Читать книгу The Bird Watcher in the Shetlands, with Some Notes on Seals—and Digressions - Edmund Selous - Страница 5

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THE red-throated diver moves softly upon the gentle play of the ripples, seeming, rather, to float with the tide than to swim, for there is no defined swimming action. When it turns and goes the other way, it meets the opposing motion—the little dance of the sea—as if it were a ripple itself, assuming the shape of a bird. This shape is a graceful one, something between that of a grebe and a guillemot. One might say that a guillemot had been sent to a finishing-school and had very much profited by it; but this is not to imply that the grebe—I am thinking of Podiceps Cristatus—is slighted in the comparison—no bird that swims need think itself so. Much there is grebe-like in manner and action, and in shape, except for the crest. By the want of this, the bird, I think, rather gains than loses to the human eye, for handsome as the grebe's crest is, the delicate curve of head and neck is interrupted by it, and the effect is rather bizarre than beautiful—it loses something in purity, that beauty of the undraped statue, to which Cicero compares the style of Cæsar. The neck of the red-throated diver offers a wonderful example of delicate yet effective ornament. Down the back of it, and encroaching a little upon either side, run thin longitudinal stripes of alternate black and white, so cleanly and finely divided that they look as though they had been traced by a paint-brush in the hand of a Japanese artist. There is a gorget of rich ruddy chestnut on the throat, but the rest of it, with the head and chin, is of a very delicious plum-bloomy grey, which looks in the sunlight as though it would be purple if it dared, but were too modest—a lovely and æsthetic combination, soft, yet bright, and the whole with such a smoothness as no words can describe. There is another effect wrought by the sun, if it should happen to be shining, and if the bird should be swimming so as to give a profile view. It then looks as though there were a broad, white stripe—white, but having almost a prismatic brilliancy—along the contour-line of the nape. This appearance is most deceptive, and it is only when the bird turns its neck so as to show the several thin delicate stripings that one sees it to be illusory. It is produced, I think, by the light being reflected from the white stripes alone, so that the black ones between them are overlooked. Whatever may be the cause, the effect is most striking and lovely, and if the stripes themselves are due to sexual selection—which I do not doubt they are—this far more beautiful appearance, being the effect and crown of them, must assuredly also be. Here is a neck, then! and I have seen three, and once even seven, together!

In their way of diving, again, these birds resemble the grebes. Sometimes they go down with a very quiet little leap, but often they sink and disappear so gently and gradually that one is hardly conscious of what they are about till one sees them no more. As much as any creature, I think, they "softly and silently vanish away." Another habit which they have is shared by the cormorant and other sea-birds, and has often puzzled me. It is that of continually dipping their bills in the water and raising them up from it again, as though they were drinking, though that they should drink the salt sea like this, for hours at a time, seems a strange thing. What is the meaning of this action, which I have just seen a shag perform forty-six times in succession, at intervals of a few seconds, as if for a wager? And this was after having watched it doing the same thing for some time before. After the forty-sixth sip, as it were, this bird made a short pause, and then recommenced. Is this drinking, and, if not, what is it? The head and part of the bill are, each time, sunk in the water, so that, as the bird moves on, they plough it like the ram of a war-ship. Then, in a second or two, the head is raised, not so high indeed as in an unmistakable thirsty draught—which I do not remember at any time to have seen shags indulge in—but with much the action of drinking. The bill, it is true, is very little opened, hardly sufficiently so to be noticeable, but very little would allow of water entering it. But why should the bird drink like this? It cannot be that the salt water makes it more and more thirsty, for this, as with shipwrecked sailors, would produce evil consequences—probably death—but, of course, this is out of the question.

Sometimes it has struck me that some small disseminated matter in the water might serve as food, and in regard to this, I have seen some large white Muscovy ducks, in the Pittville Gardens at Cheltenham, engaged for a long time, apparently, in carefully sifting the quite clear water of a little rill. Here, too, there was some action, as of drinking. On the whole, however, they seemed obviously to be feeding, but whatever they got must have been extremely minute. The waters of the sea are, no doubt, full of tiny floating substances, which a bird might yet be able to appreciate, and which would perceptibly add to its nourishment. If this were so, then drinking, as a special function, might become almost merged in the constant swallowing of water whilst taking food, and this may be the case with various sea-birds. Guillemots and razor-bills also act in this way, but not, I think, gulls. Gulls drink the fresh water of lochs and streams; whether they, of set purpose, also drink the sea, I am not quite sure. If they do, then no doubt I have seen them; but I have not set it down, and have no clear recollection of it.

