
a peculiar shade, "just as if it had been painted.
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