Bird Watching

by Edmund Selous

Sometimes during these visits that the birds pay to each other, the two will bend their heads down together and pick and pull at the grass. When they raise them there may be a blade or two of it in the bill of one, which is allowed to drop in a negligent, desultory way. Or one, which I take to be the female, plucks up a tuft and walks with it to the male as though to show him. She lets it drop, and then both birds, standing front to front, lower their heads at the same time and utter a shrill though not a loud cry. This seems as though one bird were suggesting to the other the propriety of building a nest, but it may be the actual manner in which the nest is built. There would, of course, be no doubt as to this, if the birds—or one of them—were to continue thus to pluck and bring tufts or blades of grass. But this was never the case when I saw them, nor did I ever remark any action on their part that had more the appearance of systematic nest-building than this. The nest of the great skua is very slight, a mere pressed-down litter of coarse long grass, shallow, and having a pulled, tattered look round the edges suggestive of the crown of a shabby straw hat or bonnet from which the remaining portion has been torn. Compared to it, the nest of a gull, being formed of quite a considerable quantity of bog-moss and heather, basin-shaped, and fairly regular and with well-formed, soft, cushiony rim all round it, is almost a work of architecture.

Yet neither do gulls seem to work regularly or systematically in the building of their nests. One may be seen piking into the ground with its powerful beak and then withdrawing it with a tuft of moss or a sprig of heather held between the mandibles. After making a few sedate steps with this the bird lays it down, but instead of fetching some more, now, and continuing the work, it merely stands there and appears to forget all about it. Another will fly up with some material, and, after circling a little above its partner on the ground, will alight and lay it down as a contribution beside it, in a very stolid sort of way. The other bird does not help, and does not seem particularly interested, and the two now stand side by side for about half-an-hour, when the one that has last arrived flies away, and, on returning again, brings nothing. Sometimes a gull may be seen walking with moss or heather in the bill, whilst its consort walks beside it, but without having anything. When the heather is placed by the one bird, the other stands by and seems interested, but does not assist, and no further supply is brought. It would appear, therefore, that only one bird—and this, no doubt, the female—actually builds the nest, though the other—the male—may look on and take a greater or less amount of intelligent interest in what she is doing. But though the above is from the life it hardly seems possible that gulls could get their nests done at all if they worked no better than this. When I first got to that island "de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme," but few eggs had yet been laid and many of the nests were only half finished, or not even so far advanced as that. Most, however, were completed, or nearly so, and it is probable that what I saw represented merely the finishing touches, which will also apply to the great skuas.

What I saw was, indeed, very little, and it is only a surmise that the female gull builds the nest without being aided by the male. I think so, however, because usually, when both the male and female assist in the building, they work together, and whilst collecting the materials keep more or less in each other's company, arriving with them either at the same time or shortly after each other. This, at least, has been the case with those birds which I have watched. I have, indeed, seen two gulls pulling up the moss or heather within a yard or so of each other, and these I at first put down as a married couple. This, however, was not the case, for they laid down what they pulled in different places, and several times they attacked each other and fought quite fiercely. With other birds, too, I have noticed a kind of rivalry between the females when collecting materials for the nest. Hen chaffinches seem particularly jealous of each other in this respect. They pull the lichens from the trunks of trees, fluttering up against them, and using both their claws and beaks, and when thus engaged, or when flying off with what they have got, two will often fly at each other and fight furiously in the air. I do not think that the one tries to take what the other has collected—there ought, one would think, to be enough for all—but, rather, that the sight of one when thus occupied, has an irritating effect on the other, and so it seemed to be with these two gulls.

Male gulls fight, too, as might be expected, the motive being usually, if not always, jealousy. Sometimes a little drama may be witnessed, as when a pair who would fain be tender are annoyed and hampered by a rejected suitor—the villain of the piece. This odious bird advances upon them with a menacing and, it would almost seem, a scandalised demeanour every time that he detects the smallest disposition towards an impropriety of behaviour, and when the husband-lover rushes furiously upon him he flies just out of his danger, and acts in the same way on the next occasion, which is immediately afterwards. This goes on for some time, the envious bird becoming more and more rancorous and more and more torn between rage and discretion every time valour assaults him. At last rage carries it, and, strange to say,—considering it as melodrama—he, the villain, makes quite a spirited stand against the "good" hero, who, by all the laws of such things, should fell him to the ground and spurn him, so as to make the orthodox situation. Instead of this there is an equal combat which ends only in "nothing neither way," except that, as the bad gull still goes on afterwards, it is more in his favour than the other's. He wins, in fact, for the lovers are at length wearied out, and the contemplated impropriety never does take place. It is a pity almost that it cannot sometimes go like this in stage reality. To see the hero, just when most reeking with noble utterance, put suddenly into an unshowy position by the "hound" or the "cringing cur" would be a glorious thing, a delightful—almost a Gilbertian—dénouement. One could applaud it "to the very echo that should applaud again," but one never gets the chance—or, rather, one would not if one tried, for I will not suppose that anyone with a taste for nature affects the melodrama—or even the drama nowadays.

