The Bird Watcher in the Shetlands/Chapter 1
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.