The Natatores, or swimming birds, supply us with very choice food. Even
many of the coarse sea fowl are not rejected by voyagers.
The Chinese shoot sea-gulls in large numbers, which add to their stock
of food. A man is constantly engaged in the bay of San Francisco,
California, shooting sea-gulls, which he sells to the Chinese at the
rate of 25 cents each. The _San Francisco Evening News_ says,--‘This
bird is a slow and steady mover, of large size, and flies at a
convenient distance over the head of the sportsman. The man in the
skiff was armed with a double-barrelled shot gun, both barrels of
which he would load, and taking a dead gull would throw it high in the
air and allow it to fall at some distance from the boat. This would
naturally attract a flock of gulls, and as they made their slow circuit
around the spot, the gunner raised his piece and generally succeeded in
bringing down a bird for both barrels. He would then re-load as fast
as possible, and if a gull was in range, another shot was fired and
another trophy won.’
The flesh of sea-fowl is generally too rancid to find much favour with
fastidious palates. Sailors indeed eat the livers and hearts of the
penguins, which are exceedingly palatable, but the black flesh of the
body is rank and oily, and has rather a perfumed taste. Some voyagers,
however, tell us, that eaten in ragouts, they are good as that made
from a hare.
The young puffins, having gorged themselves with sprats and crustacea,
when pickled with spices, are by some considered dainties, and they
are, occasionally, potted in the North. But when it has attained its
ugly full developed bill, like a short, thick plough coulter, this
bird does not look very prepossessing. Besides making use of them for
food, some of the islanders use them for fire-wood. They split them
open, dry them, and then burn them feathers and all.
There is a species of puffin, the _Puffinus urinatrix_ or _P.
brevicaudis_, popularly termed the mutton-bird by Tasmanian colonists,
which is met with on some of the New Zealand islands. It forms the
principal food for the native inhabitants of Foveaux Straits, and by
them is called the _titi_. It is a sea bird of black colour,[15] in
its usual condition smaller than the common duck. Like all sea birds
it has thin, slender legs, with webbed feet: the wings are long, with
many joints, I forget how many: the bill is a little hooked at the
point. They are generally in large flocks, covering the ocean as far
as the eye can reach; sometimes flying all in the same direction,
at other times crossing through each other like swarming bees. They
breed on the small uninhabited islands scattered round the coasts of
Stewart’s Island. These islands have a loose, dry, peatish soil, on a
stony bottom. Their being exposed to the stormy winds, loaded with the
salt spray of the sea, prevents the growth of a forest, except patches
of stunted bushes intermixed with a sort of soft, light green fern.
The loose soil is perforated with numberless birdholes, like a piece
of worm-eaten wood, running from two to four feet underground in a
horizontal direction, at the farthest end of which is the nest. Each
female lays only one egg, which is nearly as big as a goose egg, on
which they sit--it is believed male and female alternately--many weeks.
The young bird is full grown in the month of April, which corresponds
to October in Europe. At that time, almost all the inhabitants of
Foveaux Straits, old and young--the infirm only excepted--repair to
the Titi Islands, and take the young birds out of their nests, which
amount to many thousands, and a great many still escape. They put a
stick in the hole to feel where the bird is, which generally betrays
itself by biting the stick. If the hole is so long that the bird cannot
be reached by the hand, a hole is dug over it, the bird taken out and
killed by breaking its head, and the broken hole covered with rubbish
and earth, so that it may be used again the next year. Afterwards the
birds are plucked, and, to clean the skin from the hairy down, it is
moistened and held over the fire, when it is easily wiped quite clean.