Gull-fights are sometimes very fierce and determined, and when this is the case they often cause great excitement among a number of others. As on the human plane, fights between birds make impressions upon one according to the greater or lesser amount of intensity manifested, becoming sometimes quite tragic in their interest. Not only is this the case with oneself, but birds that are not fighting seem affected in the same way. I have noticed this with partridges somewhat—but more in the gullery. An ordinary scuffle between two birds attracts little if any notice from the others, but when it is sustained and bitter, supported with great courage on either side, there may be quite a crowd of excited onlookers. I have seen a very desperate combat which I at first thought was a general scrimmage. It was not so, however. Two alone were engaged, but a cloud of gulls swept over and hovered about them, often hiding them from view. All were interested, and interested, it seemed to me, against one of the two birds who stood all the time on the defensive, beating or trying to beat off with wings and beak the continual eager rushes of his assailant. Many times they closed and went struggling and flapping over the ground, attended all the time by gulls in the air and gulls walking about and near them. When they disengaged, the same bird—as I inferred from the dramatic unity of its conduct—attacked again in the same eager way, as though the greater vivacity of its feelings or disposition made it always more quick than the other, though this one was equally brave and determined. One might almost fancy that the attacking gull had had some great wrong done it by the one it attacked. This latter, however, a powerful and steady fighter, finally beat off its assailant, who now took to the air. Sweeping backwards and forwards above the hated one, it made each time that it passed a little drop down upon it with dangling legs and delivered, or tried to deliver, a blow with the feet, a strategy which the other met by springing up and striking with the beak.

Such a conflict as this makes quite a commotion in the gull world, all those birds that have been standing anywhere in the neighbourhood flying and circling excitedly about above the combatants, or settling and walking up to them. I did not see the casus belli, so merely assume it to have been jealousy between two rival males. Quite possibly the birds were females. In none of these fights, nor in others that I have seen between black-backed gulls on the island, did there seem to be any special set method either of attack or defence, as is so noticeable in the case of some birds. It was a generalised fight—"a pankration"—in which each bird did whatever it could without art or plan. A fight between two herring-gulls that lasted a long time was of another character. "They fought most savagely, but in a curious manner. Each seized the other by the beak, which they then (or one of them) endeavoured to extricate by pulling backwards, so that the stronger bird, or each alternately, dragged the other over the ground, a process which the one being dragged tried to resist by spreading the wings at right angles and opposing them to the ground. To me it seemed that one of the birds had each time seized the other to advantage and strove to retain its hold against the efforts of the less fortunate one to disengage. The length of time during which they remained with the beaks thus interlocked was remarkable. I was not able to time them, but it was so long as to grow tedious, and I several times turned the glasses on to other objects and, after a short interval, brought them back again, always finding them as before. A quarter of an hour, or, at the very least, ten minutes, would not, I think, be an over-estimate of the time they sometimes remained in this connection. The instant the beaks were unlocked the birds fiercely seized each other by them again, there was the same dragging and resistance, the same lengthy duration, and this was repeated three or four times in succession. At length there was a very violent struggle, and the bird that seemed to have the advantage in its hold, by advancing upon the other while never relaxing this, forced its head backwards and at length right down upon its back, the bird so treated being obviously much distressed. At last, with a violent effort, this latter got its bill free, and the two, grappling together, and one, now, seizing hold of the other's wing, rolled together down the steep face of the rock. At the bottom they separated. The bird, as I think, that had had the worst of it all along flew back to the place from which they had fallen, while the other remained, seeming somewhat hurt by the fall. Some time later there was another conflict between the same two gulls which was similar in all respects, including the place at which it was fought, except in its ending. This time there was no fall down the rock, but the one bird flew off, soon, however, to alight again, the other one pursuing and continuing to molest it with savage sweeps from side to side."

No doubt, in a fight like this, each bird seizes the other by the beak, as fearing what it might otherwise do with it, as two men with knives might seize hold of each other's wrists. But this might become in time so confirmed a habit that the birds, when fighting, would have no idea of doing anything else, and thus not attack each other in any less specialised way, however much one might have the other at an advantage. I do not mean to say that it has really come to this with the gulls in question—the facts, indeed, do not bear out this view—but several times, when watching birds fighting, I have seen, as I believe, a tendency in this direction, and it has occurred to me that the process might be carried even further.

There was no other bird very near to these two gulls during all the long time that they fought, no female who was obviously the cause of the affair, and to whom either of them went, or showed a desire to go, either in the interval between the two combats or at the end of it all. Yet that the two were rival males seems hardly to be doubted, taking the season into consideration. This—and the same observation applies to the two wheatears who fought for hours without the female being at all en évidence—seems to show a power of retaining a vivid mental impression of the loved or coveted bird in her absence, to which is added a tranquil pleasure of the paired birds in each other's society apart from mere sensual gratification. It is absurd, therefore, to keep the word "love" to ourselves, as we do in the spirit if not the letter. As in other things, there is no line drawn here in nature, and it is in watching animals that one gets to know the real meaning of all our high terminology. It is wonderful how long two birds who have chosen each other will stand quite motionless close together, as though they were a couple of stones, and then show by some mutual or dependent action that each is in the other's mind. Here is an instance. "A pair of herring-gulls have been standing for a long time one just behind the other on the edge of the grassy slope of the cliff, quite motionless, looking like the painted wooden birds of a Noah's ark. All at once both, as in obedience to a common impulse, burst into wild clamorous cries for a few seconds and then fly out over the sea. Quite soon they return and, settling again in precisely the same spot and relative position, stand motionless as before, for full three hours, when one, uttering a little chattering, almost talking note, again launches himself from the verge and flies around for some three or four minutes in the near neighbourhood, with a frequent 'how, how, how.' He then re-settles just in his old place behind the other, talks a little, again flies off, returns and talks as before. The other gull has remained motionless, or almost so, all the time, and the two now stand silently as before." It seems strange that the birds should first act so mutually and then so independently of each other, but far stranger, as it struck me, was the absolute instantaneousness with which, on the first occasion, they both burst out screaming.

It is possible that close attention to animals might lead to evidence pointing in a new and unexpected direction, but I will leave this for another chapter.