LOVE ON THE LEDGES
The ledges are thinning. There are only thirty-seven birds now where I
counted more than a hundred the other day; but some may be coming back.
My special young one is lying on the ledge with its face to the cliff,
and the white-eyed bird standing over it; but very soon it turns, and is
under the wing, as usual. The left wing seems the favoured one. Always,
except once, it has been that. The other young one is also lying under
the wing, just as it was yesterday, and here, too, as always before,
it is the left one. All these guillemots keep constantly uttering
exclamations, as they may be called--different intonations of a deep
"ur!" or "oor!" with an occasional much louder "ara!" or "hara!" of which
last I have spoken. This has been the case since I came here. There is a
great deal of expression in these sounds--quite as much so, it seems to
me, as in some of our own exclamations. Any emotion which rises above the
ordinary level of feeling, be it to do with fighting, feeding, loving,
may give rise to the prolonged, deep _jodel_. The plain parent now flies
in with a fish for the young one, and there is exactly the same scene
as the last time, all the birds near, as well as the father and mother,
_jodel_-ing excitedly. The fish is then laid on the ledge before the
chick, who, getting it head downwards, swallows it voraciously. Directly
afterwards the white-eyed bird, for the first time that I have yet seen,
flies from the ledge into the sea, but too far off for me to watch. The
other one remains, but he does not seem ready with his wing. The chick
makes several attempts to take sanctuary, but they are not responded to,
so he is reduced to standing and preening himself, the father standing
just behind him, between him and the sea. At last, however, he forces
himself under the wing, but it hangs over him awkwardly, not clasping him
at all, and very shortly--in less than a minute--he comes out again.
A well-grown young shag now, distinguishable only by its brownness, is
fed on the rocks by the old bird. The manner of it is just the same as
when on the nest. It flaps its wings the whole time it is being fed, as
young rooks do, and the parent at last shakes it off and flies down into
the sea. I cannot follow these shags for any distance under the water.
They seem to strike deep from the moment they plunge, and the way they
plunge, indeed, suggests this; but guillemots often swim for a long time,
not far below the surface. Contradicted again! to my very face, by some
shags in the pool here. They have swum quite like the guillemots in this
respect. Birds are sometimes very rude.
The eyed guillemot has now been absent for two hours, and all this time
the chick has sat or stood with the other parent by him, but not under
his wing, nor have I seen any further attempt on his part to get there.
This certainly looks like a partition of office as between the two
parents, but it is hardly worth while saying so, for everything one says
or thinks one hour or day is contradicted the next. There is little or
no uniformity in the actions of birds. That is my constant experience.
The other chick has been for long clasped under the parental (left) wing,
but whether it has always been the same parent I cannot say, for there is
nothing here to distinguish the two. Now, however, there is an interlude,
both the parent and chick standing and preening themselves. The chick
stands comparatively alone, with nothing between him and the sea. Now
he has disappeared, moving a little along the cliff's edge, but soon I
see him again, clasped tight beneath the wing of one or other parent,
who sits close brooding on the rock. I think there has been a change of
parents here, so here is the accustomed contradiction.
Looking down through the glasses at the chick, it appears to me to be
feathered, but to have, at least on the back, a close crop of down
projecting above them. The beak is nothing like so long as the parents',
either actually or in proportion to the chick's size, or the size of
its head. The feet, however, are relatively quite as large, or even
larger. The bird is getting on in size, and again I wonder why, if it is
taken down on the parent's back, this flight is so long delayed. It is
difficult, indeed, when one sees the little wings flapped, to think that
the chick can fly yet, in any proper sense of the word, but it does not
seem to me impossible that these little wings should be adequate to take
it down in a slanting line to the sea, and the longer it stays on the
ledge the less impossible does this become. This gives a reason for its
staying so long; but why should the mother not take it, if she does do
so, almost from the very first?
It seems funny to be looking over a ledge, all day long, and to eat
one's lunch whilst so doing. But I just look up to make my notes, and on
looking down again, almost right under me, I see a seal hanging lazily in
this quiet shore-pool of the sea; for to-day there is hardly a foam-line
round the stacks and rocks. When he sinks I can follow him for some
time under the water. His hind fins or feet seem to become quiescent,
as though only the front ones were used; but this last I cannot see. As
he recedes, going both downwards and outwards, he becomes greener and
greener, and the green darker and fainter, till, at last, having first
looked dimly luminous, he disappears. Some guillemots are on the water,
too--thirty-two in all, that I can see--but not one of these has a young
one swimming by it. Farther off, a kittiwake, I think, is feeding on the
floating carcase of one of its own species--a young one. Horrid sight!