Then the neck, wings, and legs are cut off, the breast is opened,
the entrails are taken out, and the body is laid flat, either to be
salted or to be boiled in its own fat, and preserved in air-tight kelp
bags. Though it cannot be said that the young birds suffer, they being
killed so quickly, yet it might seem cruel to rob the parents of their
young ones on so large a scale, and one would fancy a great deal of
fluttering and screaming of the old ones, bewailing the bereavement of
their offspring. But that is not the case. None of the old birds make
their appearance in the day-time. They are all out at sea, and come
only to their nests in the evening when it gets dark, and are off again
at day-break. But yet it would seem the parents would be distressed
at finding their nests robbed. Not so. It would seem as if Providence
had ordered it so that man should go and take the young birds for his
food without hurting the feelings of the parents. When the young birds
are full grown, then they are neglected by their parents, in order to
starve them to get thin, else they would never be able to fly for the
heaviness of their fat. It seems that at the time when they are taken
by men, they are already forsaken by the old birds; and those that are
not taken are compelled by hunger, when they have been starved thin
and light, to leave their holes and go to sea. The old birds are tough
and lean, but the young ones, which are nearly twice as big, contain,
when the legs, wings, neck, and entrails are taken off, three-fourths
of pure white fat, and one-fourth of red meat and tender bones. The
flavour is rather fishy, but, if once used to it, not bad at all, only
rather too fat. They eat best when salted and smoked a little, and then
boiled a short time, and afterwards eaten cold. If properly salted,
they might make an article of trade, like herrings in Europe. The fat
when clean is quite white, and looks just like goose fat, but the taste
is rather oily; however, it may be used for a good many other purposes
than for food. It burns very well on small shallow tin lamps, which get
warmed by the light and melt the fat. The feathers are very soft, and
would make excellent beds if they could be cured of the oily smell,
which it is likely they can.
The following remarks on the articles of food found in the arctic
regions are by one of the officers of the _Assistance_:--
‘To the feathered tribe we are chiefly indebted, and foremost in the
list for flavour and delicacy of fibre stand the ptarmigan (_Lagopus
mutus_) and the willow grouse (_Tetrao saliceti_). The flesh is
dark-coloured, and has somewhat the flavour of the hare. These may be
used in pie, stewed, boiled, or roast, at pleasure, and are easily
shot. Next in gustatory joys, the small birds rank, a kind of snipe,
and a curlew sandpiper; both are, however, rarely met with, and do not
repay the trouble of procuring them.
‘The brent goose (_Anser torquatus_) is excellent eating, and its
flesh is free from fishy taste. Then follow the little auk or rotge
(_Alca alle_), the dovekey, or black guillemot (_Uria grylle_), the
loon, or thick-billed guillemot (_Uria Brunnichii_). The first two are
better baked with a crust, and the last makes, with spices and wine, a
soup but little inferior to that of English hare. All these are found
together in flocks, but the easiest method of obtaining them is either
to shoot them at the cliffs where they breed, or as they fly to and fro
from their feeding ground.
‘The ducks now come upon the table, and are placed in the following
order by most Polar epicures. The long-tailed duck (_Fuliluga
glacialis_), the king duck (_Anas spectabilis_), and the eider duck
(_A. mollissima_). They require to be skinned before roasting or
boiling, and are then eatable, but are always more or less fishy.
‘The divers are by some thought superior for the table to the ducks,
but the difference is very slight. The red-throated diver was most
frequently seen, but few were shot; and of the great northern divers
(_Colymbus glacialis_) none were brought to table, two only having been
seen. Some of the gulls were eaten, and pronounced equal to the other
sea birds; they were the kittiwake, the tern, and the herring or silver
gull.
‘The denizens of the sea have fallen little under our notice, and they
may be dismissed with the remark, that curried narwhal’s skin can be
tolerated, but not recommended. Some fresh-water fish were caught, and
proved to be very good; they are said to be a kind of trout.’
The eggs of sea-fowl, although much eaten on the coasts, are seldom
brought to market for consumption in our large English towns, and yet
they form a considerable article of traffic in several parts of the
world, and are procured in immense quantities about the lands near the
North and South Poles.
The precipitous cliffs of England are occasionally searched for the
eggs of the razor-billed auk, which are esteemed a delicacy, for salads
especially.
