From North Pole to Equator: Studies of Wild Life and Scenes in Many Lands

by Alfred Edmund Brehm

It is a deeply-affecting trait in the life of all true sea-birds that only two causes can move them to visit the land: the joyous spring-time sense of new-awakening love, and the mournful foreboding of approaching death. Not even Winter with its long night, its cold, and its storms can drive them to the land; they are proof against all the terrors of the North, and seek their food upon or under the waves; not even the threatening jaws of voracious fish scare them ashore. They may alight occasionally, but only for a short time, often on a solitary island in the sea, to oil their feathers more thoroughly than can be done in the water. But when, with the sun’s first brightness, love stirs in their breasts, all, old and young alike, though they may have to swim and fly thousands of miles, strive to reach the place where they themselves first saw the light of day. And if, in mid-winter, months after the breeding-places have been left desolate, a sea-bird feels death in his heart, he hastens as long as his strength holds out, that he may, if possible, die in the place where he was cradled.

The annual assembling of innumerable birds at the breeding-places fills these for several months with a most marvellous life. The communities differ like the sea-birds themselves, and the places, or bergs (as the Norsemen call them), which they people vary also. While some choose only those reefs which rise just above the high-tide mark, and bear no more vegetation than is enough to provide scanty material for the nest hollowed out in the sea-weed heaps, others select islands which rear themselves straight and steep for several hundred feet above the sea, and are either rich in shelves, ledges, cavities, fissures, and other hiding-places, or are covered by a thick layer of peat-like plant remains. The Norseman calls the lower islets ‘eider-holms’ (or eider bird-hills, as the German would say), for they are the favourite brooding-places of what is to him the most valuable, and, what is the same thing, the most useful of all sea-birds. The higher islands which rise precipitously from the sea, and are chiefly peopled by auks and gulls, are included under the general name of bird-bergs.

The observant naturalist is of course tempted to study and describe in detail each individual brooding bird of the sea, but the rich variety of the inhabitants of the bird-bergs of the far north and the variety of their habits impose certain limits. Similarly, lest I exceed the time allowed to me, I must refrain from giving detailed pictures of the habits of all the berg birds, though I think it well at least to outline those of a few in order to bring into prominence some of the chief characteristics of sea-bird life. Selection is difficult, but one, at any rate—the eider-duck, which returns every spring to these islands, and helps to beautify them and their surroundings so marvellously—must not be left undescribed.

Three species of these beautiful ducks inhabit or visit European shores; one of these, the true eider-bird, is to be found every summer, even on the north-western islands of Germany, especially Sylt. Its plumage is a faithful mirror of the northern sea. Black and red, ash-gray, ice-green, white, brown, and yellow are the colours harmoniously blended in it. The eider-duck proper is the least beautiful species, but it is nevertheless a handsome bird. The neck and back, a band over the wings, and a spot on the sides of the body are white as the crests of the waves; throat and crop have a white ground faintly flushed with rose-colour as though the glow of the midnight sun had been caught there; a belt on the cheeks is delicate green like the ice of the glacier; breast and belly, wings and tail, the lower part of the back and the rump are black as the depths of the sea itself. This splendour belongs only to the male; the female, like all ducks, wears a more modest yet not less pleasing garb, which I may call a house-dress. The prevailing rust-coloured ground, shading more or less into brown, is marked with longitudinal and transverse spots, lines and spirals, with a beauty and variety that words cannot adequately describe.

No other species of duck is so thoroughly a child of the sea as the eider-duck; no species waddles more clumsily on land, or flies less gracefully, but none swims more rapidly or dives more deftly and deeply. In search of food it sinks fully fifty yards below the surface of the sea, and is said to be able to remain five minutes—an extraordinarily long time—under water. Before the beginning of the brooding season it does not leave the open sea at all, or does so very rarely; following a whim rather than driven by necessity. Towards the end of winter the flocks in which they congregate break up into pairs, and only those males who have not succeeded in securing mates swim about in little groups. Between two mates the most perfect unanimity reigns. One will, undoubtedly that of the duck, determines the actions of both. If she rises from the surface of the water to fly for a hundred yards through the air, the drake follows her; if she dives into the sea, he disappears directly afterwards; wherever she turns he follows faithfully; whatever she does seems to express his wishes. The pair still live out on the sea, though only where the depth is not greater than twenty-five fathoms, and where edible mussels and other bivalves are found in rich abundance on the rocks and the sea-bottom. These molluscs often form the sole food of eider-ducks, and to procure them they may have to dive to considerable depths. But it is the abundance of this food which preserves the eiders from the scarcity from which so many other species of duck often suffer severely.

