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

by Alfred Edmund Brehm

The farther we went, the more magnificent became the spectacle. The whole hill was alive. Hundreds of thousands of eyes looked down upon us intruders. From every hole and corner, from every peak and ledge, out of every cleft, burrow, or opening, they hurried forth, right, left, above, beneath; the air, like the ground, teemed with birds. From the sides and from the summit of the berg thousands threw themselves like a continuous cataract into the sea in a throng so dense that they seemed to the eye to form an almost solid mass. Thousands came, thousands went, thousands fluttered in a wondrous mazy dance; hundreds of thousands flew, hundreds of thousands swam and dived, and yet other hundreds of thousands awaited the footsteps which should rouse them also. There was such a swarming, whirring, rustling, dancing, flying, and creeping all about us that we almost lost our senses; the eye refused duty, and his wonted skill failed even the marksman who attempted to gain a prize at random among the thousands. Bewildered, hardly conscious, we pushed on our way until at length we reached the summit. Our expectation here at last to regain quietness, composure, and power of observation, was not at once realized. Even here there was the same swarming and whirring as further down the slope, and the cloud of birds around us was so thick that we only saw the sea dimly and indefinitely as in twilight. But a pair of jerfalcons, who had their eyrie in a neighbouring precipice, and had seen the unusual bustle, suddenly changed the wonderful scene. The razor-bills, guillemots, and puffins were not afraid of us; but on the appearance of their well-known and irresistible enemies, the whole cloud threw themselves with one accord, as at the command of a magician, into the sea, and the outlook was clear and free. Innumerable black points, the heads of the birds swimming in the sea, stood out distinctly from the water, and broke up the blue-green colouring of the waves. Their number was so great that from the top of the berg, which was over three hundred feet high, we could not see where the swarm ended, could not discover where the sea was clear from birds. In order to make a calculation, I measured out a small square with my eye, and began to count the points in it. There were more than a hundred. Then I endeavoured mentally to place several similar squares together, and soon came to thousands of points. But I might have imagined many thousands of such squares together and yet not exhausted the space covered by birds. The millions of which I had been told were really there. This picture of apparent quiet only lasted for a few moments. The birds soon began to fly upwards again, and as before, hundreds of thousands rose simultaneously from the water to ascend the hill, as before a cloud formed round it, and our senses were again bewildered. Unable to see, and deafened by the indescribable noise about me, I threw myself on the ground, and the birds streamed by on all sides. New ones crept constantly out of their holes, while those we had previously startled now crept back again; they settled all about me, looking with comical amazement at the strange form among them, and approaching with mincing gait so close to me that I attempted to seize them. The beauty and charm of life showed themselves in every movement of these remarkable birds. With astonishment I saw that even the best pictures of them are stiff and cold, for I remarked in their quaint forms a mobility and liveliness with which I had not credited them. They did not remain still a single instant, their heads and necks at least were moved incessantly to all sides, and their contours often showed most graceful lines. It seemed as though the inoffensiveness with which I had given myself up to observing them, had been rewarded by unlimited confidence on their part. The thousands just about me were like domestic birds; the millions paid me no more attention than if I had been one of themselves.

I spent eighteen hours on this bird-berg in order to study the life of the auks.[4] When the midnight sun stood large and blood-red in the sky and cast its rosy light on the sides of the hill there came the peace which midnight brings even in the far North. The sea was deserted; all the birds which had been fishing and diving in it had flown up to the berg. There they sat wherever there was room to sit in long rows of tens, of hundreds, of hundreds of thousands, forming dazzling white lines as all, without exception, sat facing the sea. Their ‘arr’ and ‘err’, which had deafened our ears notwithstanding the weakness of the individual voices, were silent now, and only the roar of the surf breaking on the rocks far below resounded as before. Not till the sun rose again did the old bewildering bustle begin anew, and as we at length descended the hill by the way we had climbed it, we were once more surrounded by a thick cloud of startled birds.