A correspondent at San Francisco informs me that an important trade is
carried on in that city in the eggs of sea birds. He states, that the
Farallones de los Frayles, a group of rocky islets, lying a little more
than twenty miles west of the entrance to the Bay of San Francisco,
are the resort of innumerable sea-fowl, known by the fishermen as
‘murres.’ These islands are almost inaccessible, and, with a single
exception, are uninhabited. They, therefore, very naturally afford a
resort for great multitudes of birds. Some time since a company was
organized in San Francisco for the purpose of bringing the eggs of
the murres to market. An imperfect idea of the numbers of these birds
may be formed from the fact, that this company sold in that city the
last season (a period of less than two months, July and parts of June
and August) _more than five hundred thousand eggs_! All these were
gathered on a single one of these islands; and, in the opinion of the
eggers, not more than one egg in six of those deposited on that island
was gathered. My correspondent informs me that he was told by those
familiar with the islands that all the eggs brought in were laid by
birds of a single kind. Yet they exhibit astonishing variations in
size, in form, and in colouring. There is no reason to suppose that he
was misinformed in regard to these eggs being deposited by a single
species. The men could have had no motive for deception, and similar
facts are observable on the Labrador coast and in the islands north of
Scotland. Besides, the writer ascertained from other sources, that all
the eggs brought to the market were obtained from a limited portion of
the island, known as the Great Farallone--called the Rookery, where
a single species swarm in myriads, and where no other kind of bird
is found. Naturalists, who have received specimens of these birds,
pronounce them to be the thick-billed or Brunnich’s guillemot, or
murre, of Labrador and Northern Europe. The eggs are three and a half
inches in length, and are esteemed a great delicacy.
There is a small island off the Cape of Good Hope, named Dassen Island,
about six miles from the mainland, which is one and a half mile long by
one broad, from which 24,000 eggs of penguins and gulls are collected
every fortnight, and sold at Cape Town for a half-penny each.
The late Lieut. Ruxton, R.N., speaking of the Island of Ichaboe, on the
Western Coast of Africa, says, ‘Notwithstanding that the island had
been occupied for nearly two years, during which time thousands upon
thousands of penguins had been wantonly destroyed, on the cessation
of work these birds again flocked to their old haunts, where they had
again commenced laying their eggs. The rocks round the island are
literally covered with penguins, cormorants, and albatrosses. The
former, wedged together in a dense phalanx, have no more dread of
man than ducks in a poultry-yard, although they have met with such
persecution on the island; and any number might be taken by the hand
without any difficulty. The sailors eat the livers and hearts, which
are exceedingly palatable, but the flesh of the body is rank and
oily.’[16]
Captain Morrell, also writing of Ichaboe (_Nautical Magazine_, vol.
13, p. 374), tells us, ‘Eggs may be obtained here in great quantities.
In the months of October and November this island is literally covered
with jackass-penguins and gannets, which convene here for the purpose
of laying and incubation. The nests of the gannets are formed like
those of the albatross, but are not so much elevated; while the
jackass-penguins lay their eggs in holes in the ground from twelve to
thirty inches in depth, which they guard with the strictest vigilance.
They frequently lay three or four eggs, but the gannet seldom lays more
than two.’
A correspondent, writing from Tristan d’Acunha, in September, gives
an account of his adventures in taking penguins’ eggs. ‘This is now
the time for penguins’ eggs. They get great numbers of them. There
are two rookeries, as they call them; one on the east, and one on the
west, of us. To the one on the west, they go over land, beyond Elephant
Bay. I went there last year, when I saw the great sea elephant and the
penguins for the first time. But this year I have been disappointed,
the weather has been so unsettled. But yesterday was a fine day, and
they were going in the boat to the other, to which they can go only by
water; so I went with them. It was a good day, and we landed easily,
though it is a very bad beach. Fancy the scene--a long, very narrow
strip of land, at the foot of a great rock, covered with the thick
tussac grass, far higher than my head; the whole place swarming with
these penguins--pretty to look at, but the most ungainly creatures in
their movements that I ever saw? They stand almost upright. The breast
is glossy white, the rest is gray. A couple of tufts of those pretty
yellow feathers, of which I sent home a few, adorn each side of the
head and give them a very lively appearance. They have no wings, but
instead, a couple of flippers, as they call them, like arms, which
they use about as gracefully as Punch does his. And then the way in
which they hop along! Talk of the motion of a frog! it is elegance
itself compared with them. Altogether, they are the most interesting,
curious things in Tristan. They are about as big, and twice as noisy,
as a duck. Fancy going into the midst of thick grass higher than your
head, with thousands of them round you, all croaking out in a harsh,
loud, quick note, ‘Cover up! cover up!’ and then kicking them right and
left, quickly, taking care they do not get hold of you,--seizing their
great eggs, till you have got some hundreds of them in your bosom.
