The omitted birds must be treated

Now I would not say that I myself was ever a fish, but I would maintain most vigorously that in the passage where I was writing these things, I was more irrational than the fish. “Let the earth bring forth a living creature” (Genesis 1:24). Why, when the discourse was running on so swiftly, did I fall silent for no small time? Perhaps many are wondering, but the more diligent among my hearers know the cause of my speechlessness. How? They are the ones who, by looking at one another and nodding, turned me back to themselves and brought to mind what had been passed over. For a whole class of creation, and not the least important one, had escaped us, and the discourse nearly went on its way leaving it completely unexamined. “Let the waters bring forth creeping things of living souls according to kind, and winged creatures flying over the earth across the firmament of heaven according to kind” (Genesis 1:20). We spoke about the swimming creatures, as much as the evening allowed; today we moved on to the examination of the land animals. The winged creature slipped through in the middle. So then, like forgetful travelers who, when they leave behind something essential, even if they have gone far along the road, turn back again, paying the penalty for their carelessness with the toil of the journey—so we too, it seems, must walk the same road again. For what was passed over is not something to be despised; it seems to be a third part of the creation of living things, if indeed there are three kinds of living creatures: the land animal, the winged, and the water-dwelling. “Let the waters bring forth,” it says, “creeping things of living souls according to kind, and winged creatures flying over the earth across the firmament of heaven according to kind” (Genesis 1:20). Why did he give the winged creatures their origin from the waters? Because there is a certain kinship between flying creatures and swimming creatures. For just as fish cut through the water, moving forward by the motion of their wings, and steering their turns and straight courses by the movement of their tail, so also in the case of winged creatures one can see them swimming through the air with their wings in a similar way. Therefore, since swimming is one distinctive property in both, a single kinship was provided for them from their origin in the waters. Except that no winged creature is footless, because all of them have their sustenance from the earth, and all necessarily require the service of feet. For the predatory ones have sharp points of claws for the hunt; for the rest, the service of feet has been granted as necessary both for procuring food and for the rest of life's conduct. But a few birds are bad-footed, suited neither for walking nor for hunting with their feet—as the swallows are, unable either to walk or to hunt, and the so-called scythe-birds, whose food is contrived from things carried in the air. For the swallow, its low flight near the ground takes the place of the service of feet. There are, however, countless differences of kinds among the birds, which if someone examines in the same way that we partially took up the examination of the fish, he will find that there is one name for winged creatures, but countless differences among them in sizes and in shapes and in colors; and in their ways of life, their activities, and their habits, their variation from one another is beyond telling.