The Bird Watcher in the Shetlands, with Some Notes on Seals—and Digressions

by Edmund Selous

There is a puffin, now, within a few feet of me, with the largest fish I have yet seen one carrying; as large as a Cornish sardine, and that is as large as can possibly pass for one. And yet it has several smaller ones in its bill, besides. How is this done? For, to catch the big fish, it must have opened the beak a good deal. That one, however, is right at the base of the bill, as though it had been caught first. This, I think, supports my ideas as to the modus operandi. I do not see how so large a fish could be caught, without letting out any little ones that had gone before it. But if it were caught first, the beak, which can cut into the body, to the bird's convenience, need not be opened more widely, on the next occasion, than it would be if it held only a small fish. Did the big fish occupy any other position in the bill than that which it does, it would be against my theory; situated as it is, it is for it. Pray heaven, then, I don't see another puffin with a big fish!—for it may be held differently.

I have now seen, more in extenso, another young kittiwake killed by a herring-gull. Herring-gulls are much more numerous here than even the lesser black-backed, which is the reason, I suppose, why they seem to stand out in this character. I do not mean to brand them specially, or, indeed, at all. (Why cannot it be recognised that to blame any one, for anything, is to blame the Deity?) It is gull nature, and that is not the worst kind, after all. Though I did not see the actual commencement of this affair, I must have all but seen it, as a party of young kittiwakes that had been bathing near the ledges flew up all at once, and this I have no doubt was when the attack was made. Immediately afterwards, I saw the gull mauling and throttling one of them, in the way I have before described. I feel sure that if it had swooped to the attack, like a hawk, I must have seen it, and therefore I have no doubt it had been swimming amongst the troop, at the time, for only yesterday I had noticed two herring-gulls within a few feet of some young kittiwakes on the water, without the latter seeming to be in the least alarmed. Probably these gulls—whose plumage, by the way, a good deal resembles that of the adult kittiwake—swim quietly amongst them, and, all at once, seize on one. This poor little thing struggled, as well as it could, with its destroyer, and, several times, got loose and began to fly away; but the gull was after it, and caught it, again, before it had risen above a foot from the water. As before (or nearly) it seized it by the throat, near the head, and then kept compressing the part between its strong mandibles. It was some minutes—perhaps five, perhaps longer—before the kittiwake was floating, breast upwards, on the water, and being disembowelled—a horrid sight. Yet this gull could not have been very hungry, for he allowed another one—no doubt his partner—to approach and eat with him. A young gull was vigorously chased away, not by him, but by this other bird, who never let it come near. Neither was the favoured gull really hungry, for, very soon, the body was abandoned by both the birds, and then fell to two others, a young and an old one. Here, too, the old bird would no doubt have driven the young one away if its appetite had been at all keen. Probably they had all been kittiwaking in the earlier morning, and were now fairly sated. But all animals that live by killing—taking life in a chasing way—are sportsmen; they enjoy the killing, that is to say, for its own sake. I can see no difference, here, between the animal sportsman and the human one. Manifestly there is none, for no one, I suppose, with a brain in his head, can be led astray by all that irrelevant insistence on unessential distinctions, with which sportsmen seek to disguise the real nature of their ignoble pleasure—law, grace, close-time, and all the rest of it—differentiating themselves, to their own satisfaction, not only from their fellow beasts of prey, but from poachers, with whom they are essentially one, but for whom a far better case can be made out than for themselves.