The prettiness of the bird contrasts so with what it is doing. But what a
joy should this be to the optimist, who always seems to extract a comfort
from the most uncomfortable things, as though they not only justified his
position, but made it self-evident.
Another half-hour has gone, and still the eyed or white-eyed parent
has not returned, nor has the chick ever been taken properly under the
wing of the other one, or stayed there more than a few seconds, when it
has managed to squeeze itself in. For the last two hours and more, too,
it has stood and squatted on the rock, giving up all attempts, and the
parent never volunteering. Thus I leave them; but coming again the next
day, about noon, I find the chick lying in the usual way under the right
wing of the plain parent bird. It is evident, therefore, that this office
may be performed by either parent; but I still think one of them--the
mother, as I suppose--undertakes it more willingly and cheerfully.
She--the white-eyed bird--is off the ledge, this being the first time I
have not found her there on my arrival.
The other chick is gone. Yes, gone; for I go to several points from which
I can see the whole of this small ledge--on a part of which only I look
directly down--and from none of them can I see the second chick, which,
were it there, I think I must. Without any doubt, this time, I think, it
is gone, and so must have either flown or been carried down within the
last twenty-four, or rather twenty-two, hours; for it was here on the
ledge with its parent when I went away yesterday, at two or thereabouts.
There are only seven birds in all, on this ledge, now. On another one
where, when I first came, there were more than a hundred, and, two days
ago, sixty odd, there are now fifteen only. Elsewhere, counting all the
ledges I can see, there are only forty odd birds--so that soon the whole
cliff will be empty. That, however, will be nothing to me. But my little
chick! Would I had seen it go!
A guillemot now flies up to the ledge underneath this one, and which I
cannot see for this--for I have returned to my original position--and as
it disappears there, there is a great _jodel_-ing from several birds--I
cannot say how many. On going round to the point of rock which fronts
them both, I see that there is another young guillemot on this lower
ledge, squeezed into the corner angle of it, which I think I have missed
all along. It is, indeed, extremely easy to miss a chick, even when one
seems to see the whole ledge very plainly. Nevertheless, there can be no
doubt that one of the two on my ledge is gone. My own little one--still
under its mother's left wing--is the only one left there now. After a
while it comes out, and the mother, as she stands by it, from time to
time just stirs or nibbles the feathers of its face with the end of her
bill--an action which has all the spirit of wiping a child's face or
nose. The father now walks up, stops in front of the chick, bends down
its head, and _jodels_. Then it lifts it up and _jodels_ more loudly;
then, stooping again, preens the chick's head and face a little with
the point of its bill, and nibbles at it affectionately. The chick,
after this, goes off on a little excursion along the ledge, then toddles
back again, and, on getting near home, makes a little run to one of its
parents, who, again bending down its head with the neck curved over it
till the point of its bill almost touches the ledge, and with both
the wings extended so as altogether to enclose it, _jodels_ and trills
softly, and then nibbles it as before. And are not these pretty little
domestic scenes, on the cold bare rock, with the sea beneath and the
blowing wind all about? What a snug little boudoir this ledge of the
precipice--white with droppings and wet with the sea-spray--becomes as
one watches them! Such tenderness amidst such roughness seems wonderful.
And now I have to make one of those doubtful-certain entries--certain at
the time, doubtful as one thinks of it afterwards--like that about the
raven. It will be admitted that it was natural for me to suppose that
the bird which has just acted this scene with the chick was one or other
of its parents; but, to my surprise, just after it is over and the chick
has toddled away to the white-eyed bird--undoubtedly its parent, and the
only one so marked on the ledge--in flies another guillemot with a fish,
and amidst loud _jodel_-ings from the few birds on the ledge, gives it
to the chick. Afterwards this bird, who seems thus to have proved its
relationship, walks a little way along the ledge, then returns, and he
and the white-eyed one make passes at and then nibble one another with
their bills so energetically, _jodel_-ing and barking the while, that it
almost seems as though it would pass into a fight--more proof that they
are married. Then the one that has brought the fish flies off to sea
again. Now he flew in with that fish just as the chick had toddled away
from the bird that had petted it, this bird continuing to stand where it
had been, and I had been watching them up almost to that very second, my
head over the ledge all the time. Even could the bird which had petted
the chick have flown off without my noticing it--which I do not think it
could have done--it would have been impossible, surely, for it to have
caught a fish and returned in so very short a time. The chick, therefore,
appears to have been petted by a third bird, not being either of its
parents, for the white-eyed one stood apart all the time, so that even
if it had not been distinguished in this way I could not have confused
it with either of the other two. This is interesting, I think, if it is
really the case, for here, as with terns, we see the beginning of what
might in time lead to something similar, in a social community of birds,
to what we see in those of insects--the absorption, that is to say, of
the individualised parental instinct into the generalised one of the
whole community.