These Muscovy ducks that I spoke of have another curious habit of drinking dew in the early morning. This, at least, is what it looks like. They walk about for hours over the well-kept lawns, and with their heads stretched straight out, just above the herbage, continually just open and shut the mandibles very quickly and very slightly, nibbling the dew as it were. They certainly do drink it—one can see it disappear in their mouths; but whether that is all they do, or their chief object, it is not so easy to be sure of. Why should they walk about imbibing dew for such a length of time? and why should dew be so much preferred by them to ordinary water, of which there is abundance? These ducks, indeed, or at least the larger kind of them, which are of great size, are never to be seen swimming, but they often walk about by the edge of the lake. They have a most portentous appearance, and walk with an extraordinary swing of the body, first to one side and then another. They are fond of bread, but their ordinary eating and drinking is something of a mystery to me. I have seen them apparently browsing some long, coarse grass, more like rushes, but though occasionally they did crop a piece, the incessant nibbling was out of all proportion to what they got, and seemed for the most part to be simply in the air. They seem indeed to have a habit of incessantly moving the mandibles in this way, without any particular object, or, at any rate, without any clearly discernible result following upon their doing so.

But as I remember these fine white Muscovy ducks with their vermilion faces and wild, light eye, with something a look of insanity in it, I remember, too, that they are now gone, or, at any rate, that most of them are, and those the best—the hugest and most dragon-like. "Sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish" and sometimes a duck. These wonderful, waddling, swinging red and white Muscovy ducks were, and to have them running after one, with uncouth hissings and with their heads held down, yet scooping up and wagged from side to side at one—and with that insane eye—made one think all sorts of odd things. Well, they are gone, nor are they the only ones that are. When I first, by necessity, came to live at Cheltenham, the ducks in the Pittville Gardens were a great consolation to me. There was quite a fleet of them, a gay little flotilla of all kinds and colours, and at the smallest hint of bread, on one side of the lake, they would all come flying over from the other; and then it was the sport to feed them. How diverting that was! Being in such numbers, one took notice of all the little differences in their dispositions, the different degrees of boldness or retiringness, of pugnacity, greediness, aggressiveness, pertness, impudence, swagger, imperialism, and so on, all of which one could bring out, in some amusing way or another, by the varied and nicely-schemed throwing of the bread. To contrive that a timid bird should always get it, whilst a boldly greedy one pursued in vain, that two should contend for a large piece, to the end that a third might swim securely away with it, to tempt some to walk on thin ice till it broke, and others to make little canals through it, each from a different place, each struggling to be first, to have one bird feeding from the hand, whilst a crowd stood round, looking enviously on, to see greed just drag on fear, or fear just drive back greed, or the two so nicely balanced that they produced a deadlock, so that the bird stood on a very knife-edge, trembling between a forward and a backward movement; and then, too, gradually to come to connect the look and bearing of each bird with its disposition, to know them, both outwardly and psychologically, to see them grow into their names that grew with them, and have the bold orange-bill, the modest grey, the swaggering white bird, the Duchess, the Fine Lady, the My Lord Tomnoddy, the Kaiser, the Swashbuckler, and so on, all about one, so many characters, so many amusing little burlesques of humanity—human nature stripped, without its guards, disguises, softenings and hypocrisies—all this was the solace and beguilement of many a tedious afternoon.

But there exists for some reason, in every town in England, a body of men who can do what they like, without asking anybody, to the annoyance of everybody, though everybody pays for them. One day, after an absence, I came with my bag of bread as usual, but there were no ducks to be fed; all had vanished—there was only the uninteresting pond. Alarmed, I inquired of the man at the entrance, and found that the Cheltenham Corporation had got rid of the whole of them on account of their being of no particular breed or strain, just ordinary tame ducks and no more. Their appearance, the indiscriminate diversity of their plumage, their infinite variety of colour and pattern, had been against them. It had, indeed, made the water gay, and gladdened the eyes of subscribers to the gardens, but it had not been creditable to the Corporation. True elegance, it appears, which can only come from true breeding, had been wanting. These ducks were "a mongrel lot," and though they might be pretty to look at and entertaining to feed, that was not what the Corporation cared about. What the Corporation did care about, presumably, was to read in the local papers, or be told by their friends that now, at last, there were some ducks on the Cheltenham lakes a little better than the "mongrel lot" one had so long been accustomed to see there, more worthy of themselves, more worthy of the town they represented, and so forth. So the poor "mongrel lot," the delight of all the children, and of many a grown-up person to boot—Charles the Second was grown up, and a clever man too—were done away with, and a few pairs of select, blue-blooded strangers (more soothing to gentle bourgeois feelings) were introduced in their place. The children who came to feed them said, "Where are the others? Where are all the rest gone to? There's no fun in feeding three or four." Nor is there, in comparison with feeding a hundred, as one grown-up person at least can testify. As additions, these new arrivals would have been welcome enough, and being of distinct species they would not, probably, have entered into mésalliances with the others, to make a correct Corporation blush. Why could they not have stayed? But this, I suppose, was the way of it. Here were pleasure gardens for which the public paid. This pretty little fleet of ducks, painted all sorts of colours and not one painted quite like another, made a very considerable part of the pleasure thus paid for. So the Corporation, vested with mysterious and almost unlimited powers of annoyance, decided that the proper thing to do was to do away with them, and they did do away with them, and the gardens have been the duller for it ever since. What they could have thought——But there! they were a Corporation and acted like one. They had a precedent. They had previously done away with the peacocks.