What makes, or helps to make, these scenes so very unpleasant, is the prosaic and unimposing manner in which the gull goes to work. We have, here, no swoop and rush of wings, from giddy heights, as in the falcon tribe; there is no dilating of the plumage, no eloquent expression of the fiercer emotions; no fine embodiment of speed, power, rage, combined, is presented to us, nor does the victim lie, in an instant, prostrate and bleeding beneath the claws of its destroyer. Such sights make fine pictures. They personify, in a grand and striking way, our ideas of the inevitable and irresistible—of fate, clothed in terror. There is something in them of the old Greek drama, nay, of our real conceptions—drawn from nature and the Old Testament—of the Deity. But here there is nothing of all this—no impetuosity, and not enough strength or mastery to give a sense of power, at least not of mighty power. Structurally the gull is not specially fitted, nor, in general appearance, does he look fitted, for the part he is acting, and this, as is usual, gives something of a bungling appearance to his handiwork. Above all, he lacks fire, and this makes one doubly alive to the cruelty, which is not so disagreeably felt in witnessing the fierce thunder-bolts of a true bird or beast of prey. There it is masked, so to speak, under "the power and the glory," but here we see only a sordid and cold-blooded murder, unrelieved by any feature of special interest even, much less by any apparently ennobling element. As a spectacle, it compares very unfavourably with that of snakes killing their prey, and equally, or even more so, from the intellectual point of view. For with snakes we have a special, and very marvellous, adaptation to a certain end, which arouses admiration in a high degree in one direction, even though it may excite disgust in another. On the whole—to me, at least, who am a naturalist, with the curiosity proper to one strongly developed—there is far more of wonder and instruction, than of horror, in the scene, unless, indeed, the sufferings of the victim are prolonged, which is by no means always the case. Some of the smaller constrictors, for instance, will dart upon, and twist one or two of the first neck-coils round a rat, or other small mammal, with such lightning-like speed and dexterity, and with such tremendous strength, that death—as shown by the relaxation of the muscles, and hanging down of the limbs—is almost instantaneous, and the effect upon the mind comparable to that which would be produced by the stoop of an eagle, or the spring of a tiger. We are impressed by the speed and power, and have to admire the amazing ingenuity—one may even say the beauty—of the structural adaptation; for, after all, one should have an intellect, as well as a heart. This would soon pass into more distressing sensations, were the rat long a-killing; but in the cases to which I refer it is very soon over. The bowstring in a Turkish harem must be a lengthy process in comparison. Thus the balance of our emotions produces, or should produce, the exclamation, "How wonderful!" rather than the one, "How horrible!" but with the gull and kittiwake, only the latter is possible. Do I, then, defend the feeding of snakes with their ordinary living prey, in captivity? Yes, I do, so long as the conditions of nature are properly preserved. I would make that the test. If it is not permissible to study the living habits of the living animal, to stand as a spectator and see how nature works, then there is no such thing as natural history, and no place for a naturalist. What naturalist is there who would not esteem himself favoured of heaven, were he to see an anaconda seize and strangle its prey, in the forests of South America, or a cobra secure his, amidst the ruins of some jungle temple in India? Now, when the same naturalist keeps either these or any other snakes in captivity, what is the object with which he does, and which alone can justify his doing, so? There is—there can be—but one, which is, of course, to study its natural habits—for all others are puerile and contemptible. Is he, then, to shrink, like one who cannot read a tragedy, however great, from that very nature which for years, perhaps, as a part of his daily life, he has wooed and sought after? What, then, justifies him in doing that? Why should he look on whilst a gull, slowly and painfully, does a poor young kittiwake to death? Yet, had I shot that gull, to save that kittiwake, I should have done, in my opinion, an execrable act. I should not have stopped the ways of nature, in this respect, nor could they be stopped, except by a worse slaughter than the one which we would prohibit. I should have officiously saved the life of one kittiwake, and taken a gull's in exchange. But if we are justified in watching a certain act of nature's drama, in the field or the forest, why should we not, also, watch it under conditions which may, alone, make it possible for us to do so? The thing is not the worse because it is thus transported to another spot on earth; and the same snake that in captivity eats but once in a month or so, were it at liberty, would have a much better appetite. Therefore, when we keep snakes, and let them eat in the way that is natural to them, and which, not to the naturalist merely, but to every thinking man, should be full of interest, we do not increase the sum of misery which this earth contains, but, rather, take away from it. What we see, under these conditions, we do not create, any more than if we came upon it by chance, during a walk. We are spectators merely; and spectators of nature I hold that we have a right to be. If not, the very breath of his life is stifled in the naturalist's nostrils. He is strangled. He ceases to exist.