It is natural, at present, we will suppose, for every pair of birds in
a colony of terns or guillemots to feel affection for, and to tend,
their own young. Were this affection, and the active expression of it,
to extend to the young of other members of the community, then, as every
pair of birds would probably be able to supply the wants of more than its
own young, a lesser number than the whole community would be sufficient
for nursery work, leaving the others free for--what we cannot say, but
nature might evolve her product out of the material thus placed at her
disposal. Some new activity might well arise, which, if fostered,
would be of advantage to the general commonwealth. But let us consider
the old ones. Terns, as we have seen, are vigorous in the defence of
their eggs and young. They mob and attack any one--be it bird, beast,
or man--who trespasses upon their breeding-grounds. If, therefore, only
about half the colony were needed for the nurture of the young, and
thus gradually came to be the equivalent of the workers amongst ants
and bees, in the other half there would exist the elements of a soldier
caste. Of these it would become at first the more special, and in time
the exclusive business, to drive all enemies away from the ternery;
and since efficiency in so important an office might well outweigh the
otherwise ill effects of a loss of fertility in certain members of
the commonwealth, the soldiers, both male and female, might, in the
continuous prosecution of their task, come gradually to lose the sexual
instinct, which, again, would allow the others to lay, with advantage,
a greater number of eggs. I have mentioned the case of a dog making
regular daily expeditions to a ternery, in order to feast upon the eggs;
and if one dog could commit havoc like this, what might not some wild
egg-eating species do, if not efficiently kept away? It is obvious that
the eggs thus destroyed might amount to more in number than those by the
loss of which they would be saved to the community; and, on the other
hand, a caste whose sole task it was to guard the eggs and young might be
competent to guard a greater number than the whole community would be,
if "a divided duty" claimed their attention.
It is not at all necessary to show that the socialism of insects has
advanced along these lines--their greater fertility allowing of a
still more remarkable specialisation--in order to make out a case for
the possibility, or even likelihood, of its hereafter doing so in the
case of some birds. There are insect communities, however, composed of
males and fertile females, or of the latter only, that may be compared,
without much violence, to those of terns or weaver-birds. There are the
mason-bees, for instance--numbers of whom labour side by side, each at
making its own nest, in which, perhaps, we see an early state of our
more truly social hymenoptera. But in nature many ways constantly lead
to the same goal, and what this is, or is likely to be, must depend on
the kind of advantages which the general conditions prescribe and make
possible. It is difficult in the case of animals, no less than in that
of man, to imagine any great social advance except through, or side
by side with, subdivision of labour; and for real social labour to be
subdivided, it must first be extended, that is to say in common. The
separate attention paid by each pair of birds in a community to its own
young only is not subdivision of labour in the proper socialistic sense
of the term; for this labour is not social, but solitary. It appertains,
that is to say, to every solitary-breeding animal, or, if not to both
parents, at least to one, so that, at best, we do not get beyond the
family, which in social matters is generally taken as a unit. Numbers of
animals living and breeding together may be said to be social by virtue
of their contiguity, and, no doubt, are so, to a greater or less extent,
in their feelings. But until they help and support one another in some
way, true social labour has not begun amongst them. When it does begin it
will become distributed through the whole community, and it is only after
this early point in social advance has been reached, that the other and
greater advance, which consists in the limitation to a certain number of
the labour which was before shared by all, can take place.