In April, or at the latest in the beginning of May, the pairs approach nearer and nearer the fringe of reefs and the shores of the mainland. Maternal cares are stirring in the breast of the duck, and to these everything else is subordinated. Out at sea the pair were so shy that they never allowed a ship or boat to get near them, and feared man, if he ever happened to approach them, more than any other living creature; now in the neighbourhood of the islands their behaviour changes entirely. Obeying her maternal instincts, and these only, the duck swims to one of the brooding-places, and paying no attention to the human inhabitants, waddles on to the land. Anxiously the drake follows her, not without uttering his warning “Ahua, ahua”, not without visible hesitation, for every now and then he remains behind as if reflecting for a while, and then swims forward once more. The duck, however, pays no heed to all this. Careless of the whole world around her, she wanders over the island seeking a suitable brooding-place. Being somewhat fastidious, she is not satisfied with the first good heap of sea-weed cast up by the tide, with the low juniper-bush whose branches straggling on the ground offer safe concealment, with the half-broken box which the owner of the island has placed as a shelter for her, or with the heaps of twigs and brushwood which he has gathered to entice her, but approaches the owner’s dwelling as fearlessly as if she were a domestic bird. She enters it, walks about the floor, follows the housewife through rooms and kitchen, and capriciously selects, it may be, the inside of the oven as her resting-place, thereby forcing the housewife to have her bread baked for weeks on another island. With manifest alarm the faithful drake follows her as far as he dares; but when she, in his opinion, so far neglects all considerations of safety as to dwell under the same roof with human beings, he no longer tries to struggle against her wayward whim, but leaves her to follow it alone, and flies out to the safety of the sea, there longingly to await her daily visit. His mate is in no wise distracted by his departure, but proceeds to collect twigs and brushwood—a task in which she willingly accepts the Norseman’s help—and to pile up into a heap her nest materials, which include sea-weed as well as twigs. She hollows out a trough with her wings and makes it circular by turning round and round in it with her smooth breast. Then she sets about procuring the lining and incorporating it with the nest. Thinking only of her brood, she plucks the incomparably soft down from her breast and makes with it a sort of felt, which not only lines the whole hollow but forms such a thick border at its upper edge that it serves as a cover to protect the eggs from cold when the mother leaves the nest. Before the work of lining is quite completed, the duck begins laying her comparatively small, smooth-shelled, clouded-green or grayish-green eggs. The clutch consists of from six to eight, seldom more or fewer.

This is the time for which the Norseman has been waiting, for it was self-interest that prompted all his hospitality to the bird. The host now becomes the robber. Ruthlessly he takes the eggs and the nest with its inner lining of costly down. From twenty-four to thirty nests yield about two pounds of down, worth at least thirty shillings on the spot. This price is sufficient explanation of the Norseman’s way of acting.

Fig. 2.—Colony of Eider-ducks.

With a heavy heart the duck sees the downfall of her hopes for that year. Perturbed and frightened, she flies out to sea, where her mate awaits her. Whether he takes the opportunity of repeating his warnings more urgently I cannot say, but I can testify that he very soon succeeds in consoling her. The joy and spirit of the spring-time still live in the hearts of both; and in a very few days our duck waddles on land again as though nothing had happened, to build a second nest! This time she probably avoids her former position and contents herself with the first available heap of tangle which is not fully taken up by other birds. Again she digs and rounds a hollow; again she begins to probe among her plumage in order to procure the lining of down which seems to her indispensable. But, however much she exert herself, stretching her neck and twisting it in intricate snake-like curves, she can find no more. Yet when was a mother, even a duck mother, at a loss when her children had to be provided for? Our duck is certainly at none. She herself has no more down, but her mate bears it untouched on his breast and back. Now it is his turn. And though he may perhaps rebel, having a lively recollection of former years, he is the husband and she the wife, therefore he must obey. Without compunction the anxious mother rifles his plumage, and in a few hours, or at most within two days, she has plucked him as bare as herself. That the drake, after such treatment, should fly out to the open sea as soon as possible, and associate for some months only with his fellows, troubling himself not in the least about his mate and her coming brood, seems to me quite comprehensible. And when, as happens on every nesting island, a drake is to be seen standing by the brooding duck, I think he must be one who has not yet been plucked![2]