Our duck broods once more assiduously. And now her house-dress is seen to be the only suitable, I might say the only possible, garment which she could wear. Among the tangle which surrounds the nest she is completely hidden even from the sharp eyes of the falcon or the sea-eagle. Not only the general colouring, but every point and every line is so harmonious with the dried sea-weed, that the brooding-bird, when she has drawn down her neck and slightly spread out her wings, seems to become almost a part of her surroundings. Many a time it has happened that I, searching with the practised eye of a sportsman and naturalist, have walked across eider-holms and only become aware of the brooding duck at my feet, when she warned me off by pecking at my shoes. No one who knows the self-forgetting devotion with which the birds brood will be surprised that it is possible to come so near an eider-duck sitting in her nest, but it may well excite the astonishment of even an experienced naturalist to learn that the duck suffers one to handle the eggs under her breast without flying away, and that she does not even allow herself to be diverted from her brooding when one lifts her from the nest and places her upon it again, or lays her on the ground at some little distance in order to see the charmingly quaint way in which she waddles back to her brood.
The eider-duck’s maternal self-surrender and desire for offspring show themselves in another way. Every female eider-duck, perhaps every duck of whatever species, desires not only the bliss of bearing children, but wishes to have as many nestlings as possible under her motherly eye. Prompted by this desire, she has no scruples in robbing, whenever possible, other eiders brooding near her. Devoted as she is in her brooding, she must nevertheless forsake her nest once a day to procure her own food, and to cleanse, oil, and smooth her plumage, which suffers considerably from the heat developed in brooding. Throwing a suspicious glance at her neighbours to right and left, she rises early in the forenoon, after having perhaps suffered the pangs of hunger for some hours, stands beside her nest and carefully spreads the surrounding fringe of down with her bill, so that it forms a concealing and protecting cover for the eggs. Then she flies quickly out to the sea, dives repeatedly, and hastily fills crop and gullet to the full with mussels, bathes, cleans, and oils herself, and returns to land, drying and smoothing her feathers continuously as she walks towards her nest. Both her neighbours sit seemingly as innocent as before, but in the interval a theft has been perpetrated by at least one of them. As soon as the first had flown away, one of them rose from her nest, and lifting the cover of her neighbour’s nest, quickly rolled one, two, three, or four eggs with her feet into her own nest, then carefully replaced the cover, and resumed her place, rejoicing over her unrighteously-increased clutch. The returning duck probably notices the trick that has been played, but she makes not the slightest sign, and calmly settles down to brood again as though she thought, “Just wait, neighbour, you must go to the sea, too, and then I’ll do to you what you have done to me”. As a matter of fact, the eggs of several nests standing close together are shifted continuously from one to another. Whether it is her own or another’s children that come to life under her motherly breast seems to matter very little to the eider-duck—they are children, at any rate!
The duck sits about twenty-six days before the eggs are hatched. The Norseman, who goes to work intelligently, lets her do as she pleases this time, and not only refrains from disturbing her, but assists her as far as possible by keeping away from the island all enemies who might harass the bird. He knows his ducks, if not personally, at least to this extent, that he can tell about what time this or that one will have finished brooding, and will set out with her ducklings to seek the safety of the sea. The journey thither brings sudden destruction to many unwatched young eider-ducks. Not only the falcons breeding on or visiting the island, but even more the ravens, the skuas, and the larger gulls watch for the first appearance of the ducklings, attack them on the way, and carry off one or more of them. The owner of the island seeks to prevent this in a manner which enables one to appreciate how thoroughly the duck, ordinarily so wild and shy, has become a domestic bird during the breeding season. Every morning towards the end of the brooding-time he inspects the island in order to help the mothers and to gather in a second harvest of down. On his back hangs a hamper, and on one arm a wide hand-basket. Going from nest to nest he lifts each duck, and looks to see whether the young are hatched and are sufficiently dry. If this be the case, he packs the whole waddling company in his hand-basket, and with adroit grasp divests the nest of its downy lining, which he throws into his hamper, and proceeds to another nest. Trustfully the duck waddles after him or rather after her piping offspring, and a second, third, tenth nest is thus emptied, in fact the work goes on as long as the basket will accommodate more nestlings, and one mother after another joins the procession, exchanging opinions with her companions in suffering on the way. Arrived at the sea, the man turns the basket upside down and simply shakes the whole crowd of ducklings into the water. Immediately all the ducks throw themselves after their piping young ones; coaxing, calling, displaying all manner of maternal tenderness, they swim about among the flock, each trying to collect as many ducklings as possible behind herself. With obvious pride one swims about with a long train behind her, but soon a second, less favoured, crosses the procession and seeks to detach as many of the ducklings as she can, and again a third endeavours to divert a few in her own favour. So all the mothers swim about, quacking and calling, cackling and coaxing, till at length each one has behind her a troop of young ones, whether her own or another’s who can tell? The duck in question certainly does not know, but her mother-love does not suffer on that account—they are in any case ducklings who are swimming behind her!
