FROM THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE
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.
[Footnote 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!