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.
GREAT NORTHERN DIVER.
This species, the Colymbus glacialis of Linnæus and of ornithologists generally, is, in its breeding plumage, one of the handsomest of British birds. Its chief characteristics are its large size—about that of a Goose—black head and neck, double semi-collars of white and black vertical stripes, and black upper parts, marked with white spots of varying size, and arranged in a series of belts. Whether it actually breeds within our limits has not yet been absolutely determined, although evidence is forthcoming that seems to point to the fact. Unfortunately for the seaside student of bird life, the Great Northern Diver is only known as a winter visitor. At that season, however, it may be met with pretty frequently off the British coasts, the young birds especially venturing into our bays and creeks and estuaries, older individuals, as a rule, keeping further out to sea. Adult birds are, however, often observed near the coasts of South Devonshire and Cornwall. I have known them linger in the waters near here until the summer has been well advanced. Young birds of this species, in the brown and white dress characteristic of immaturity, may often be seen quietly fishing under the cliffs, notably in Tor Bay. One very remarkable thing about this Diver is its singular habit of immersing the body to such a depth that the back is quite under water. It often so sinks itself when menaced by danger, and then, almost out of sight, swims away with great speed. If pursuit is still continued all but the neck is sunk below the surface, and finally, if hotly pressed, the bird will disappear entirely, and swim along under water at a speed absolutely astonishing, Gätke records that this Diver, when chased by a boat under these circumstances, will dive and allow the boat to pass over it, rising again in the rear of it, a habit which my own observations of the bird completely confirm. How this act of immersion, without apparent effort, is accomplished remains a mystery, and offers a problem in animal mechanics by no means easy of solution.
The Great Northern Diver is rarely seen on land, perhaps never except during the breeding season. Its movements on shore are ungainly in the extreme, the legs being placed so far back that the bird can only push itself along in a crawling sort of a way; it is equally rarely seen in the air, and apparently only uses its wings to fly when performing its annual migrations. How the species still retains the function of flight at all seems almost a mystery, but perhaps the constant use of the wings in the water keeps them to a standard of efficiency. This Diver is one of the least gregarious, and save on passage is rarely met with in numbers greater than a pair. It seems to be the rule for odd pairs to take up their residence in certain spots during the breeding season; after that period the bird is usually met with solitary, and the young individuals, unlike so many others that evince strong gregarious propensities, for the most part wander about alone. This Diver, like most big birds, is shy and wary, although I have repeatedly watched it from the cliffs in Tor Bay evincing little concern at my presence. As may be gathered from the foregoing remarks the Great Northern Diver is a proficient in the art of diving, and is said to be able to remain as long as eight minutes beneath the surface—a period of time which seems incredible. The depth to which it sometimes descends is also enormous—it has been captured in a net thirty fathoms from the surface. The food of this Diver is almost, if not absolutely, composed of fish. During the non-breeding season Divers are not particularly noisy birds, but at their nesting-places the cries they utter are both loud and startling, described by some listeners as similar to the screams of tortured children; as shrieks of maddened laughter, or as weird and melancholy howls by others.