CHAPTER X

FROM THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE

I

I HAVE been watching the black guillemots. Like the common ones, they often carry a fish they have caught, for a very long time in the bill, before swallowing it, or even before giving it to their young. They will swim with it for half an hour or so, constantly dipping it beneath the water, and apparently nibbling on it with the bill, whilst they hold it thus submerged. Then finding themselves near a rock which is ascendable, they ascend it, and lie couched there for a while, resting, always with the fish in their bill. Anon, with refreshed energies, they re-enter the sea with it, and, if very patient, and prepared to watch indefinitely, one may at last see that fish swallowed; but I hardly think I should be exaggerating were I to say that hours may pass in this way. They usually hold the fish by the middle, or just below the head, and if they want to shift their hold from one place to the other, they sink down their bills into the water, as though better able to do so through its medium. To mandibulate a fish in the air, quite freely, as does the cormorant, is, perhaps, beyond their power. Any moment, however, may show me that it is not. So, too, when I have seen them swallow the fish, they have done so in the same way. Instead of raising the head and gulping it down, they gulped it up, with the water to help them; though I can hardly think that they are compelled to act in this way.

These little birds—old ocean's pets, his darlings—seem to me to play at fighting. Whilst swimming together in little changing troops—for the numbers are always increasing or diminishing—they constantly approach one another in a threatening manner, the body raised in the water, the head held straight up, and the mandibles opening and shutting like a slender pair of scissors—a thoroughly warlike appearance. Yet it hardly ever ends in anything, nor does the threatened bird seem really alarmed. Generally, the threatener, as he comes alongside, subsides into quiet humdrum, or two birds, after circling round one another in this way, each almost on its own pivot, like a pair of whirligig corks, both quiet down. Each, whilst thus acting, will, at intervals, drop the head and sink the beak a little in the water—one of their most usual actions. Sometimes, indeed, the menacing bird may fly at the one he menaces, who ducks at the right moment; but what makes me think it more play than wrath is that, often, instead of flying right at him, he flies to beside him only, and both then swim together, looking the best of friends. Yet too much stress is not to be laid on this either, and certainly it can be "miching malicho" on occasions. Often, when one bird is attacked, all the others will dive and scurry about under the water, in the most excited manner, seeming to pursue one another, as though it were a game or romp. Sometimes, indeed, there will be a little bit of a scuffle; but if there be fighting, still more, as it appears to me, is there the play or pretence of fighting, which is tending to pass into a social sport or dance.

The antics of birds are often so very curious, and the whole subject of their origin and meaning is so full of interest, that nothing which might by any possibility throw light upon this ought to be neglected, or can be too closely observed. I believe that the feelings of animals, still more than is known to be the case with savages, pass easily from one channel into another, and that, therefore, nervous excitement brought forth by one kind of emotion is apt, in its turn, to produce another kind, so that if any special transition of this sort were at all frequent, it might, through memory and association of ideas, become habitual. If, however, a mêlée or scrimmage—to meet the case of these guillemots—became, almost as soon as started, a mere hurrying and scurrying about, it would be difficult to detect the one as the cause of the other, and this is just the difficulty one might expect, for in such a sequence the tendency would, no doubt, be for the first or causal part of the activity to become more and more abbreviated (what should delay the passage?) till, at length, a mere start on the part of any one bird might set the others off dancing. Finally, what had become a mere pretence or starting-point might vanish entirely, or only survive as an indistinguishable part of the other, in which case there would be the dance or sport alone, which would then seem a very unaccountable thing. In this way I can imagine the evening dances or antics of the great plover, which used to impress me so when I lived in Suffolk, to have originated. One might watch these performances a great many times without seeing anything to suggest that a feeling of pugnacity entered into them. Nevertheless, there is, sometimes, a slight appearance of this, for I have several times seen a bird pursue and wave its wings over another one. My theory is that an initial energy or emotion sometimes flows out into subsidiary channels, and that gradually this secondary factor may encroach upon and take the place of the primary one.

