Bird Watching

by Edmund Selous

Gargoyle idylls.—"Now I have found a nest with the bird on it, to see and watch. It was on a ledge, and just within the mouth of one of those long, narrowing, throat-like caverns into and out of which the sea with all sorts of strange, sullen noises licks like a tongue. The bird, who had seen me, continued for a long time afterwards to crane about its long neck from side to side or up and down over the nest, in doing which it had a very demoniac appearance, suggesting some evil being in its dark abode, or even the principle of evil itself. As it was impossible for me to watch it without my head being visible over the edge of the rock I was on, I collected a number of loose flat stones that lay on the turf above, and, at the cost of a good deal of time and labour, made a kind of wall or sconce with loopholes in it, through which I could look, yet be invisible. Presently the bird's mate came flying into the cavern, and wheeling up as it entered, alighted on a sloping slab of the rock just opposite to the nest. For a little both birds uttered low, deep, croaking notes in weird unison with the surroundings and the sad sea-dirges, after which they were silent for a considerable time, the one standing and the other sitting on the nest vis-à-vis to each other. At length the former, which I have no doubt was the male, hopped across the slight space dividing them on to the nest, which was a huge mass of seaweed. There were now some more deep sounds and then, bending over the female bird, the male caressed her by passing the hooked tip of his bill through the feathers of her head and neck, which she held low down the better to permit of this. Afterwards the two sat side by side together on the nest.

"The whole scene was a striking picture of affection between these dark, wild birds in their lonely, wave-made home.

"Here was love unmistakable, between so strange a pair and in so wild a spot. But to them it was the sweetest of bowers. How snug, how cosy they were on that great wet heap of 'the brown seaweed,' just in the dark jaws of that gloom-filled cavern, with the frowning precipice above and the sullen-heaving sea beneath. Here in this gloom, this wildness, this stupendousness of sea and shore, beneath grey skies and in chilling air, here was peace, here was comfort, conjugal love, domestic bliss, the same flame burning in such strange gargoyle-shaped forms amidst all the shagginess of nature. The scene was full of charm, full of poetry, more so, as it struck me, than most love-scenes in most plays and novels—having regard, of course, to the prodigious majority of the bad ones.

"The male bird now flies out to sea again, and after a time returns carrying a long piece of brown seaweed in his bill. This he delivers to the female, who takes it from him and deposits it on the heap, as she sits. Meanwhile, the male flies off again, and again returns with more seaweed, which he delivers as before, and this he does eight times in the space of one hour and forty minutes, diving each time for the seaweed with the true cormorant leap. Sometimes the sitting bird, when she takes the seaweed from her mate, merely lets it drop on the heap, but at others she places and manipulates it with some care. All takes place in silence for the most part, but on some of the visits the heads are thrown up and there are sounds—hoarse and deeply guttural—as of gratulation between the two.

"Once the male bird, standing on the rock, pulls at some green seaweed growing there, and after a time gets it off.

('It was rather tough work to pull out the cork,

But he drew it at last with his teeth.')

"The female is much interested, stretches forward with her neck over the nest and takes the seaweed as soon as it is loose, before the other can pass it to her. Then she arranges it on the nest, the male looking on the while as though she were the bride cutting the cake. Now he hops on to the nest again, and both together (for I think the male joins) arrange or pull the seaweed about with their beaks. One would think that the nest was still a-building and that the eggs were not yet laid. This last, however, is not the case. Several times, whilst waiting alone, the female bird rises a little on the nest, and each time there is a gleam like snow and the gloom seems deeper against the cut outline of a pure white egg. How full of poetry and interest it is lying there; how unmeaning and, one may almost say, absurd in a cabinet!"

The nest of the shag is continually added to by the male, not only whilst the eggs are in process of incubation, but after they are hatched, and when the young are being brought up. In a sense, therefore, it may be said to be never finished, though to all practical purposes it is, before the female bird begins to sit. That up to this period the female as well as the male bird takes part in the building of the nest I cannot but think, but from the time of my arrival on the island I never saw the two either diving for or carrying seaweed together. Of course, if all the hen birds were sitting this is accounted for, but from the courting antics which I witnessed, and for some other reasons, I judged that this was not the case. Once I saw a pair of birds together high up on the cliffs, where some tufts of grass grew in the niches. One of these birds, only, pulled out some of the grass, and flew away with it accompanied by the other one. It is not only seaweed that is used by these birds in the construction of the nest. In many that I saw, grass alone was visible (though I have no doubt seaweed was underneath it); and one, in particular, had quite an ornamental appearance, from being covered all over with some land-plant having a number of small blue flowers; and this I have observed in other nests, though not to the same extent. A fact like this is interesting when we remember the bower-birds, and the way in which they ornament their runs. I think it was on this same nest that I noticed the picked and partially bleached skeleton—with the head and wings still feathered—of a puffin. It had, to be sure, a sorry appearance to the human—at least to the civilised human—eye, but if it had not been brought there for the sake of ornament I can think of no other reason, and brought there or, at least, placed upon the nest by the bird, it must almost certainly have been. The brilliant beak and saliently marked head of the puffin must be here remembered. Again, fair-sized pieces of wood or spar, cast up by the sea and whitened by it, are often to be seen stuck amongst the seaweed, and on one occasion I saw a bird fly with one of these to its nest and place it upon it. In all this, as it seems to me, the beginnings of a tendency to ornament the nest are clearly exhibited. It would be interesting to observe if the common cormorant exhibits the same tendency, or to the same degree. The shag being a handsome and adorned bird, we might, on Darwinian principles, expect to find the æsthetic sense more developed in it than in its plainer and unadorned relative.