Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/491/en

"The bird is … in the whole essentially a head." The outward appearance of a tit, a robin or a wren and so on confirms this statement directly. The metabolic tract and chest are shortened and appear as if drawn inward toward the head pole. The physiognomy is governed by beak and eyes; but it closes up, in the form, colour and patterning of the plumage, into the head-gestalt of the bird as a whole. The rigid union of the cranial bones continues through the jointed middle cervical vertebrae into the trunk skeleton; the fused dorsal vertebrae form with shoulder blade, pelvis, ribs and sternum a firmly closed unity. Conversely, the principal limb-activity shifts into the wings and further forward into the jerking, pecking mobility of the head — pecking (chicken, sparrow, etc.) or drumming (woodpecker). In the head, then, a highly specialised limb-activity closes together with an intensely wakeful sense-activity. When one looks into the eye of a bird — above all of a bird of prey — one feels a soul-force that, as though passing through a still point, arrests one's own gaze with an almost overwhelming power; a gaze as from ancient times. The soul-nature of the bird communicates itself to the airy periphery in simple calls reaching up to tonally painterly sequences of sound. These stream forth from the syrinx (the so-called lower larynx), brought about by the outbreathing and, in part, also the inbreathing airstream. The skylark, when it swings itself up into the air on an early sun-brightened morning, is able to trill its melody for so long because it can make what are called micro-inhalations, with which it continuously replenishes the air sacs — comparable to a bagpiper. So it is also with the nightingale, which can sustain its melodic song in just this way for so long.