At any rate, to come back from the general to the particular, it is apparent to me that these little ebullitions, or whatever they may be called, of the black guillemots are of a blended nature, and I should think it misleading to describe them simply as fights. Whatever they are, they are very pretty to see. The actions of all the little dumpling birds are so pert, brisk, and vivacious—so elegant, too. Yet a bird will go through it all, play every part in the little affaire, carrying, all the while, a fish in its bill. It makes no difference to him; he will even threaten in the way I have described, whilst thus encumbered. Whether this makes it more likely that the whole thing is sport, I hardly know.[3] It seems strange to seek one's enemy with one's dinner in one's hand—the beak is used more as a hand here than a mouth—yet what is done with entire ease is as though it were not done at all. Even so do the guillemots—the common ones, I mean—but then, they used to fight for their fish. Here I saw little or nothing of any real attempt on the part of one bird, to take the fish from another.

[3] On second thoughts it does not, since sparrows will attack martins though holding grass, etc., for nest-building, in their beaks—as I have seen.

In swimming under water the black guillemot uses its wings only—the rose-red legs trail behind it, a fading fire as it goes down. The body becomes one great glaucous-green bubble, which has, still more, a luminous appearance. The effect may almost be called beautiful, but it is still more odd and bottle-imp-like. Most diving sea-birds exhibit this appearance under water, but not all in the same degree. Whether sexual selection has come into play here I know not.

A pair of these birds are now feeding their young. The nest is in a hole in the earth, on a ridge of the precipitous grass-slope of the cliff, just above where it breaks into rocks, and drops sheer to the sea. Both parents feed the chick—for their family is no larger—but one more often than the other. They bring, each time, a single fish—a sand-eel, often of a fair size—and disappear with it into the hole, reappearing shortly afterwards. Once both are in the hole together, having entered in succession, each with a fish, but generally when the two meet at the entrance one only brings a fish and goes in, and the other, having nothing, stays outside. When the parent bird has fed its young and come out again, it will often sit for a little on the steep slope, above or below the hole, before flying away. It looks solicitously at the hole, and from time to time utters a little thin note that just reaches me where I am. Once both the birds sat like this, one above and one below the hole. What I particularly noticed was that when the bird that had taken a fish in had come out again, the other, even though it had nothing, would always go in too, as though to pay the chick a little visit. It stayed about the same time—less than a minute that is to say. How interesting are these little birds to watch, and how delightful is it to watch them from the summit of precipices that "beetle o'er their base into the sea," where all is wild and tremendous, and in the midst of utter solitude!

CHAPTER XI

DARWINIAN EIDER-DUCKS

I

I HAVE seen a fair number of eider-ducks within the last few days. All the grown ones are females—not a male to be seen now—and the greater number of them are unaccompanied by ducklings. Of those that are, most have but one, and three is the maximum number that I have seen swimming together with their mother. Yet two years ago, in early June, the males here were courting the females, and when I left, about the middle of the month, but very few eggs, I believe, had been laid. This year, I learn, the birds have been very late in breeding, there having been some very "rough weather," as it is euphoniously called, in the spring—that is to say, the spring has been like a bad winter, and now the summer, though it has no very close resemblance to any of the four seasons as I have seen them elsewhere, yet comes nearest to a phenomenally bad November. I wonder, therefore, that so many of these mother eiders are without their young ones, for they should all have hatched out a brood of them not so very long ago. Why, too, should so many be swimming with one duckling only? Were these single ones of any size, one could understand the others of the brood having escaped from tutelage, but, like all I have seen, they are but little fluffy things. It looks as though their fellow nestlings had come to grief in some way, and if so it is probable that many entire broods have also. Yet perhaps they have merely drifted away into the wide, watery world, where they may be able enough to shift for themselves thus early. To judge by these, however, they would not have left the mother duck voluntarily—they are dutiful, dependent little things.

Where the coast is iron-bound, in delightful little bays and inlets—those sea-pools lovely to look down upon—one may watch the eiders feeding on the rocks, and try, through the glasses, to make out exactly what they are getting. In this way I am amusing myself this morning, having just run round a projecting point, towards which a family of three were advancing, and concealed myself behind a projecting ridge. Over this I can just peep at some black rocks, up which, whilst their mother waits, the little ducklings now begin to crawl. So steep is the slope that sometimes they slip and roll a little way down it, but they always recover themselves and run up it again, none the worse. In the intervals between such little mishaps they seem to be picking minute shell-fish off the rock; but what shell-fish are they? for the small white ones, with which large areas of the rock are covered, are as hard as stone, and might defy anything short of a hammer and chisel to dislodge them. It is not on these assuredly that these soft little things are feeding, and now I see that where they are most active the rock is black. There are broad, black bands and streaks upon it, but what these consist of, or whether they are anything more than seaweed I cannot quite make out; and here, where I lie, being above the sea's influence, there is nothing similar to instruct me. Rocks now I find—as I have often before—are inferior to foliage for concealing oneself, that is, if one wishes to see as well as to be unseen. One's head, projecting over their hard, sharp, uncompromising lines, catches the eye of a wary bird, and recesses made by their angles are not often to be found where one wants them. Twice has the mother duck been slightly suspicious, and now, to my chagrin—though it really should not be, for what can be more entertaining?—she goes to the length of calling her ducklings off the rock. This she does by uttering a deep "quorl"—a curious sound, not a quack, but something like one—on which they come scurrying down to join her, putting off to sea with the greatest precipitation, like two little boats that have only just themselves to launch—no waiting for people to get into them. I have heard this note before, and always it has been uttered as a danger-signal to the chicks. There is another one that is used on ordinary occasions, and this much more resembles a true "quack."

