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

by Alfred Edmund Brehm

Streams a raving Witches’ Song.”

Mephisto’s words are realized. The noise and tumult, the confusion of forms and cries, fatigue all the senses; everything swims and flickers before our eyes; there is singing and ringing in our ears, till at length we are conscious of neither colour nor noise, scarcely even of the usually very penetrating odour. In whatever direction we may turn the cloud covers the island; nothing is to be seen but birds, and when thousands alight to rest thousands more take wing, their care and anxiety for their brood making them forget their own powerlessness, and encouraging them to a defence which, though not dangerous, is certainly embarrassing to the explorers.

Fig. 3.—The Bird-bergs of Lapland.

Essentially different from the life—after all very inoffensive—on an eider-holm is the picture presented by an island peopled by silver, herring, or great black-backed gulls. These also congregate on certain islands for the breeding season in hundreds and hundreds of pairs, one such island being sometimes inhabited by from three to five thousand pairs. The island presents quite as beautiful and noble a spectacle as the eider-holm. The large, dazzling white, and light or dark gray forms contrast wonderfully with the whole surroundings, and their movements possess much of the grace which characterizes all gulls. But these strong, powerful, rapacious gulls, though gregarious, are not peaceable neighbours. No member of such a colony trusts any other. Each pair lives by itself, marks out a definite brooding-ground, however small its diameter, allows no other pair within its boundaries, and both birds never leave the nest at the same time. If they have been disturbed by a powerful common enemy they hasten back as quickly as possible to the nest to protect it from others of their own species.

Less noisy, but certainly not less impressive, is the life on the real bird-bergs, the breeding-grounds of razor-bills, guillemots, and puffins, with at most here and there one or other of the gulls or of the cormorants. It will suffice if I attempt to describe one such berg in narrative form.

To the north of the large island belonging to the Lofoden group, and about three hundred yards from its shore, lie three bell-shaped rocky islands (the Nyken), rising rugged and steep for about three hundred feet above the surface of the sea, and closely surrounded by a circle of little reefs. One of these rocky cones is a bird-berg, and one can hardly imagine a finer of its kind.

We prepared to visit the island on a beautiful summer day when the sea was unusually smooth and calm, the sky clear and blue, the air warm and pleasant. Powerful Norsemen rowed our light boat in and out among innumerable skerries. Look where we would, we saw birds. Almost every rock which rose above the surface of the water was peopled with them. Some of the reefs were coated with white by the excrement of the cormorants which regularly spent a portion of each day there in rest. Arranged in rows, like soldiers drawn up, they sat in tens, twenties, or hundreds, in the most extraordinary positions, their necks stretched, their wings spread out so that every part of their bodies might have full benefit of the sunshine, waving their wings also as if to fan each other, and all the while casting watchful glances in every direction. On our approach, they threw themselves heavily with hollow cries into the sea, and then, swimming and diving, defied all our attempts to get near them. Other reefs were covered with gulls, hundreds and thousands of the same species; or with male eiders, which had probably come from some eider-holm or other, to amuse themselves after the fashion of their sex while their mates were busied with maternal cares. Around other rocky islands the dazzling eider-birds, perhaps newly-plucked males, had congregated and arranged themselves in a circle, suggestive of the great white water-lilies of our quiet freshwater lakes. In the sounds that were not too deep one could see the fishing mergansers and divers, one or other of which would every now and then give full vent to its shrill, far-reaching cry—a cry so long-drawn-out and so varied in tone that one might call it a song, were it not rather a wild melody such as can only be executed by a child of the North Sea who has listened to the howling and blustering of winter storms, and has echoed the roar of the surging waves. Proud as a prince upon his throne sat here and there a sea-eagle, the terror of all the feathered creatures of the sea; sometimes we saw a whole company of these robbers gorged with prey; the jerfalcon, who had his eyrie on one of the steep precipices, flew through his wide domain with the swiftness of an arrow; fluttering gulls and kittiwakes and fishing terns darted up and down; oyster-catchers greeted us with their trilling cries; razor-bills and guillemots appeared and disappeared all about us as they rose to the surface or dived underneath.

In such company we proceeded on our way. When we had traversed about ten nautical miles we came within range of the Nyke. In whatever direction we looked we saw some of the temporary dwellers on the berg, fishing and diving in the sea, or, startled by our boat, flying along so close to the surface of the water that their bright red webbed feet struck spray from the waves. We saw swarms of from thirty to fifty or a hundred birds streaming from or towards the berg, and we could not doubt that we were approaching a very populous breeding-colony. But we had been told of millions of brooding birds, and as yet we could see nothing of such numbers. At length, after we had rowed round a projecting ridge, the Nyke lay before us. In the sea, all around, were black points, at the foot of the hill white ones. The former were without order or regularity, the latter generally in rows, or sharply defined troops; the one set consisted of razor-bills swimming, with head, throat, and neck above the water, the others were the same birds sitting on the hill with their white breasts turned towards the sea. There were certainly many thousands, but not millions.

After we had landed at the opposite island and refreshed ourselves in the house of the proprietor of the Nyke, we crossed over to it, and choosing a place round which the seething waves did not surge too violently, we sprang out on the rock and climbed quickly up to the turf which covers the whole Nyke, with the exception of a few protruding peaks, ledges, and angles. There we found that the whole turf was so pierced with nest-hollows something like rabbit holes, that on the whole hill not a single place the size of a table could be found free from such openings. We made our way upwards in a spiral, clambering rather than walking to the top of the berg. The undermined turf trembled under our feet, and from every hole there peeped, crept, glided, or flew out birds rather larger than pigeons, slate-coloured on the upper part of the body, dazzlingly white on breast and belly, with fantastic bills and faces, short, narrow, pointed wings, and stumpy tails. Out of every hole they appeared and even out of the fissures and clefts in the rocks. Whichever way we turned we saw only birds, heard only the low droning noise of their combined weak cries. Every step onwards brought new flocks out of the bowels of the earth. From the berg down to the sea, from the sea up to the berg there flew swarms innumerable. The dozens became hundreds, the hundreds became thousands, and hundreds of thousands sprang incessantly from the brown-green turf. A cloud not less thick than that over the holm enveloped us, enveloped the island, so that it—magically indeed, but in a way perceptible by the senses—seemed transformed into a gigantic bee-hive, round which not less gigantic bees, humming and buzzing, hovered and fluttered.