The men wear a large shirt, tied round their waist, so as to form a
large loose bag in front, and so pop them in as fast as they can pick
them up. The men will gather two or three hundred in this way, and the
boys from one to two; and from the other rookery carry them the whole
way home--no little load. The eggs vary much in size, from a large
hen’s egg to a goose’s. They mostly lay two at once. Their nests are
sometimes close together, so you can soon pick up a lot. They stand in
pairs, each couple at their nest to defend it, and some will not give
up till they have been kicked away two or three times. They can give a
good sharp bite, if they get hold of you. The men found me a spot where
the eggs were very thick, and very little tussac, and though I was a
new hand at the work, and therefore obliged to look sharp to escape a
bite, I managed to collect more than a hundred of them in a short time.
Fancy what work, to stand amid hundreds of the birds, all screaming
round you, so as almost to deafen you, tumbling them here and there,
and picking up their eggs as fast as you can gather them! It is really
amusing sport. I must remind you the kicking them over with our soft
moccasins (shoes) does not hurt them in the least, and the next day
they will have just as many eggs.
‘Six of the men went round in the boat. We were there about four hours,
and gathered about four thousand--pretty near a boat’s load; and could
have got more if we had chosen. It was a pleasant day, and we had a
good row back.’
An interesting account which recently appeared in a Jamaica paper,
respecting egg gathering, is also worth quoting.
The annual egg gathering visit, which the boatmen of Port Royal make
to the Pedro Keys, we may set down as a remnant of Indian life. In
the work entitled _The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus,
compiled from his papers by his son Don Ferdinand_, we are informed,
that on the 13th of November, 1492, the discovery squadron weighing
from the Rio de Mares, Cuba, stood to the eastward, to search for the
island called Bohio by the Indians, and coming to an anchor among some
high raised islets on the coast, found them to be places visited by the
Indians at certain seasons of the year, for supplies of fish and birds.
‘The islands,’ Columbus says, ‘were not inhabited, but there were seen
the remains of many fires which had been made by the fishermen; for it
afterwards appeared that the people were in use to go over in great
numbers in their canoes to these islands, and to a great number of
other uninhabited islets in these seas, to live upon fish, which they
catch in great abundance, and upon birds and crabs, and other things
which they find on the land. The Indians follow this employment of
fishing and bird-catching according to the seasons, sometimes in one
island sometimes in another, as a person changes his diet, when weary
of living on one kind of food.’[17]
‘From the lighthouse on the Port Royal palisades to Portland in Vere,
a line encloses a system of coast islands, reefs, banks, and shoals
colonized by numerous birds and fishes. Each kind has its own locality.
Pelican Key and Pigeon Island never interchange inhabitants, and the
bank that gives the king-fish furnishes neither the snapper nor the
grouper. Southward from Portland, at a distance of some few leagues,
the great Pedro bank is reached, stretching near 100 miles. There are
islets at each extremity, but the group that attracts the egg gatherers
every year, are the Keys, distinguished as the Pedros, at its eastern
end. We shall loiter a little to describe a living world there that
must have been a great attraction to the aboriginal Indians, in those
periodical junketings that came under the notice of Columbus.
‘The Port Royal boats bound for the egg harvest, bring to, at the
outermost of the Portland Keys, and start at midnight from there, to
gain with a favourable breeze in 14 or 15 hours the shelter of the
Pedros, and to be snug at anchor long before sundown. The vessels in
their voyage steer for a single rock in fathomless water, the Isla Sola
of the Spanish maps. It rises about 30 or 40 feet out of the sea like
a castle in ruins, over which the surf breaks fiercely; and in about
five or six hours after making it, they anchor within what are properly
called the Keys.