In every case the flock thus collected follows the mother or foster-mother faithfully even in the first hours of free life. The mother leads them to places where edible mussels cover the rocks up to low-water mark, gathers as many as she and her family require, breaks the shells of the smallest and lays the contents before her brood. On the first day of their lives the ducklings are able to swim and dive as well as their parents, and they even excel them in one respect, for they are incomparably more nimble on land, being able to move about with surprising activity. If they become tired near an island the mother leads them on to it, and they run about like young partridges, and, by simply crouching down at the first warning cry, conceal themselves so effectively that they can only be found after long searching. If they get fatigued when they are far from land, the mother spreads out her wings a little and offers them these and her back as a resting-place. As they never know want they grow with extraordinary rapidity, and at the end of two months will have attained nearly the size, certainly all the adroitness, of their mother. The father soon joins them in order to pass the winter with his family—usually in company with many other families, so that a flock of thousands may occasionally be formed.
The high and annually increasing price of its incomparable down makes the eider-duck the most valuable of all berg-birds. A thousand pairs of ducks form a possession well worth having. At least three or four thousand pairs brood on each island, and the fortunate possessor of still more numerously visited breeding-places derives revenues through his birds which many a German land-owner might envy. But besides the eider-ducks there breed also on the holms oyster-catchers and black guillemots, whose eggs are preserved and used for food for months, or are exported to a distance. Furthermore, the flesh of the young birds is sometimes salted for winter use, and thus the holms yield a rich harvest. They are therefore strictly preserved and protected by special laws.[3]
A brooding island peopled by eider-ducks and other sea birds presents a spectacle as unique as it is fascinating. A more or less thick cloud of brilliantly white sea-gulls veils such an island. Without intermission troops and swarms of brooding birds arrive and fly out to sea again, visiting the neighbouring reefs also, and sometimes marvellously adorning the drained moorland, now covered with green turf, in front of the red log-huts. With justifiable pride a dweller on the Lofodens pointed to several hundred gulls which were assembled directly before his door seeking for insects. “Our land is too poor, too cold, and too rough”, he said, “for us to be able to keep domestic birds as you do in the south. But the sea sends us our doves, and, I ask, have you ever seen more beautiful?” I could but answer in the negative, for the picture of the dazzling white and delicate blue-gray gulls on the luxuriant green turf amid the grand environment of the northern mountains was indeed magnificent. It is these gulls chiefly which make the brooding holms conspicuous from a distance, and distinguish them from others which are physically the same. The other members of the feathered population are but little noticed, though they number many thousands. Only when one of the admirable light boats of the country is pushed off from the inhabited shores and rowed towards the holm does the quiet life of the birds change. Some oyster-catchers, which have been feeding directly above the high-water mark, have observed the boat and fly hastily towards it. These birds, which are absent from none of the larger islands, scarcely from any of the skerries, are the guardians of the safety and welfare of the peacefully united colony. More inquisitive and active than any other birds known to me, self-possessed, cautious, and deliberate, they possess all the qualities necessary to make them the sentinels of a mixed colony. Every new, unusual, or extraordinary event arouses their curiosity, and incites them to make closer examination. Thus they fly to meet the boat, sweep round it five or six times in ever-narrowing circles, screaming uninterruptedly the while, thus attracting others of their own species to the spot, and rousing the attention of all the cautious birds in the colony. As soon as they have convinced themselves of the presence of actual danger, they fly quickly back, and, with warning notes, communicate the result of their investigation to all the other birds on the berg who will pay any attention, as indeed many do. Some gulls now resolve to investigate the cause of the disturbance for themselves. Five or six of them fly towards the boat, hover falcon-like in the air, perhaps even dart boldly down upon the intruders, and return to the holm more quickly than they came. Just as if their report was mistrusted, twice, three, four—ten times the number take wing, proceeding exactly as the first spies had done, and soon a cloud of birds forms above the boat. This cloud becomes thicker and thicker, more and more threatening, for the birds not only endeavour with continually increasing boldness to strike against the intruders in the boat, but they bestow upon them stuff which does not exactly tend to adorn faces and clothing. In the neighbourhood of the breeding-place the excitement increases to an apparently distracted confusion, the cries of individuals unite to form a maddening noise a thousand times repeated. Before the boat has touched the land the eider-drakes, who have been visiting their mates, have waddled to the shore and are now swimming out to sea with a warning “Ahua-ahua”. The cormorants and mergansers follow them, but the oyster-catchers, plovers, black guillemots, eider-ducks, gulls, and terns, as well as the stone-chats and water-wagtails, cannot make up their minds to forsake the island. Running birds innumerable rush up and down the shore as if pursued by the evil one; the black guillemots, which had glided up the slanting blocks of rock, squat flat down upon them and stare in innocent wonder at the strangers, and the eider-ducks prepare to make themselves invisible after their fashion when the right moment comes.
The boat touches the shore. We step upon the holm. A screech rises from thousands of voices at once, the cloud of flying birds thickens to opaqueness; hundreds of brooding gulls rise croaking to join those in flight; dozens of oyster-catchers scream loudly, and the maze of moving birds and the noise of their screeching become so bewildering that one feels as if one perceived with the bodily senses the din and riot of the witches’ revel on the Blocksberg.
“Voices o’er us dost thou hear?
Voices far, and voices near?
All the mountain-range along