It is not because of their enormous numbers alone that the auks are so fascinating; there is much that is attractive in their life and habits. During the brooding time their social virtues reach an extraordinary height. Till the beginning of that season they live entirely on the open sea, defying the severest winter and the wildest storms. Even in the long night of winter very few of them forsake their northern home, but they range, in flocks of hundreds and thousands, from one fishing-ground to another, finding all the open spaces among the ice as unfailingly as they do other promising feeding-grounds in the open sea. But when the sun reappears they are animated by one feeling—love, by one longing—to reach as soon as possible the hill where their own cradle stood. Then somewhere about Easter-time they all set out, swimming more than flying, for the bird-berg. But among the auks there are more males than females, and not every male is fortunate enough to secure a wife. Among other birds such a disproportion gives rise to ceaseless strife, yet among these auks peace is not disturbed. The much-to-be-pitied beings whom, making use of a human analogy, we may call bachelors, migrate to the berg as well as the fortunate pairs, who coquette and caress by the way; they fly up with these to the heights and accompany them on their hunting expeditions to the surrounding sea. As soon as the weather permits, the pairs begin to get the old holes in order; they clear them out, deepen them, enlarge their chambers, and, if necessary, hollow out a new brooding-place. As soon as this has been done the female lays, on the bare ground at the further end of the hollowed-out brooding-chamber, a single very large, top-shaped, brightly-spotted egg, and begins to brood alternately with the male. The poor bachelors have a sad time of it now. They, too, would dearly like to take parental cares upon themselves if they could only find a mate who would share them. But all the females are appropriated, and wooing is in vain. So they resolve to give practical proof of their good-will, at least in so far that they force themselves on the fortunate pair as friends of the family. In the hours about midnight, when the female broods on the nest, they sit with the male as he keeps watch before it, and, when the male relieves his mate that she may fish in the sea, they mount guard in his stead. But when both parents visit the sea at once the bachelors hasten to reap some reward for their faithfulness. Without delay they thrust themselves into the interior of the cavity, and sit for the time upon the forsaken egg. The poor birds who are condemned to celibacy want at least to brood a little! This unselfish devotion has one result for which men might envy the auks—there are no orphans on these bird-bergs. Should the male of a pair come to grief, his widow immediately consoles herself with another mate, and in the rarer case of both parents losing their lives at once the good-natured supernumeraries are quite ready to finish hatching the egg and to rear the young one. The young ones differ materially from those of the ducks and gulls. They are ‘altrices’, not ‘præcoces’ as the ornithologists say;[5] in plain language, they are not ready for active life as soon as they are hatched. In a dress of thick gray down the young auk slips from the egg in which it awakes to life, but it must spend many weeks in the hole before it is ready to attempt its first flight to the sea. This first flight is always a hazardous undertaking, as is proved by the countless dead bodies on the cliffs at the foot of the berg. The young bird, nervously using its unpractised legs, hardly less timidly its newly-developed wings, follows its parents as they lead the way down the hill towards some place from which the leap into the sea may be attempted with as little danger as possible. On a suitable ledge the parents often remain a long time with their young one before they can induce it to take a spring. Both father and mother persuade it coaxingly; the little one, usually obedient like all young birds, pays no heed to their commands. The father throws himself into the sea before the eyes of his hesitating offspring; the inexperienced young one remains where he was. More attempts, more coaxing, urgent pressure: at length he risks the great leap and plunges like a falling stone deep into the sea; then, unconsciously obeying his instincts, he works his way to the surface, looks all around over the unending sea, and—is a sea-bird who thenceforth shuns no danger.

Different again is the life and activity on the bergs chosen as brooding-places by the kittiwakes. Such a hill is the promontory Swärtholm, high up in the north between the Laxen and the Porsanger fjord, not far from the North Cape. I knew well how these gulls appear on their brooding-places. Faber, with his excellent knowledge of the birds of the far North, has depicted it, as usual, in a few vivid words:

“They hide the sun when they fly, they cover the skerries when they sit, they drown the thunder of the surf when they cry, they colour the rocks white when they brood.” I believed the excellent Faber after I had seen the eider-holms and auk-bergs, and yet I doubted, as every naturalist must, and therefore I ardently desired to visit Swärtholm for myself. An amiable Norseman with whom I became friendly, the pilot of the mail steamer by which I travelled, readily agreed to row me over to the breeding-place, and we approached the promontory late one evening. At a distance of six or eight nautical miles we were overtaken by flocks of from thirty to a hundred, sometimes even two hundred kittiwakes flying to their nesting-place. The nearer we approached to Swärtholm the more rapid was the succession of these swarms, and the larger did they become. At last the promontory became visible, a rocky wall about eight hundred yards long, pierced by innumerable holes, rising almost perpendicularly from the sea to a height of from four hundred and fifty to six hundred feet. It looked gray in the distance, but with a telescope one could discern innumerable points and lines. It looked as though a gigantic slate had been scratched all over with all sorts of marks by a playful giant child, as though the whole rock bore a wondrous decoration of chains, rings, and stars. From the dark depths of large and small cavities there gleamed a brilliant white; the shelving ledges stood out in more conspicuous brightness. The brooding gulls on their nests formed the white pattern, and we realized the truth of Faber’s words, “they cover the rocks when they sit”.

Fig. 4.—Razor-bills.

Our boat, as it grated on the rocky shore, startled a number of the gulls, and I saw a picture such as I had seen on many eider-holms and gull-islands. A shot from my friend’s gun thundered against the precipice. As a raging winter storm rushes through the air and breaks up the snow-laden clouds till they fall in flakes, so now it snowed living birds. One saw neither hill nor sky, nothing but an indescribable confusion. A thick cloud darkened the whole horizon, justifying the description “they hide the sun when they fly”. The north wind blew violently and the icy sea surged wildly against the foot of the cliffs, but more loudly still resounded the shrill cries of the birds, so that the truth of the last part also of Faber’s description was fully proved, “they drown the thunder of the surf when they cry”. At length the cloud sank down upon the sea, the hitherto dim outlines of Swärtholm became distinct again, and a new spectacle enchained our gaze. On the precipices there seemed to sit quite as many birds as before, and thousands were still flying up and down. A second shot scared new flocks, a second time it snowed birds down upon the sea, and still the hillsides were covered with hundreds of thousands. But on the sea, as far as the eye could reach, lay gulls like light foam-balls rocking up and down with the waves. How shall I describe the magnificent spectacle? Shall I say that the sea had woven millions and millions of bright pearls into her dark wave-robe? Or shall I compare the gulls to stars; and the ocean to the dome of heaven? I know not; but I know that I have seen nothing more gorgeous even on the sea. And as if the charm were not already great enough, the midnight sun, erewhile clouded over, suddenly shed its rosy light over promontory and sea and birds, lighting up every wave-crest as if a golden, wide-meshed net had been thrown over the water, and making the rose-tinted dazzling gulls appear more brilliant than before. We stood speechless at the sight! And we, with all our company, even the sailors of our boat, remained motionless for a long, long time, deeply moved by the wonderful picture before us, till at last one of us broke the silence, and, rather to recover himself through the sound of his own voice than to express his inner feeling, softly uttered the poet’s words:

Over the bergs the sun blood-red

Shone through the night;