To this first stage these guillemots have, perhaps, not yet attained,
but if some of them are interested in, and show kindness towards, the
young of the community generally, as distinct from their own, then, as it
appears to me, they are on the way towards it, and when they have reached
it they will probably begin to advance socially along the general lines
by which both man and social insects have advanced. This is why such a
little incident as that I have just recorded is to me a matter of so much
interest, so that I get quite excited in trying to be sure about it. It
may be little or nothing now, but what does that matter if, in no more,
perhaps, than another million of years, it has led to most important
developments, if not in guillemots, yet in some other species of bird,
possibly in a very great many?--supposing, that is, that we do not
exterminate all of them--which is likely, except perhaps sparrows--not
counting poultry of course. Already the terns have gone a good deal
further than the guillemots, for they not only show the liveliest
interest in the common progeny, and combine together for their defence,
but there is also, I believe, a good deal of communistic feeding amongst
them. Other birds, perhaps, have gone further still.
In what does the interest taken by a bird--let us say by one of these
guillemots--in a chick which is not its own originate? Does not the sight
of it arouse, by association of ideas, all those feelings which, but
shortly before, its own chick was daily arousing? And if this be so, does
it not in a manner mistake it for its own? It would be interesting, were
something to happen to the parents of this little chick, to see if it
would be fed and taken care of by any of the other birds on the ledge. If
it were to be, I should be inclined to think this the reason of it. That
one bird (or pair of birds) should foster the young of another, knowing
all the while that it was another's, and not its own, seems to me very
unlikely. There must be some confusion of thought. By association of
ideas the stranger chick would excite in the stranger bird the feelings
proper to rearing, whilst at the same time supplying in itself the proper
object for their translation into act. When once this point had been
reached, the foster-parent, if it did not look upon the chick as its own,
would have--always supposing it to be one of these guillemots here--to
retain a clear recollection of the chick that it had reared, all the
while that it was rearing the foundling, to keep the two distinct, and
remember not only that it had finished with its own chick, and seen it
leave or gone off with it from the ledge, but also that it had not had
another one since then. But though I believe that mental association may
call up a very clear image of some past event in a bird's mind, I cannot
credit it with such retentiveness and perspicuity of memory as this.
Moreover, what idea of ownership in a chick can a bird have, other than
those feelings which compel it to rear it? When once they are roused, the
chick before it is its own.
But has not this a bearing upon the nature and origin of sympathy? When
we sympathise with others we, by a quick mental process, put ourselves
in their place, and feel to a lesser degree in ourselves what we suppose
them to be feeling. In a certain degree, therefore, we are them, but our
reason assures us that this is not really the case. We can distinguish;
but can animals, or can they other than partially? Anthropologists have
much to say--sometimes, perhaps, almost too much--on the extent to which
savages mistake their subjective impressions for objective reality; but
what applies to the savage should apply with much greater force to the
animal. When a herd of fierce animals--as, say, of peccaries--are filled
with sudden rage at the sight of a companion struck down by some beast of
prey--bear, jaguar, or puma--and attack the assailant, is each member of
it distinctly conscious that he is acting in defence of another, or does
he not, rather, imagine that he is repelling an attack made upon himself?
I believe myself that this last, or something very like it, is really the
case, and that sympathy, if traced far enough back along the line of our
descent, would lead us to a time when it made no conscious distinction
between itself and its object; thus rooting our best feelings in the
purest selfishness.
There is, indeed, this to be objected against the noblest emotions by
which the highest natures are actuated--those very exalted ones about
which there has been, and still is, so much self-laudation--viz. that
they are all tainted in their origin. This is an objection--I mean as
against the optimistic standpoint--which nobody ever seems to consider;
but with me it is a very grave one. What matters it--that is to say, what
ground of jubilation is it--that some "noble numbers," as Herrick calls
them, have somehow got into a great "sculduddery book," written upon a
plan, and, as far as we can see, with an object which never contemplated
or thought of them at all, but only of the sculduddery, in relation
to which they exist as a small pool may by the side of a great muddy,
turbulent river, out of which it has leaked, and, by some accident,
become clear? If this is all, then they are mere by-products, and it
is not by a by-product that any scheme can be justified. It is to the
scheme itself we must look, judging of it by what seems its clear object
and intent, and having regard to the mass of the facts through which it
reveals itself; not to some few merely which may seem, at first sight, to
be in opposition to these, but, looked at more closely, are seen to be
sequences only, quite reconcilable with them, and not obstructing them in
any way. In a word, we must think of the stream and flow of the river,
not of some eddies in it, or a back-wash here and there. Though it does
not seem to be, yet the water that makes these is really going the way
that the stream is, and our "noblest numbers," when closely analysed, are
found to be "sculduddery" after all.