‘There are numerous outlying rocks just above and beneath the water,
between the Pedro shoal and the open sea, on which the winds and the
currents roll a heavy surf. The spots properly called the islands are
seven in number, and vary from forty to some three or four acres in
size. They are upthrown masses of broken coral and shell cemented by
calcareous sand, washed upon rocky ledges above the sea. The breakers
shift with the shifting winds, rolling these fragmentary deposits on
before them. By the regularity of their change of action, they have
done the work of accumulation pretty equally on all sides: they have
raised a wall all round the islands, and left the centres hollow.
‘From time to time storms of unusual violence have carried the
heaped-up coral and sand suddenly, and in thick layers, over portions
of the islands where the dung of the sea birds had accumulated for
years, and these irruptions have made intermediate deposits of animal
matter and cemented rock. It is evident from the prevalence of this
succession of deposits within the hollow centres of the islets, that
the sea has washed in the fragmentary materials of the outer margins,
by a more than ordinary rise of the waters, and laid them in pretty
equal strata at distant intervals of time, so that the centres have
risen in height as the sea walls have been built and cemented up. The
animal deposits, which may be characterized as loosely cohering urate
of lime, are sometimes found two feet beneath the strata of cemented
coral and shells, and run about an inch or an inch and a half thick.
‘Immediately within the islands, the waters shoal, and make a bank
called the Vibora by the Spaniards. It runs to the Cascabel rock,
90 odd miles westward, bristled with reefs and sunken rocks, having
a depth of from 7 to 17 fathoms. Easterly winds, that is, the trade
winds, veering southward and northward, for determinate portions of
the year, roll constant billows over it. Westerly breezes, varying
northerly and southerly, bring tremendous gales and heavy swells. The
rough agency of all these movements has heaped up the sands, and the
corals, and shells, cementing them into rock, and giving the island an
elevation of from 15 to 20 feet.
‘The vegetation on these islands is stunted surianas, among whose tough
and twisted branches the birds find nestling places. To these lonely
islets resort thousands and tens of thousands of sea-fowl. As soon as
visitors land, myriads of birds are upon the wing in all directions.
Some flocks rise in circling flight high up into the air, and
descending again in the same dense numbers as they rose, settle in more
remote places; others break away hurriedly, and fly in a wide sweep
far around, but return again hastily to the rocks they had quitted,
reconciled to bear with the disturbance. The turmoil and hubbub of the
thousands of birds thus suddenly put upon the wing, overpower for a
moment the roar of the breakers, and darken the air like the sudden
passing of a cloud.
‘The constant inhabitants of the rocks are several species of the
booby, gannets, terns, gulls, and petrels--and the frigate pelican. The
frigate-birds preserve their predilection for rapine amid the teeming
plenty of the waters, and subsist by pillaging the gulls and gannets.
The migratory visitors are ducks, herons, plovers, snipes, sandpipers,
curlews, and ibises, with the several falcons that follow them. In the
autumnal movement of these birds towards the equatorial regions, they
would be found steering from north to south, but at the time when the
egg gatherers visit the islets, they are seen coming from the south,
just resting and departing north. The successive months of March,
April, and May, are those of the egg harvest.
‘The Keys are open to all adventurers, but the egg gathering is
regulated by a custom which recognises the first coming vessel as
commanding for the season. The second vessel in seniority is called
the Commodore, the first being styled the Admiral. They have a code of
laws, to which, in a spirit of honourable compliance, all are expected
to show obedience; and in case of any infraction of the obligations
thus voluntarily imposed upon themselves, a jury selected from the
several vessels tries complaints, and with due formality inflicts
punishment for offences.
