A fugitive pleiades

I walk directly at the birds -- a general apprehension, a rally, a scutter ahead, and the birds are gone. Standing on the beach, fresh claw marks at my feet, I watch the lovely sight of the group instantly turned into a constellation of birds, into a fugitive pleiades whose living stars keep their chance positions; I watch the spiraling flight, the momentary tilts of the white bellies, the alternate shows of the clustered, grayish backs.

From Henry Beston's account of his year living on Cape Cod in 1928, The Outermost House