British Sea Birds

by Charles Dixon

PUFFIN.

Of all the Auks the present species, the Alca arctica of Linnæus, and the Fratercula arctica of modern ornithologists, is not only the best known, but the most readily distinguished. The Puffin cannot readily be mistaken for any other bird along the coast, his big brightly coloured beak and comical facial expression, being never failing marks of his identity. In the colour of its plumage the Puffin somewhat closely resembles the Guillemot or the Little Auk, only the throat and the sides of the head are white. The most striking feature in the Puffin is its beak—a deep, laterally flattened, coulter-shaped organ, banded with blue, yellow, and red, singularly grooved and embossed with horny excrescences, although these latter are only assumed for the pairing season, and are cast again when the breeding period is over! Unlike most birds, therefore, the Puffin displays his wedding ornaments on his beak! And this singular peculiarity appears to be common to various other species, more distantly allied, yet undoubtedly of close affinity with the English Puffin. Many local names have been applied to the Puffin in consequence of its singular bill. Bottlenose, Coulterneb, and Sea Parrot, may be mentioned as the most commonly used. Like most, if not all, members of the Auk family, the Puffin is not seen much near the land after the breeding season has passed. Indeed, it is very doubtful whether the bird ever voluntarily seeks the coast after it leaves it in early autumn with its young; continued gales and storms will occasionally drive a bird even far inland, whilst rough weather often causes it to perish at sea, its remains being sometimes washed up in quantities. Its actions on the water are almost precisely the same as those of the Guillemot and Razorbill. It is an adept swimmer, a marvellous diver; it flies well and strongly, especially during the summer, where I have seen it in swarms, drifting round and round the highest peaks of its island haunt on apparently never-tiring-wing. At the summit of the cliffs its powers of flight may often be witnessed to perfection. At St. Kilda, I have watched it gracefully poising itself in the air, its narrow wings beating rapidly, and its two orange-coloured legs spread out behind acting as a rudder. Of all the Auk tribe, so far as my experience goes, the Puffin flies the most. The Puffin feeds principally upon small fish, especially sprats and the fry of larger fishes; it also eats crustaceans, and various marine insects. It dives often to a great depth, and is remarkably active beneath the surface; when on the water it generally tries to escape from danger by diving. Sometimes the Puffin may be seen close ashore during winter, but never in any abundance.

The Puffin becomes by far the most interesting at its breeding places. The regularity of its appearance at these has often been remarked. In many localities it not only arrives punctually on a certain day, but retires from them in autumn with its young almost as regularly! In some places Puffins arrive on the land to breed as early as March; in others, not before April; in others, yet again, not before the beginning of May. With the exception of the south and east coasts of England—where it is only sparingly and locally distributed—the Puffin, from Flamborough northwards, is widely and generally dispersed. In some places its numbers are almost incredible, as for instance, at Lundy Island, the Farne Islands, on some of the Hebrides, and St. Kilda. There is a very interesting colony of Puffins established amongst the walls of the ancient fortress on the Bass Rock, but so far as my experience goes the colony on St. Kilda stands unrivalled, and, at a very moderate computation, must consist of many millions of birds! The Puffin most probably pairs for life, and returns time out of mind to certain familiar spots to rear its offspring. In most places the bird makes its scanty nest in a burrow which it excavates itself, but in some localities rabbit holes are frequently made use of. In some localities, however, the bird makes a nest in a crevice of the cliffs or beneath heaps of rocks. By the end of April both birds are engaged in scraping out this burrow, if circumstances demand it, which often extends for several yards in the loamy soil, sometimes sloping downwards, sometimes tortuous, sometimes nearly straight. At the end, or elsewhere in some cases, the slight nest of dry grass and a few feathers is formed. Occasionally several pairs occupy one burrow, each pair enlarging a portion of it for their own requirements into a kind of chamber; whilst many of the burrows have several openings, and are evidently the work of successive years. In this rude nest the hen Puffin lays a single egg, dull white, sometimes tinged with blue or gray, and obscurely spotted with pale brown and gray. Contact with the earth in the burrow and with the wet feet of the sitting bird, soon discolours this egg, and renders it almost like a ball of peat in appearance. When disturbed at their breeding places, such Puffins as may chance to be outside the holes soon fly off to the sea, and join the hosts of birds that swarm in the water near every breeding station. Those in the burrows, however, remain, allowing themselves to be dragged out without making any attempt to escape. Great caution and gloves are recommended, for the Puffin resents intrusion and bites fiercely, being able to inflict a nasty cut with its powerful beak and sharp claws.