But there is a test and guiding path of reason and morality, here as in other matters. Whether it is right or wrong that a snake should feed in captivity, as it does when at large, depends, in my opinion, on the similarity, or otherwise, of the essential conditions in each case. In nature the victim is at some point taken unawares by the snake, and it is only after that, if at all, that it suffers any pain of apprehension. [18] If, therefore, we put a rat, or a guinea-pig, into a cage so small, or so bare, that its reptile occupant is conspicuously visible, then, if the sight is fraught with any meaning, or disagreeable sensation, for it, we do not treat the creature fairly. We are modifying nature, to the great increase, possibly, of its sufferings, for it may be some time before the snake acts, and if it were not seen, or noticed, till it did, its action might be so sudden as to leave little or no room for previous disquietude. In some way or another, therefore, either by the spaciousness of the cage, or the cover which it provides, or by giving it something to eat, the prey should always be made happy and comfortable during the interim between its being put inside, and the attack, or first offensive movements, of the snake. It should never be allowed to sit shivering, as it were, in the expectation of some dreadful thing—not, that is to say, before the snake obliges it to do so. Another most important point is this. Under nature, and in their own homes, snakes are in possession of their full muscular and vital energies during the time of year at which they are abroad, and take their meals. If they are not so, also, in captivity, then we do a grave wrong to an animal in exposing it to a death which, for this reason, is both more painful and more protracted. As to the poisonous snakes, their poison, I suppose, retains its strength in captivity, and if so—but not otherwise—I can see nothing more dreadful in the death, by this means, of a rat, or guinea-pig, in a cage, than in that of a marmot on the prairies, or of a cavy in the swamps of a Brazilian forest. With the constrictors, however, it is different. The smaller ones, indeed, seem to retain their full vigour, or, if not that, something very like it, for they are capable—as I have myself seen—of killing a rat almost instantaneously. It is different with the huge pythons, or anacondas, which lose their force, together with their appetite, in confinement, so that their languid and clumsy efforts—lasting for a long period—to take the life of their victims, may be compared to those of a drunken headsman with a blunt axe. Manifestly, therefore, to give them such a creature as a goat to mumble, and in such a sort of fern-case as they occupy, is a revolting thing; but I cannot see that a flagrant abuse like this condemns the principle. Were a combined rockery and shrubbery, as large as a good-sized garden, accorded the python, say, and were it in some hot country, the sun of which acted upon its system like Falstaff's "excellent sherris sack"—its own, for instance, at the Cape, or in Durban—then I should recognise no wrong done in introducing a goat or pig (preferably, however, a wild animal) into its sanctum. The conditions would, in that case, be the same, or closely similar, to those which govern under nature, nor can I see that it matters much, in ethics, whether a snake eats its dinner inside, or outside, a paling. If it is wrong to see it do so in the one case, it is wrong in the other, and the contention that it is wrong in either sanctions the principle of an officious interference in the ways of the animal world, which, upon the whole, are better than our ways.

[18] But this is begging the question of the so-called power of fascination said to be possessed by some snakes, and for which, I think, there is some evidence.

There is a very fine line, as it seems to me, between thinking it wrong that a snake in confinement should eat in the way that nature has instructed it to, and wishing to exterminate snakes and various other wild animals, because of the way they have of dining. I may well think so, for the line, to my knowledge, has been overstepped, and here, in these remote islands, there are alarming indications of a campaign to be waged—with no other reason than this—against various poor birds, who are under the same necessity as was Caliban, of eating their dinners.[19] Some, for instance—and they advocate their views in the local papers—wish the gulls to be shot down, on account of the kittiwakes, whilst others would seek vengeance on the skuas for the way in which they persecute the gulls. It seems wonderful that such grotesque views should be held by educated people, but they seem to me to be the same in principle with those which would deny to snakes, in captivity, the natural use of their bodily structure. For myself, I only believe in such a Zoological Gardens as I have tried to sketch,[20] and hope I have foreshadowed. But if the rational study of the habits and life history of the creatures confined there be not the raison d'être of its existence, I, at any rate, can admit no other, and I would as soon think of training spiders not to make webs, as of habituating snakes to the eating of dead meat. An interesting, an instructive thing, truly, to see a creature, formed, by a long process of evolution, to kill in the most marvellous and admirable way, tamely eat something that has already been killed! What wretched vapidity! Like performing dogs, or monkeys, dressed in men's clothes. Where, then, is the soul of the naturalist?

