A VENGEFUL COMMUNITY
It was terns, I think, who, when some killing Scotch naturalist or
other had wounded one of their number, came down to it, pitifully, as
it lay on the sea, and bore it away upon their backs and wings. I can
better realise this incident now, after having walked about a ternery
in these northern parts, and again tried the experiment--which in the
south produced no special consequences--of interfering with their young.
Upon my taking one of them in my hand, the whole community, amounting,
perhaps, to several hundreds, gathered in one great, air-filling cloud,
a little above my head, and with violent sweeps and piercing cries,
seemed to threaten an actual attack. When I let the young thing flutter
to the ground, and it moved and struggled upon it, the excitement was
redoubled. It seemed as though they were animated with hope at seeing
it out of my grasp, and as I took it up and let it go twice again, each
time with the same result, I have little doubt that this was really
the case. It was not only the two parents--assuming them to have been
there--who attacked me. Many did so; many, too, seemed to feel, at some
time, an extra degree of fury, whilst not a bird in the whole crowd but
was violently and vengefully moved. These terns, as they clustered and
darted about, resembled, or at least made me think of an angry swarm of
wasps or hornets; but how different is the anger of insects to that of
any other sort of animal! Though so much smaller, they attack without
any hesitation or mistrust as to the result whatever. A hornet or an ant
threatening merely when its nest was attacked seems an absurdity, whilst
in a creature many times their size it is the idea of courage only that
is presented to us.
Yet it was not all threatening with these terns, for as the excitement
and hubbub increased several of them attacked me, though only with
missile weapons. To be explicit, they excreted upon me, as they swept
down, in such an irate "Take that!" sort of manner and with such
precision of aim, that the intention was quite evident. This habit I
had heard of, though not felt, before, for a south coast fisherman
told me that he once had a dog which had developed a strong liking for
tern's eggs, to gratify which he used to make egg-hunting and feasting
expeditions along a line of beach where they lived, from which he would
return in a most unseemly plight, owing to the birds having "dunged" him.
I did not doubt this account at the time, and I have now this interesting
confirmation of it, but though I myself walked amongst these southern
terns and often took the young ones up in my hand, they never vented
their displeasure on me in this particular way, nor were such swoops and
threatenings as they made of so pronounced and violent a character. They
mobbed a hare, however, in a much more determined way, and certainly
pecked at it, though, at the distance, this was all I could say with
certainty. It is interesting if a means of defence resorted to against
animals only, by some colonies of these birds, is by others employed to
repel the intrusion of man also. For the habit itself, I do not remember
reading of it, either in the case of terns or any other bird or animal,
except one with which Swift has made us familiar--Swift, that great
misanthrope, who, by the sheer force of his satire, has anticipated to
some extent the reasoned truth of Darwin. As I say, I can hardly doubt
that these terns acted as they did with malice prepense, yet, as their
conduct is, perhaps, susceptible of another interpretation, I ought to
mention that the bombardment was not continuous, but occasional only--a
dropping fire, so to speak. As far as I could observe, however, the act
was always in combination with the plunging sweep down, which makes me
certain that, if not the mere mechanical effect of intense excitement, it
was prompted by hostility--to which latter view I strongly incline.
A little way farther on I found two quite tiny terns--the other was
of a fair size--lying together in the nest. There was excitement when
I took up these also, but not nearly so great as just before, except,
perhaps, on the part of the two parents. The first young bird had assumed
almost its final appearance, though not quite able to fly. I concluded,
therefore, that this had something to do with the different degree of
excitement shown by the terns as a whole, but when, after some while,
I found and took up another baby, almost as big as the first, there was
still less demonstration than in the case of the two fluffy ones--again
excepting the parents. Perhaps the boiling point of communal fury that
had been aroused by my first unlawful act was not to be again reached;
but birds are certainly capricious in their actions, and there is no
judging from one to the next.
But, taking them at their best, why are these northern terns so much
fiercer and more vengeful than those which breed in the south? Of the
disposition of the latter I have had ample time to judge, and, though
there was always anger when I walked over the great bank crowded with
their nests, yet its manifestations were of a more ordinary kind, nor,
as I say, did I notice any very acute development of it when I lifted
a young one from the ground. Sometimes I think these Shetlanders look
slightly smaller than the English kind, and always they seem to me to be
more waspish and irritable in their disposition. Are they, therefore, of
a different species--the Arctic, instead of the common tern, or _vice
versâ_? The two, indeed, are so much alike that only an ornithologist--as
ornithologists tell us--is capable of distinguishing them whilst the
birds are alive and at liberty. However, as the sole mark of distinction
appears to consist in a hardly appreciable difference in the length
of the tarsus, it is easier to understand the difficulty than how the
ornithological eye, even, unsupported by a measuring-tape, manages to
surmount it. But when would any member of a fraternity admit himself on
a level with mankind in general, in regard to his particular cult? The
thing is always to ramp on one's pedestal, though it be no higher than
the houses over the way. Personally I doubt the validity of a specific
distinction so attenuated as this; but be that as it may, terns, in
their northern and southern homes, seem to differ somewhat in their
natures, even as do the respective beaches on which they lay, with their
surrounding scenery of sea and sky. How different are these one from
another! Here, in these desolate and wind-swept isles, I, at least,
though I have sometimes seen the sun, have never caught one glimpse of
summer--nothing at all nearer to it than a somewhat fresher and very
much rougher November. But on that other great bank, in the more genial
climate of southern England, not only is it summer, sometimes--and that
in spring--for hours together, but one may even be, for a while, in the
tropics. How else could there be the mirage? Yet there it is, or, at any
rate, something like it; for as one lies at length and gazes through the
golden haze that seems to beat in waves upon the hot, parched shingle,
lo! this is gone, and where it lay, all glaring, a blue pellucid lake,
that seems to partake equally of the nature of sea and sky, lies now,
cool and delightful. Into it terns, ever descending, seem to plunge or
softly dip, as though it were the sea itself; and as they do so they
either disappear altogether, becoming lost in azure haze, or are seen
through it, dimly and vaguely, sitting or performing such actions as are
proper to their shore life, amidst those strange new waters, from which
others as constantly ascend. Gulls, too, and sometimes cormorants, may be
there, whilst dove-cot pigeons, with familiar, yet now half phantasmal
strut and bow, mingle occasionally, like little household Pucks, with
the more poetic figures of this fairy dream. A dream, indeed, it is;
but, more and more, it passes into one of far-off, sunnier lands--seen
once, remembered now. Bluer becomes the sky--the sea; softer the air.
Palm-trees wave, the long, bright breakers are bursting on a coral shore,
the surf roars in, hissing and sparkling, the gulls are the surf-riders,
England is no more.