In spite of these various alarms, however, the young eiders are soon on the rock again, and after a while the mother walks up it, too, and begins picking and pulling with her bill over these same black surfaces. I still cannot quite make out, though now I surmise, what it is that gives this black, or rather indigo, tinting to the rock, and in trying to get nearer, the mother duck is again alarmed, and with another deep "quorl" or two, runs quickly down the slant, and slides into the water, close followed by her two little children. This time she swims away with them and returns no more, leaving me as disappointed as though I had thirsted for her blood.

Going down now to the rocks, where they have just been, I find that the black appearance of which I have spoken is caused by immense numbers of quite small mussels which grow thickly wedged together. It is on these that all three have been feeding, and I have no doubt that they form one of the staples of the eider-duck's food just now. Earlier in the year it seemed to be all diving, and when they brought anything up it did not look like a mussel. All about the rocks there are certain little collections of broken mussel-shells—often of a very pretty violet tint—coagulated more or less firmly together, and these must evidently have been ejected, as indigestible, by birds that had swallowed them; but whether by gulls only, or by both gulls and eider-ducks, I cannot tell. Gulls, I know, disgorge these queer kinds of pellets as well as others still more peculiar, since they occur over the interior of the island in numbers too great for any other bird to have produced them.

The eider-ducks, therefore, feed on the beds of mussels that the sea exposes at low tide, but they also, to go by appearances, devour the actual seaweed, irrespective of anything that may be growing upon it. Having seen them do both, I see no reason why I should reject the evidence of my eyesight in the one case more than in the other. What interests me is that I have several times during this week seen the same duck, with her young ones, feeding along this one flat part of the coast-line, where it forms a beach, whereas all the others that I have seen have kept in the neighbourhood of the rocks. Even about the shores of this small island it seems as though a process of differentiation were going on, and that whilst the great majority of the eider-ducks affect a diet of shell-fish, and, therefore, haunt the broken, rocky parts where it is to be best obtained, some few prefer the seaweed growing on the smooth, shallow bottoms, which they therefore do not leave, or, at least, more frequently resort to.

A difference of food like this, involving a residence in different localities, must lead to change in other habits, to which structure would, in time, respond, so that, at last, upon Darwinian principles, two different birds would be produced. Thus anywhere and everywhere one may see with one's own eyes—or think that one sees, which is just as instructive—the early unregarded stages of some important evolutionary process.

It is a good thing, I think, thus to exercise one's imagination, and by observing this or that more or less slight deviation from the main stream of an animal's habits, to try and picture its remote future descendants. Too little, I think, has been done in this way. The imaginative element is one without which all things starve. In natural history it is particularly wanted, and would have particularly good effects. Most naturalists think only of what is the rule in any animal's habits—exceptions they do not care about—yet, looked at in a certain way, they are still more interesting. Moreover, there is a great tendency to see an animal do just what it is supposed to do, and this tendency does not conduce to keen and interested observation. But the future modification of any species must depend largely upon deviations, on the part of individuals belonging to it, from its more ordinary line of conduct, so that any man who should wish rationally to speculate on this future must become, perforce, a patient noticer of such deviations, and, therefore, a great observer of the animal in question.

To support a theory is a great motive towards the collection of facts, yet a number of small-minded people are always deprecating what they call "mere theory" in field natural history, and crying out for facts only. Theory, however, is a soil in which facts grow, and there is a greater crop from a false one than from none at all. The history of astrology and alchemy are instances of this—if, indeed, the latter, in its fundamental belief, does not turn out to have been true after all. When have men been much interested in facts—apart from mere gaping wonder or amusement—except in connection with some idea in their mind, which, by giving, or seeming to give, them significance, as it were irradiated them? The "matter-of-fact man," as that lowest type of one is called, is interested in comparatively few facts even, and such fancy and imagination as he does possess plays around those few.

To return to the eider-ducks, I cannot, of course, be quite certain that it is always the same family party that I see along the beach by the fringe of seaweed, but I have little doubt that it is; for, in the first place, it always consists of the mother and three ducklings, and in the next, there is never another bird or party of birds there at the same time with them. The double coincidence is, I think, decisive, for most of the eiders that have ducklings at all, have either one only or two, whilst the greater number are without any. But then, to be sure, I have only been here a week, nor have I given the matter any very special attention. It is not quite constaté, only I like to think things, and then think as though they were as I think.

CHAPTER XII

ON THE GREAT NESS-SIDE

T

TO-DAY I was to see the cormorants fly out from their caves, but my hopes were too high, and so proper for dashing. Having gone to bed at six, I awoke at ten, dozed till eleven, read Shakespeare till near twelve, and, soon after, got up. It was night when I first opened the door and looked out, morning when I went away. The moon had possessed the world in fullest sovereignty, had streamed her silver over land and sea. Now she was deposed, dethroned, yet there had only intervened the short time necessary to resuscitate the peat fire and make a cup of tea. Yet it is not morning either, even yet—or only on the eastern sea and in the eastern sky; the one a lake of lucid light, hung in an all but universal pall of dun cloud, the other lying beneath it, bathed in it, glowing with reflected colours, which yet seem deeper and more lurid than those from which they have their birth. Two seas of surpassing splendour: and long lines of heavy purple cloud hang, like ocean islands, in the one of the sky. The other, the true sea, has a strangely opaque appearance—it does not look like water at all. It is this that makes the morning; all else is dark and shrouded. Standing here, upon a cornerstone of this island, one looks from night into day. Just before the sun rises the clouds about become rosy red, and then take fire; but from the moment he has risen they begin to fade back into grey again. All flame himself, he puts all other out. It is a strange effect. The sun here wants his state. He has been up but a moment, yet, but for a very tempered glow just about him, all light and all colour is gone. Soon it will be all gone, for into the great grey cloudy continent that broods upon the one clear space and spreads from it, illimitable as the sky itself, he, "the King of Glory," is now entering, and there, in all probability, he will be for the rest of the sombre day. Here in the Shetlands the sky that waits for the sun is a much more wonderful sight than the actual sunrise, whereas elsewhere I have seen it throb to his coming and relume at his torch.

Walking to the caves, I miss my way and long overshoot the point. This is a pity, for it has grown lighter yonder, and I do not wish to disturb the shags, some of whom, no doubt, roost near the entrance. However, when I get there, the island is still dark and shrouded, and sitting, as I have to, with my face to the western sea, that, too, lies in a grey-blue something that is neither light nor dark. Through it and over it the Skerries Lighthouse still throws at regular intervals its revolving beam, showing that it still counts as night. The shags do not seem to wait for the true morning—the one over to the east. Many of them have flown out to sea like shadows, or great, uncouth bats, yet I hardly think they can have seen me in the greyness after I had sat down. I am not sure whether they came from the cavern itself or only from about its frowning portals. Wondrous noises the sea is making now, as, with the heaves of a dead calm, even—heaves that in their very quietude suggest a terrible reserve of power—it laps into and out of this awesome cavern—moans, rumblings, sullen sounds that want and seem to crave a name.

It is now near three, and the first gull yet—of its own free will, and not unsettled by me—has flown by. Just before, some very large fish—for I think it must be a shark, and not a cetacean—has passed on its silent way along the silent sea. It came several times to the surface, and showed each time a very long back, with one small pointed fin, very much out of proportion to its bulk, rising sharply and straightly from it, just as a shark's dorsal fin does. Each time it made that same sort of roll that a porpoise does, only more slowly and in a much greater space. This, indeed, does not suggest a shark—indeed, it can't be one—but one of the smaller cetaceans that is yet much larger than the common porpoise. Every time it comes up it makes a sort of grunting snort or blow. On account of this—for it gives itself more leisure to do it—and that its roll describes a longer curve, I doubt if it be the porpoise—the one we know so well. It must be a larger sort, nor should I ever have supposed it to be a shark had I not been assured that sharks of some size are common round the shores of these islands. This must be true, I think, for my informants could hardly have been mistaken.

At two I could see, though dimly, to write, and now, at a quarter-past three, I can as plainly as by full daylight, though it is not that yet. The Skerries light is still flashing, though it must be now superfluous; but even as I write this, it must have flashed its last, for the proper interval has gone by. There is now a great bellowing of shags from the cave, which may proceed either from a single pair or from several. No words can describe the strangeness of these sounds. They are more than guttural—stomachic rather. They harmonise finely with those of the sea, and sometimes, indeed, bear a curious resemblance to some of its minor, sullen gurgles, deep within the cavern. But no birds fly out.

