Transcriber Notes
Text emphasis is denoted as _Italics_.
THE
BIRD WATCHER IN THE SHETLANDS
WITH SOME NOTES ON SEALS--AND DIGRESSIONS
_All rights reserved_
[Illustration: _A Seal's Dormitory._]
THE
BIRD WATCHER
IN THE SHETLANDS
WITH SOME NOTES ON SEALS--AND
DIGRESSIONS
BY
EDMUND SELOUS
[Illustration: Shadows we are and
Like shadows depart]
WITH 10 ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
J. SMIT
LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
1905
PREFACE
In the spring of 1900 I paid my first visit to the Shetlands, and most
of what I then saw is embodied in my work _Bird Watching_. Two years
afterwards I went there again, arriving somewhat later, and it is the
notes made by me during this second stay which fill the greater number
of these pages. They are my journal, written from day to day, amidst
the birds with whom I lived without another companion, nor did I look
upon them as more than the rough material out of which I might, some
day, make a book. When it came to making one, however, it struck me more
and more forcibly that I was taking elaborate pains to stereotype and
artificialise what was, at any rate, as it stood, an unforced utterance
and natural growth. I found, in fact, that I could make it worse, but not
better, so I resolved not to make it worse. Except for a few peckings,
therefore, and minor interpolations--mostly having to do with the working
out of ideas jotted down in the rough--I send it to press with this very
negative sort of recommendation, and with only the hope added that what
interested me so much will interest others also, even through the veil
of my writing. Besides birds, I was lucky enough this time to have
seals to watch, and I watched them hour after hour and day after day. I
believe I know them better now, than I do anybody, or than anybody does
me; but that is not to say much, for, as the true Russian proverb has it,
"Another man's soul is darkness." But I have them in my heart for ever,
and I would take them out of the Zoological Society's basins, and throw
them back into the sea, if I could.
I have no doubt that these pages contain some errors of observation or
inference which I am not yet aware of--but those who only glance at
them may sometimes be inclined to correct me, where, later, I correct
myself. It is best, I think, to let one's mistakes stand recorded
against one, for mistakes have their interest, and often emphasize some
truth. Honesty, too, would suffer in their suppression--and besides,
if one has got in some idea or reflection that pleases one, or a
piece of descriptive writing that does not seem amiss, how tiresome
to have to scratch it out, merely because it is founded on a wrong
apprehension!--the spire to come tumbling just for the want of a base!
For these reasons, therefore--especially the last, when it applies--I
have not suppressed my errors, even where I happen to know them. There
they stand, if only to encourage others who may be labouring in the same
field as myself--which makes one more high-minded motive.
For my digressions, etc.--for which I have been taken to task--I hope
this fresh crop of them will make it apparent that they are a part of
my method, or, rather, a part of myself. I have still a temperament I
find--and it gives me a good deal of trouble--but as soon as I have
become a nonentity, I will follow the advice given me, and write like
one. I would say more if I could, but I must not promise what it is not
in my power to perform.
EDMUND SELOUS
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. My Island Again! 1
II. Spoiler and Spoiled 9
III. From Darkness to Light 15
IV. Duckings and Bobbings 26
V. A Vengeful Community 31
VI. Metempsychosis 37
VII. Bird Sympathy 39
VIII. Enchanted Caverns 47
IX. Ducks and Divers 59
X. From the Edge of a Precipice 68
XI. Darwinian Eider-ducks 74
XII. On the Great Ness-side 81
XIII. Mother and Child 88
XIV. "Dream Children" 95
XV. New Developments 104
XVI. Flight and Fancy 110
XVII. Mouths with Meanings 122
XVIII. Learning to Soar 133
XIX. The Dance of Death 138
XX. "By _Any_ Other Name"! 150
XXI. "Not Always to the Strong" 156
XXII. Children of the Mists 160
XXIII. Love on the Ledges 172
XXIV. Grouse Aspirations 190
XXV. Unorthodox Attitudes 203
XXVI. Pied Pipers 218
XXVII. A Bitter Disappointment 225
XXVIII. Tammy-Norie-land 234
XXIX. Thoughts in a Sentry-box 249
XXX. Intersexual Selection 261
XXXI. An All-day Sitting 284
XXXII. Three Murderers 297
XXXIII. Gulls and Gibbon 314
XXXIV. All about Seals 327
XXXV. The Devil's Advocate 342
XXXVI. Comparing Notes 365
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A Seal's Dormitory _Photogravure Frontispiece_
Bird Sympathy _Facing page_ 42
From the Rocks of Raasey Isle " 84
On the Edge of the Precipice " 92
Aerial Piracy " 133
A Seal's Plaything " 216
A Perilous Journey " 288
"One More Unfortunate" " 308
"Nature Red in Tooth and Claw" " 316
Polite but Insistent " 346
THE BIRD WATCHER
IN THE SHETLANDS
WITH SOME NOTES ON SEALS--AND
DIGRESSIONS
CHAPTER I
MY ISLAND AGAIN!
My island again!--and all the birds still there, looking just as they did
when I left it. More, too, have come. At night, but in a sort of murky
daylight, I walk over the breeding-ground of the terns, a long flat strip
of pebbly beach--or rather the heather a little way above it, for on
the beach itself they do not appear to have laid. Rising, all at once,
as is their wont, they make a second smaller canopy, above me, floating
midway beneath the all-overshadowing one of dreary low-lying cloud. Out
of it, ever and anon, some single bird shoots down, with a cry so sharp
and shrill that it seems to pierce the ear like a pointed instrument.
Occasionally an oyster-catcher darts in amongst them all, on quickly
quivering wings, its quavering high-pitched note of "teep, teep!--teep,
teep, teep!" threading, as it were, the general clamour, whilst like
a grey, complaining shadow, the curlew circles, beyond and solitary,
shunning even the outer margin of the crowd. How lonely is this island,
and yet how populous! The terns--a "shrieking sisterhood"--make, as I
say, a canopy above me, when I pace or skirt their territories; but what
is that to the great perpetual canopy of gulls that accompanies and
shrieks down at me, almost wherever I go? Were it beneath any roof but
that of heaven, how deafening, how ear-splitting would be the noise,
how utterly unendurable! But going forth into the immensity of sky and
air it sounds almost softly, harsh as it is, and even its highest, most
distressful notes, sink peacefully at last into the universal murmur of
the sea, making the treble to the bass of its lullaby.
Most of the cries seem to resolve themselves into the one note or
syllable "ow," out of which, through varied tone and inflection, a
language has been evolved. "Ow-_ow_, ow-_ow_, ow-_ow_!" sadly prolonged
and most disconsolately upturned upon the last, saddest syllable--a
despair, a dirge in "ow." Then a series of shrieking "ows," disjoined,
but each the echo of the last, so that when the last has sounded, the
memory hears but one. Then again a wail, intoned a little differently,
but as mournful as the other. And now a laugh--discordant, mirthless,
but a laugh, and with even a chuckle in it--"ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!" the
syllables huddling one another like the "_petit glou-glou_" of water out
of a bottle. All "ow" or variants of "ow," till the great black-backed
(the bulk are herring-gulls) swooping upon you, almost like the great
skua itself, breaks the spell with a "gugga, gugga, gugga!" or, right
over your head, says "er" with a stress and feeling that amounts almost
to solemnity.
How lonely and yet how populous! Does life, other than human life,
around one, in any way diminish the sense of solitude? I do not think
it does myself, except through human association, and for this, human
surroundings are more or less requisite. Thus woodland birds seem homely
and companionable in woods near which one has a home, and gulls upon the
roofs of houses take the place of pigeons or poultry in the feelings they
arouse. So, too, as long as a natural alacrity of the spirits prevails
over that dead, void feeling which prolonged solitude brings to the most
solitary, the wildest creatures in the wildest and loneliest places may
seem to cheer us with their presence. But the feeling is a false one,
dependent on that very condition, and treacherously forsaking us--even
to the extent of making what seemed a relief, an accentuation--when it
fails. How often, as I have wandered over this little, noisy, thickly
crowded retreat, has all the fellowship around me served but to remind
me of my own exclusion from it--as from that of fairies, ghosts,
elementals--but what all this life could not do, the cheerful firelight
on the bare stone walls of the solitary shepherd's hut did at once for
me, and with bacon in the frying-pan I had all the companionship I
wanted. A dog--one's own or that knew one--or even a cat, might do more
by its own personality than such inanimate objects by association merely,
to relieve the sense of solitude; but no quite indifferent creature
could do as much, I believe, or indeed anything.
But with the gulls here--and still more with the terns--there is more
than mere indifference. It is a disagreeable reflection that all these
many birds--these beings everywhere about one--resent one's presence and
wish one away, that every one of all the discordant notes uttered as one
walks about under this screaming cloud of witnesses has a distinct and
very unflattering reference to oneself, upbraids one, almost calls one
a name. To be hated by thousands--and rightly hated too! It is strange,
man's callousness in this respect--that he should see his presence affect
bird and beast as that of the most odious tyrant affects his fellow-men,
yet never sleep or eat a meal the less comfortably for it! So it is
indeed--and the principle holds good as between races and classes of
men--when one has one's fellow-tyrants to laugh and joke and chat with;
but here, with but oneself and one's own thoughts, the hostility of
all these gulls begins to trouble one. There is no one to share in the
obloquy--it falls upon you alone. You are the most unpopular person in
the island.
I get another odd sensation through being here. Gradually, as the days
go on, it seems more and more as though gulls made all the world, and
this feeling, which, for its singularity, I value, I can encourage by
seeking out some spot from which the sight of all but them and inanimate
nature is, with extra rigour, shut out. The centre of the island, which
is the gulls' especial sanctuary, presents these conditions. It forms an
extended grassy basin, ringed in with low, swelling peat-hills, above
which--for the intervening space is invisible--rise the tops of hills far
higher, belonging to islands of some size which lie spread about this
little one, hiding it from all the world. Through dips in these, and in
the rim of one's own brown basin, one gets the sea--dull, cold grey lakes
of it, engirt by dimmer islands, far away. No human sight in it all; no
sail, for hours, upon the sea--only the gulls which, in their thousands
and their all-possession, seem to have subdued the world. Men are gone,
and gulls now take their place, become ennobled for want of a superior.
Like snowy-toga'd Roman senators, they stand grouped about, or walk over
the grassy amphitheatre--their natural senate-house--and it is wonderful
with how slight an effort of the imagination--or indeed with none--the
dissonant cries and shrieks, the clang and the jangle, become as the
dignified utterance, eloquent oratory, to which one has sat and listened,
spell-bound, in the gallery of the House of Commons. "Such tricks has
strong imagination." "How easy," indeed, as Shakespeare tells us, "is a
bush supposed a bear!"
It is curious how the gulls cling to their breeding-places long after
the breeding-time is over. Summer--or say July--is now fast waning,
yet in the way they stand amidst the heather, rise as I approach, and
float, shrieking, above me, it is just as it was last time I was here,
which was in early June, when things were hardly more than beginning.
Any one not knowing the time of the year--and it is difficult to tell
in the Shetlands--might expect from the birds' actions and the general
appearance of the whole community, to find eggs and newly-hatched chicks
all about; but all are gone, and the nests now hardly to be distinguished
from the surrounding heather. A few young birds there are, but they are
of large size, though unable as yet--or scarcely able--to fly. It is
the habit of these, when approached, to crouch and lie flat along the
ground, without making any attempt to escape, even allowing themselves to
be stroked and taken up in the hand. When set down again, however, they
generally start off running, and often get to a great distance before
they stop. Young terns and young peewits do just the same thing, and it
is curious that in their manner of thus crouching, before the power of
flight has been fully gained, they exactly resemble the stone-curlew,
in which bird the habit is permanent, though not, I should say, very
frequently indulged in after maturity has been reached. As no adult gull
or peewit crouches in this way, we must suppose either that natural
selection has infixed a certain habit in the young bird, suited to its
flightless condition, or that in thus acting it reverts to a trick of its
ancestors, which were presumably, in that case, flightless, through life.
The clinging of the stone-curlew to the early habit seems to support
the latter supposition, and _primâ facie_ it is perhaps more probable
that crouching in a bird should have come before flying than after it,
or, at least, that it should have been resorted to by certain species,
on account of their flight having become weak. It is conceivable that
some birds may have alternately lost and reacquired the power of flight
many times in their genealogical history. But where have the majority
of the young gulls gone? That they have left the island seems evident,
for, were it otherwise, they would either be all about the heather, or
fill the air more numerously than do the mature birds, when they cluster
above me in my walks. In the air, however, none are to be seen, though,
as by far the greater number must now be full-fledged, it is there that
they ought to be, with the rest. On the ground there are, as I say, a few
that seem to have been later hatched, and are not yet matriculated in
flight. Their proportion, however, is not more than one to a hundred of
the grown gulls, whereas since every pair of these rears three young, it
should be as three to two. Gilbert White speaks of that general law in
accordance with which young birds are driven away by their parents, when
they are no longer dependent upon the latter's attention, but can feed
and look after themselves; but with social birds this law of expulsion
is apt to merge in a larger one, that, namely, which is expressed in the
old adage that "birds of a feather flock together." We often see this
illustrated in the case of the sexes, and after watching kittiwakes at
the close of the breeding-season, I can have no doubt that the same
principle governs the motions of young and old birds. Of hostility on
the part of the parents I have seen but little, nor is it necessary;
for the young, which are now distinguished by a different coloration,
both of plumage and bill, making them look like another and quite mature
species, delight to associate together, so that both the rocks and the
water become the scene of tolerably large gatherings of them, at which
hardly an old bird is present. As the parents of these assemblies are now
free from the cares of domesticity, it seems as though the reason for
such a segregation must be of a psychical nature, since one can hardly
suppose that the dissimilarity of plumage has anything to do with it,
seeing that young and old are as familiar with one another's appearance
as with their own. It is the same thing, no doubt, with the gulls on this
island, but as the whole interior, or rather the crown of it, is little
else than their nesting-ground, it would be difficult for the younger
generation to foregather, without the constraining presence of the elder
one. The inconveniences of this may be imagined. Not a remark but would
be overheard, not a side-glance but would be supervised and harshly
interpreted, not a giggle that would pass unreproved. In these irritating
circumstances, apparently--this, at least, is my theory of it--the young
people have migrated _en masse_, a striking proof that, with birds no
less than with ourselves,
Crabbed age and youth cannot live together.