Although for the later arrivals a good deal of fighting was necessary before a mate could be secured, it seemed that some got the matter fixed up without any difficulty at all, especially during the earlier days when only a few birds were scattered widely over the rookery. Later, the cocks seemed to watch one another jealously, and to hunt in little batches in consequence. (Figs. [27], [28], and [29].)
From the particulars I have just given it is also evident that a wife and home once obtained could only be kept by dint of further battling and constant vigilance during the first stages of domesticity, when thousands of lusty cocks were pouring into the rookery, and it was not unusual to see a strange cock paying court to a mated hen in the absence of her husband until he returned to drive away the interloper, but I do not think that this ever occurred after the eggs had come and the regular family life begun, couples after this being perfectly faithful to one another.
The instance I have given of a newly arrived cock by dumb show pretending to take a stone and place it before a mated hen, is typical of the sort of first overture one sees, though more frequently an actual stone was tendered. While on this subject I had better mention a most interesting thing which occurred to one of my companions. One day as he was sitting quietly on some shingle near the ice-foot, a penguin approached him, and after eyeing him for a little, walked right up to him and nibbled gently at one of the legs of his wind-proof trousers. Then it walked away, picked up a pebble, and came back with it, dropping it on the ground by his side. The only explanation of this occurrence seems to be that the tendering of the stone was meant as an overture of friendship.
Fig. 26. THE PROPOSAL. (NOTE THE HEN IN HER SCOOP)
On October 26 there was no abatement in the stream of arrivals. The cock-fighting continued, and many of them, temporarily disabled, were to be seen moping about the rookery, smeared with blood and guano. Often a hen would join in when two cocks were fighting, occasionally going first for one and then the other, but I never to my knowledge saw a cock retaliate on a hen.
Once I saw two cocks fighting, and a hen taking the part of one of the cocks, the pair of them gave the other a fearful hammering, the hen using her bill savagely as well as her flippers. Completely knocked out and gasping for breath he got away at last, only to meet another cock who fought him and easily beat him. When this one had gone a third came, and the poor victim with a courage truly noble was squaring himself up with his last spark of energy, when I interfered and drove away his enemy.
The nests on most of the knolls soon became so crowded that their occupants, by stretching out their necks, could reach their neighbours without getting up. As every hen appeared to hate her neighbour they would peck-peck at one another hour after hour, in the manner seen in my [photograph],[(3)] till their mouths and heads became terribly sore. Occasionally they would desist, shake their heads apparently from pain, then at it again.
In various places through the course of these pages, reference is made to the “ecstatic” attitude of the penguins. This antic is gone through by both sexes and at various times, though much more frequently during the actual breeding season. The bird rears its body upward and stretching up its neck in a perpendicular line, discharges a volley of guttural sounds straight at the unresponding heavens. At the same time the clonic movements of its syrinx or “sound box” distinctly can be seen going on in its throat. Why it does this I have never been able to make out, but it appears to be thrown into this ecstasy when it is pleased; in fact, the zoologist of the “Pourquoi Pas” expedition termed it the “Chant de satisfaction.” I suppose it may be likened to the crowing of a cock or the braying of an ass. When one bird of a pair starts to perform in this way, the other usually starts at once to pacify it. Very many times I saw this scene enacted when nesting was in progress. The two might be squatting by the nest when one would arise to assume the “ecstatic” attitude and make the guttural sounds in its syrinx. Immediately the other would get close up to it and make the following noise in a soft soothing tone: