This soaring and wheeling is evidently done for recreation, like a dance.

Presently the flock seems to tumble and fall, and there comes the rushing sound of the air swiftly parted by their out-spread wings as they dive a hundred feet in a second.

The noise is audible a quarter of a mile off.

This, too, is play; for, catching themselves and regaining their balance just above the elms, they resume their steady flight onwards to distant feeding-grounds.
Later in the season, sitting there in the warm evenings, I could hear the pheasants utter their peculiar roost-cry, and the noise of their wings as they flew up in the wood: the vibration is so loud that it might almost be described as thumping.
By-and-by the cuckoo began to lose his voice; he gurgled and gasped, and cried 'cuck--kuk--kwai--kash,' and could not utter the soft, melodious 'oo.' The latest date on which I ever heard the cuckoo here, to be certain, was the day before St.Swithin, July 14, 1879.

The nightingales, too, lose their sweet notes, but not their voices; they remain in the hedges long after their song has ceased.