The discussion between the Wart, Merlyn, and Archimedes of their favorite birds is White's satirical look at social class and the relations between the sexes. While the Wart loves the rooks, Archimedes "loftily" reiterates the Wart's description of them as "mobs" — to the owl; rooks are lower-station birds who should be dismissed for the very frivolity that the Wart finds so appealing. Archimedes' love of the pigeon reveals his own values: He praises the "philosophical" nature of the bird and its complete sobriety. Merlyn's vote is more humorous, because he selects the chaffinch because they "have the sense to separate during the winter, so that all the males are in one flock and all the females in the other." Because of this separation, Merlyn explains that in "the winter months, at any rate there is perfect peace." White's linking different species of birds to different types of people is a suggestion from him that the reader do so himself with all of the other animals in the book (if he has not yet started doing so already). The explicit link between animals and humans is again reiterated near the end of Chapter 19, when the Wart flies over the town of birds, complete with crowded slums. Kay's clumsy entrance (bearing a dead thrush) reveals his complete ignorance of birds' more "human-like" qualities.
Archimedes proves himself to be another in the Wart's long list of teachers. Although his methods can be harsh (he reprimands the Wart for his flying method and calls him an "idiot"), he does achieve his desired results. As when the Wart was literally able to see the world differently as a perch in Chapter 5, the same phenomenon occurs here as an owl, when the Wart is able to see one ray beyond the visible spectrum. An even greater change of perception occurs when the Wart finds himself suddenly transformed into a wild goose. White's description of the air relies almost wholly on abstract language in order to convey the Wart's new and inexplicable sensation of flight. The Wart is described as feeling like "a point in geometry, existing mysteriously on the shortest distance between two points" and the sky is depicted as "a pulseless world-stream steady in limbo." These moments of new perception are literal examples of what is metaphorically occurring every time the Wart becomes a new animal and receives a new lesson.