[19] Caliban: I must eat my dinner.—Tempest, Act i., Scene 2.

[20] The Old Zoo and the New.

These views I would apply to every beast of prey in the Gardens, each one of which, in my opinion, has a gross wrong done it in not being allowed to do that which both its soul and body expressly commission it to do—as though a sentient musical instrument, throbbing to play, should never, in all its faded life, be given the opportunity of emitting a note. The misery of such privation is far beyond that which would attend the energy now so cruelly restrained. It is out of all proportion to it, in my opinion. Not only snakes, then, but the lion and tiger, too, should, by my will, kill their prey; or, if this were too costly a proceeding—though I see not why it should be—then out with them to the wilds they belong to! I would have those only stay, that could stay, and be themselves. No neuters in my Gardens!

If animals have really rights—as to which, and our own, I have expressed my views—then snakes must necessarily have their share of them. They have a right, I maintain, upon that assumption, to eat their victuals according to the laws of their being, and I, on my part, shall always be pleased and interested to see them do so. I am greatly interested in snakes, and in reptiles generally. Their structure is wonderful, their powers are extraordinary, their ways and their habits, their whole life history, everything about them, is fascinating. They are not stupid, as they are erroneously supposed to be, and those who have been brought into intimate relations with them have found them capable of great and enduring affection.[21] For the sort of crusade, therefore, that has been got up against these maligned creatures, I altogether repudiate it, and I dissociate myself entirely from the many harsh, rude, unsympathetic and unappreciative things that have been said about them. Things, of course, are thus, or thus, according as we ourselves are, and snakes must be uninteresting indeed to some people, since—infandum!—in a place devoted, or that should be devoted, to the study of the living habits of the living animal, it is proposed, with a shout of "Eureka!", to substitute for the grace of motion and lithe sinuosity of the living serpent, its motionless, stuffed, dusty, dirty, faded, black, hard, cracky skin. A stuffed snake!—that awful production, from which all softness and smoothness is gone, out of which every intimate character is driven, from the very beginning, whilst the mere superficial resemblance fades slowly, day by day, till we have, at last, something like a vast sausage, or interminable gouty black-pudding, set hard in a bolster-like attitude, with a crack, or repulsive sharp angle, at every one of the stiff, graceless bendings, supposed to represent those marvellous flexures of the real creature, which, when we see them in their living beauty, set the mind in a glow of admiration, and are a rest, as well as a feast, for the eye to dwell upon. This—this monstrosity—we are to have, and to be thankful for having it, instead of the gracious glidings and foldings, the sweet wave-like coilings and uncoilings, the subtle entanglements, labyrinthine complexities, that, going hand in hand with the greatest simplicity of design, and with the perfect, deft power of unravelment, make the living body of a snake both a joy to the æsthetic, and a wonder to the intellectual mind: instead, too, of the radiance, lustre, sheen—the glory, both of pattern and hue—which sometimes sits upon its glistening scales, crowning them with a beauty hardly, if at all, inferior to that which decks the feathers of a bird, or waves on the wings of a butterfly. All this we are to fling away for worse than "dusty nothing," for a set of sorry deformities—worthy only of some wretched taxidermist's shop-window—which every real naturalist ought to be ashamed to look upon, but every one of which must cost some poor serpent its life. The worst plaster cast, substituted for the original marble of a Greek statue, were artistic luxury compared to this; and those, indeed, who have no taste for art can enjoy the one, as much—or as little—as the other. It is easy to be satisfied with stuffed snakes, when snakes are of no interest to one; and that, I think, is the position here. Those who would stand and look at the pavement, as soon as they would at a python or rattlesnake, say to those who have the life-loving instincts of the naturalist, "Oh, get rid of your live snakes, and have stuffed ones instead. They're just as interesting—in fact, more so, because you can set them up as you like." Exactly. I understand, quite, what is meant—only to me a live snake is much more interesting than a live man or woman, and a stuffed one almost more repugnant than a stuffed man or woman would be. That is the little difference—the little thing that makes all the difference. One is either a naturalist, or one is not.