no ordinary Bird

     It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.
A mile from shore a fishing boat chummed the water, and the word for
Breakfast Flock flashed through the air, till a crowd of a thousand seagulls came
to dodge and fight for bits of food. It was another busy day beginning.
     But way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan
Livingston Seagull was practicing. A hundred feet in the sky he lowered his
webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a painful hard twisting curve
through his wings. The curve meant that he would fly slowly, and now he
slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face, until the ocean stood still
beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration, held his breath,
forced one…single…more…inch…of…curve…. Then his feathers ruffled, he
stalled and fell.
     Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air is for
them disgrace and it is dishonor.
     But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings again in
that trembling hard curve—slowing, slowing, and stalling once more—was no
ordinary bird.
     Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight—how
to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that
matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but
flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.

- Richard Bach, American writer