Es tanzen zwölf Klosterjungfraun herein
Die schielende Kupplerin führet den Reihn
Es folgen zwölf lüsterne Pfäffelein schon
Und pfeifen ein Schandlied im Kirchenton.
But can I be quite sure that it was a strange guillemot, and not one
of the two parents, that acted that little scene with the chick which
I have described? It is easy, certainly, as I know by experience, for
a bird to go off the ledge without one's noticing it--even under one's
very nose--if one's eye is not actually on it all the time, and that,
I suppose, mine was not. Again, the plain parent has just made a very
quick return with another fish, though not, I think, quite so quick as
the other one would have been, had it been he and not a stranger bird
that I had seen on the ledge all the while. All I can say is that it
certainly looked like what I supposed was the case, and I feel pretty
sure that it was so; but I have never seen such a thing before, and it is
more likely, perhaps, that I was mistaken. Still, one must remember the
interest taken by the other birds when a chick is fed, as shown by their
_jodel_-ing, and also that these have now no chick of their own to be
busy with.
There is something in the sight and feel of a fish, indeed, which goes
to the soul of a guillemot. Two, with one between them, have been making
a most extraordinary noise, harahing and _jodel_-ing as they bend over
it. It is laid on the ledge and taken up again several times, by one or
another of them, and finally one swallows it. This _jodel_-ing note of
the guillemot--and there is no other word, to my mind, which expresses
it nearly so well--constantly begins with another and almost louder one,
of two syllables, which is pretty exactly like the word harā ("hurrah!"
but with the first syllable as in harrow). There is a moment's pause,
and then follows a second "hara"--or "harrah" would be the better
spelling--in a higher key, and it is the last syllable of this which,
prolonged in a wonderful manner, makes what I call the _jodel_, and this
_jodel_ often ends in a kind of barking. "Hărrāh--hărrāh--hărrāh!"
from one bird or another, without its continuation and in a low,
sometimes almost a soft tone, is constantly to be heard on this ledge, and,
no doubt, on all the ledges. Though suitable to any and every occasion, it
seems mostly the vehicle of parental affection. As, for example, the
chick which has been asleep, and almost buried for some time, now rouses
himself, comes out, and begins to walk along the ledge. The mother
follows and says "harrah!" He stops and turns. She goes up to him with
"harrah!"; then, bending down her head till her beak almost touches the
rock, she _jodels_ softly, as though very pleased both with herself and
him. He moves on again. "Harrah!" ("Will he really do so?") He turns to
go back. "Harrah!" ("In that case she will follow him.") And so on and
so on, an "harrah!" for whatever he does, there being, in each one, a
certain indefinable tone of interest, mixed with a little surprise.
During this last promenade the chick flapped its wings a good deal, and,
once or twice, came a little towards the edge of the rock, nor did the
mother keep so between it and him as I should have expected. By some
instinct, however, he goes along the length of the ledge, but never for
more than a step or two forward towards the sea. One of the two chicks
is already gone, and this restlessness on the part of the other, which
has never been so marked before, may be the prelude to his going too.
I would fain see the flight, if I could, however it may be, but I have
been here all day, and mother and chick are now, again, crouched together
as usual. It is near seven, and so cold and wretched that I can stand
it no longer, but have to go. When I get up I can hardly stand steady,
and lumbago has crept upon me unawares. Understanding that he lodges
with me, the toothache, later, pays him a little visit, and the two chat
together all the evening. Bitterly cold it was during the last hour or
so, and a wretched sort of day altogether. Getting to bed at last--for
cooking takes a woful time--I turn to the British Bird-book again; and
reading there about the plaintive cry of the young guillemot for food
reminds me that I have not once heard either of my two little birds
utter a syllable--at least, not to be sure. Once I thought I caught
a very faint thin note, such as most young birds utter, but that was
the only time. When I was here before, too, at a time when there were
numbers of young birds on the ledges, I never noticed this cry, so find
it difficult to believe that it ever attracted the attention of the
French sailors sufficiently to make them name these birds "guillemots" in
imitation of it, as is here suggested. To judge by all I have seen, the
young guillemot is the most contented little thing, and generally squats
asleep under the wing of the one parent, till the other brings it a fish,
when it comes out, swallows it, swells, preens itself, and goes back to
"sleepy-by" again, like Stella.