Several times, again, now, I have seen this large small cetacean, and once another one, larger still—in fact, an unmistakable small whale, which came briskly up at no great distance away and blew a jet of oily-looking vapour from its nose. It looked almost black, and had the right whale shape, though not more, perhaps, than some dozen or twenty feet long. These small whales are common off the Shetlands, but suddenly to see one is very exciting. It reminds me of when, from the rocks of Raasey Isle, I saw in the clear, pale light of the morning, true whales—huge monsters of the deep—leaping, head first, out of the water and falling back into it again with a roar, which, though several miles off, I heard each time most distinctly, and attributed, at first, to the breaking away of portions of the cliff on the opposite shores of Skye. Nothing, it seemed to me, but a landslip was sufficient to account for such a tremendous sound, and it was with an interest the vividness of which I can even now feel that its true nature first dawned upon me. These whales, as, with their huge dimensions, I could see, though so far away, leapt almost if not entirely clear of the water, and perpendicularly into the air. At that time I was quite unaware that they ever did this, but since then I have both heard and read of it, and Darwin, somewhere in his journal, speaks of the cachalot or sperm-whale doing the same thing.

FROM THE ROCKS OF RAASEY ISLE

Puffins are beginning now to fly hither and thither over the sea, and terns are fishing about a low-lying eastern isle. They are the common kind, but some clouds above the island are becoming flame-touched, making them roseate terns. An Arctic skua goes by too, and a black guillemot flies with a fish to feed its young. Still from the recesses of the cavern come those deep, hoarse, bellowing sounds, but they must be uttered by shags upon their nests, and that do not mean to come forth. What there was to see I have seen—those bat-like shadows. There can be no more to speak of—it is too late—but, were there hundreds, I can no longer resist the impulse to walk and walk in the clear and cool-aired morning. The shags that roost in these caverns cannot, I think, be numerous, and they leave them, it would seem, whilst night still broods upon the sea.

True, there was the morning, clear and lovely, in the east, but, to see that, they would have had to peep round the point. Both in numbers, therefore, and impressiveness the Ausflug has been a failure, but the morning, with the almost midnight sun, a splendid success.

This was my last day on the island. In the afternoon my friends sailed over from Yell, bringing me my letters. One was from my sentry-box man, telling me the birds were still on the ledges, but advising me to come at once, if I wished to find them there—otherwise they might be flown. I therefore went back the same evening, and next day, which was Sunday, took steamer to Uyea Sound, from whence I walked through a barren desolation to Balta Sound, getting in, about 10 p.m., to tea and cakes at one of the most homelike, friendly-breathing hostels possible to find either in the Shetlands or the rest of the United Kingdom—or, indeed, the world, to judge by probabilities—to wit, Mrs. Hunter's establishment, where many a one has had cause to say, like myself:

"Sleep (or rather rest) after toil, port after stormie seas,

* * * * * does greatly please."

Next day I made what purchases I wanted, not forgetting a good serviceable porridge-spoon—I had used a stick before—and, on Tuesday, drove over to Burra Firth, where I was met by the watcher, and between us we carried my belongings up the great hill—or ness, to give it its Shetland name—to the little black sentry-box that I knew so well. The "pockmantle" fell to my share, and was the lesser burden. It was very heavy, however, and I had almost as lief be taken to a tea-party as have such another trudge. But how the skuas greeted me, again, with their wild cries, as we climbed the higher slopes where their nurseries are. Having set everything where it would best go, in the little cabin, I walked out and made my way to the cliffs.

CHAPTER XIII

MOTHER AND CHILD

T

THE young fulmar petrels here are still all in a state of fluff—not one true feather to be seen—just as I left them in the middle of July, on my last visit, though now it is the end of it. They are larger, however, which, with their softness, whiteness, and general appearance, as of a great powder-puff, makes them more marvellous-looking than ever. Their shape, as they lie on the rock, is that of a round flat disc—a muffin somewhat inflated, or an air-ball compressed. Only when they flutter their wings, or waggle out their legs, have they any more intricate shape than this, except that the funny little head, with the black eyes and black hooked beak, projects permanently out of their roundness. The latter is frequently held open, with the mandibles widely distended—sometimes fixed so, at others gently moving. The neck, on these occasions, is often stretched out and swayed from side to side, so that we have here, in embryo, those curious movements which, in the grown birds, are nuptial ones, and accompany the note then uttered. Although the chick, as would be naturally expected, often opens its bill in order to persuade the parent bird to feed it, yet after some hours' watching I came to the conclusion that the action was too frequent and too habitual to be altogether explained in this way, and I look upon it as an inherited tendency. But may not the habit have originated in the hunger of the chick, and have been worked in, sexually, at a later age, when the reproductive system had become active? Strong emotion, one may suppose, would require an outward manifestation in the shape of movements of some sort, and it would be such as were already known, that, by first coming to hand, would be likely to be first employed. If we had been accustomed to do one kind of work for which we had a suitable implement, and it became suddenly necessary to do some other for which we had none, it would be natural for us to catch up the one we had and make a shift with that. If a swim-bladder can be worked in as a lung, or a pair of legs as part of a mouth, then why not a hunger-signal as a love-signal? Be this as it may, it is certainly strange to see little fluffy chicks on the nest going through the same sort of pantomime as their parents do when in love. But why do I call them little? I have never seen such big baby things, and their size makes them look all the weirder. So great, indeed, is the chick's fluffiness that though the wings are tiny and the tail invisible, it looks almost, if not quite, as big as the graceful and delicately shaped parent bird sitting beside it.