I still retain the most vivid impressions on my visit to the grand colony of Puffins on Doon, one of the St. Kilda group. Every available place is honeycombed with their holes; the ground cannot afford accommodation for all, and numbers of birds have to seek nesting places under the masses of rock lying on the grass-covered hillsides, or in the crannies of the cliffs at the summit of the island. As soon as we had fairly got ashore, and begun to walk up the slopes, the Puffins, in a dense whirling bewildering host, swept downwards to the sea, or rose high in air to circle above our heads, in the direst alarm. It seemed as if the whole face of the island were slipping away from under me, just like flakes of shale down a quarry side! Not a single bird, so far as I could ascertain, uttered a note, but the whirring noise of the millions of rapidly beating wings sounded like the distant rush of wind! But even Doon does not harbour so many Puffins as find a home on the face of the mighty cliff Connacher; and when we fired a gun and disturbed them from this noble precipice, it seemed as though the face of the entire cliff was falling outwards into the Atlantic, the enormous cloud of birds overpowering one with its magnificence! As soon as the young are reared the land is deserted, and the wandering pelagic life resumed.

In connection with this species mention may be made of its former repute as an article of food. Old records inform us that the young Puffins were regularly gathered by the owners of the breeding-places, and were salted down for future food. Gesner and Caius assert that the Puffin was allowed to be eaten during Lent, probably because, in the words of Carew, of its coming nearest to fish in taste. More than two hundred years ago Ligon, in his History of Barbadoes, complains of the ill taste of Puffins which he had received from the Scilly Islands (once a great centre of exportation of these birds), and asserts that this kind of food is only for servants. The taste for salted and dried Puffin, however, still lingers in the land; for at St. Kilda vast numbers are caught, and so preserved by the natives for food. Dried Puffin, perhaps a twelvemonth old, is one of the few delicacies of the island; whilst the feathers help materially to pay the rent!

Divers, Grebes, and Cormorants

GREAT NORTHERN DIVER. Chapter iv.

CHAPTER IV.
DIVERS, GREBES, AND CORMORANTS.

Divers—Affinities and characteristics—Great Northern Diver—Black-throated Diver—Red-throated Diver—Grebes—Characteristics—Changes of Plumage—Great Crested Grebe—Red-necked Grebe—Black-necked Grebe—Sclavonian Grebe—Little Grebe—Cormorants—Characteristics—Changes of Plumage—Cormorant—Shag—Gannet.

The birds included in the present chapter belong to three well-defined families. None of them are so completely pelagic as the Auks, and yet, according to season, many of them are interesting features in the bird-life of the coast. Unfortunately for the summer visitor to the seaside, the Divers will be absent. They are birds that resort chiefly to inland districts to rear their young, or are only known as winter visitors to the British Coasts. The Divers form a small but well-marked family known as Colymbidæ, consisting of a single genus Colymbus, into which are grouped the four species that are now known to science. The Divers are allied to the Auks on the one hand, to the Grebes on the other, although systematists are not yet agreed upon the degree of their relationship. United, these three families form Dr. Sclater’s order Pygopodes. In every way the Divers are remarkably well fitted for an aquatic life. Their strong tarsi are laterally compressed, a form best suited for cleaving the water, the hind toe is well developed, and on the same plane as the rest, the feet are webbed, the bill is long, straight, spear-shaped and conical, admirably adapted for seizing the finny prey, the wings are comparatively short, yet capable of bearing the bird at great speed, the tail is short and fairly developed. The Divers in nuptial plumage are remarkably handsome birds, the neck being striped or richly marked, and the upper plumage beautifully spotted or adorned with white bars. They are all more or less gregarious birds during winter, and well marked social tendencies are displayed in some species during the breeding season. Their migrations, if comparatively short, are pronounced and regular. The young are hatched covered with down, able to swim with ease almost immediately. Adults moult in autumn, and assume their nuptial plumage in winter—a period doubtless when they pair—the winter plumage thus being carried for a short time. Young Divers carry their first plumage through the winter until the following spring (not moulting in December with their parents), when they assume their summer plumage, but the nuptial ornaments are not so brilliant in colour as in adults. Whether the vernal change in colour is effected without moulting, as in the Auks and some of the Limicolæ, appears not to have yet been ascertained. All the species of Divers are visitors to the British Islands, but only two breed in them, and one is an exceptionally irregular straggler. This is the largest of them all, the White-billed Diver, Colymbus adamsi, and a species apparently circumpolar in its distribution. The Divers are all birds of the north-temperate or Arctic regions, during summer; in winter their range is much more extended, almost reaching to the northern tropics. With this brief résumé of their more salient characteristics, we will now proceed to a more detailed examination of their economy.