‘The south-west is the principal of the Pedro Keys. The stay of the
birds that resort there to breed is prolonged by the successive loss of
the eggs they lay. Each loss is a stimulus to a fresh act of pairing;
a new lot of eggs being the result, possibly in number equal to the
former lot, but probably less, as the latter deposits are a forced
production, at the expense of the vigour of the bird, without any
additional strength to the constitution by the increased nourishment
of food, the process by which domesticated birds, in changing their
habits, are led to lay a continuance of eggs for a long season. The
egg gatherers are careful observers of the progress of incubation, and
take only the eggs they know to be fresh laid. These are a part of the
regulations they require to be observed, or the constant depredations
committed on the birds would fatally thin their numbers.
‘Without going into the discussion of naturalists, who see in the
different colours of eggs a certain relation to circumstances
favourable to concealment, it may be observed that the blotched egg,
laid by the _Hydrochelidon fuliginosa_, properly distinguished as the
_egg-bird_, is found among sticks and dried leaves of the suriana,
whilst the white eggs of the boobies and petrels are deposited in
hollows of the coral rocks, amid sand and chalky dung. There is
one curious coincidence between the eggs of the noddy, _Sterna
stolida_, and the peculiarities of the nest, that must not, however,
be unremarked. The elaborate pile of sticks slightly hollowed, in
which they deposit their eggs, is always embellished with broken sea
shells, speckled and spotted like the eggs. Audubon records the same
occurrence in the nests of the noddy terns he inspected in the Florida
Keys. The obvious suggestion for this curious prevalence of instinct
is deceptiveness, arising from similarity between the egg shell and
the sea shell. The nests are pillaged by what is called the laughing
gull (the _Larus atricilla_, not the _ridibundus_); the numerous empty
shells lying among the rocks being always set down to the predatory
visits of the laughing gull.
‘South-west Key, and the other sandy islets around it, are beside,
annually resorted to by the fishermen in the turtling season for a
different harvest of eggs. The turtles (_Chelone midas_) visit these
shoals to deposit their eggs in the dry sand, and leave them to the
fostering influence of the sun. They repeat their layings thrice, at
the interval of two or three weeks, laying a hundred at a time. Some
experience is necessary to trace the place of deposit, for the eggs are
always laid in the night; but few of them escape the detection of the
turtler.’
Geese are reared in large numbers in Alsace, the livers of which are
used in making the famous Strasburg pies. In Denmark, geese and ducks
are salted down for winter use.
In Greenland, the snow goose affords great subsistence to the natives,
and the feathers are an article of commerce. Each family will kill
thousands in a season; these, after being plucked and gutted, are flung
in heaps into holes dug for that purpose, and are covered only with
earth. The mould presses, and forms over them an arch; and whenever the
family have occasion to open one of these magazines, they find their
provisions perfectly sweet and good.
In Captain Sir John Ross’s _Arctic Voyage to Regent Inlet_, it is
recorded, that when they discovered that the wild geese had begun
to lay on the margin of the lakes, their eggs formed a dainty and
wholesome repast. ‘The eggs on being weighed were found on an average
to be 4½ ounces--of a dingy white, faintly speckled. The discovery of
a goose’s nest, where the process of incubation had not begun, was
regarded by them in the light of a treasure. To the natives, however,
it appeared to be a matter of very trifling import whether the egg were
freshly laid, or whether it were within a few days of being hatched.
Half-a-dozen eggs beaten up with the young ones, in all stages of
their growth, from the first development of the form to the complete
formation of the fœtus, proved to the natives what a dish of callipash
and callipee is to the gourmandizing alderman; nor were they very
particular as to the embryos being wholly divested of the shells, for
the latter appeared to be nearly of the same use as beans to the food
of a horse, to force him to masticate the oats more thoroughly.’
The cygnet, or young of the swan, was formerly much esteemed; at
Norwich they were fattened for the corporation. The flesh of the old
birds is hard and ill tasted.
The pintail (_Anas acuta_) is a very choice bird--the very ‘ring tail’
of the duck tribe. They are undoubtedly a _recherché morceau_, for,
being essentially grain feeders, they have no fishy flavour.
Widgeon and teal are in great favour when in good condition.