The lethargy of these young fulmars is very noticeable. They do occasionally rise a little on their feet and shuffle about in the place where they sit, so that in this way they may, in time, turn quite round. But after watching them now, for some two hours, I should doubt if they ever moved more than an inch or so beyond an imaginary line drawn close round them, as they lie. Here natural selection seems a demonstrable thing, for often, were the chick to move so much as six inches forward, or a few feet in any other direction, it must fall and be dashed to pieces. What but this force—or, rather, process—can have produced such a want of all inclination to move? It is the same, I suppose, with birds that nest in trees or bushes. With the nightjar, however, though the chicks become, after a while, somewhat active, so that the nest, or rather nursery, is shifted from day to day, yet for some time they lie very quiet, though well able to run about. Here the above explanation does not apply, so that one can never be sure. "Theories," says Voltaire "are like mice. They run through nineteen holes, but are stopped by the twentieth." Still, it would generally be an advantage for young birds to keep still when left by themselves, even in a field or wood, and how much more so where a step or two, or one little run, would be death. Looking at these fat, fluffy, odd-looking creatures as they sit motionless from hour to hour, and then at the grown bird sailing on spread wings, all grace and beauty—a being that seems born of the air—the change from one to the other—from the fixed to the free phase of life—seems hardly less or more remarkable than that by which a chrysalis becomes a butterfly. Not the egg itself differs more from this last stage of its inmate—this free flitting, gliding thing—than does the round, squat, stolid chick, which in appearance is nearer to an egg than to a full-blossomed bird.

The mother fulmar—for I suppose it is the mother—cossets the chick as she sits beside it, leaning tenderly over it, and nibbling with her bill amidst its long, soft, white fluff, the chick sitting still, the while, with its beak held open, but not at all as though it were thinking of food. Sometimes, by inadvertence, the mother pricks the chick a little, with her bill, upon which it turns indignantly towards her, with distended jaws. She, to cover her maladresse, does the same, but in a dignified, parental manner, as though it were she who had cause to be angry. But it is easy to see that she is really a little ashamed of herself, and purposes to be more careful another time. Mother and chick often sleep side by side on the rock, and then it is noticeable that whilst the mother has her head turned and partially hidden amongst the feathers of the back—"under her wing," as one says—the chick's is often held straight in the usual manner. Not always, however: at other times, it is disposed of in the same way. As far as I can see, the chick is in the charge of one parent only. On several occasions a bird, which I suppose to be the other one, has flown in, and settled on the rock near, but always, on its coming nearer than some three feet or so, the one in charge, distending its jaws, and with threatening gestures, has uttered an angry "ak, ak, ak, ak!" and, on two occasions, has squirted something—I presume, oil—at the intruder, causing it to go farther off. This cry is sometimes preceded by a more curious and less articulate one of "rherrrrrr!"—at a venture: I would not answer for the spelling being exact.

I believe it is the mother who takes charge of the chick, and becomes so intensely jealous of it that she will not suffer even her cáro spóso, to whom she was so much attached, to come within a certain distance of it. One cannot, indeed, say for certain that it is the husband who thus sometimes flies up, and seems to show a wish to approach his wife or child, but it is not likely that a strange bird would act in this way—for all are mated—and if both parents fed the young one, why should either repulse the other? I feel sure, therefore, that only one does, and this one is much more likely to be the female.

The chick, in order to be fed, places its bill within that of the parent bird, and evidently gets something which she brings up into it. This appears to be liquid and, I suppose, is oil. Had it been solid, I must, I think, at this close distance, have seen it—or at least have seen that it was. Where, however, this supply of oil comes from, or how it is procured, I have no very clear idea. Though the actions of the old bird in thus feeding the chick are something like those of a pigeon, yet they are much easier and, so to speak, softer. The liquid food is brought up without difficulty or straining, as one might, indeed, expect would be the case, seeing the ease with which the bird can at any moment squirt it out, when angry, and the distance to which it is shot. Nor is this the only power of the kind which these petrels possess, for they are able to eject their excrement to a quite astonishing distance—greater even, perhaps, than that to which the cormorant or shag attains in this art—at least it seems so at the time. This power is fully developed in the chick—by whom, indeed, it is the more needed—and I notice that the rock where each one lies is clean enough, though all round about it is whitened.