Notes on the natural history of the Bell Rock

by J. M. Campbell

Vegetation now exists only at low-water mark; above that, broken tangle roots, or, to be more correct, the claspers are seen still adhering to the rocks, the tangles themselves having been shorn clean from their moorings. Away towards the south-west, in the deeper water, a boat may float among whole groves of storm-torn tangles as they flaunt their tattered banners in the frosty sunlight, suggestive of leafless trees in a winter landscape. Over the recently emptied contents of the cook’s slop-pail a flock of gulls are circling and screaming, actually hustling each other in their attempts to capture anything edible. A solitary “black-back” is seen amongst the noisy crowd, and as he swoops at some tempting morsel, his black, beady eye watches our every movement with suspicion. What a handsome bird he is as he swings past within a few feet of us, the back and wings presenting a dead black appearance in startling contrast with the immaculate whiteness of the fan-shaped tail and the remainder of the body. Despite his handsome appearance, he is a veritable vulture, and nothing comes amiss to him in the way of food, be it fish, flesh or fowl. Frequently I have seen them make a meal of a wounded duck, and once witnessed in Orkney a tug-of-war between two of them for the possession of a dead lamb, resulting, thanks to its decomposed state, in an equal division.

More gruesome meals are credited to them by those who have witnessed their proceedings on a wreck strewn shore where loss of life had been involved. A terror also on the grouse moors, they devour both eggs and young, and even the sitting grouse herself is not safe from him. One can scarcely credit such a sweeping indictment against this handsome bird, but the proofs are all too plain. Consequently we find him outside the pale of the Wild Birds Protection Act, an Ishmael among his kind, whom any man may slay when and wherever found. Except when harrying the eider ducks of their legitimate spoil, he may be seen riding gracefully, head to wind, in front of our kitchen window, with his weather eye always lifting in our direction. A hand thrust from the window is sufficient invitation, he is up at once, and the smallest morsel tossing among the foaming breakers does not escape his keen eye. How gracefully he floats back to his former position, lighting on the surface like a fleck of foam. What a contrast to the eiders, who, when changing their fishing ground, wing their way with such rapid wing beats as to give one the impression that they are barely able to support themselves, and finally strike the water with an awkward splash, reminding one of the somewhat inelegant term with which boys designate a bad dive—a “gutser.” Should a flock of eiders be fishing to leeward of the tower, an amusing sight may be witnessed if advantage be taken, while they are under water, of pouring a little paraffin oil from the balcony, so that it will drift in their direction. No sooner does the head of the first emerge in the greasy track of the oil than he is conscious of something unusual having taken place. Flippering hither and thither with outstretched neck, he becomes quite excited, and each as he bounces to the surface joins in the commotion, frequently colliding with each other. Finally, with loud cacklings, the whole flock takes wing, evidently in high dudgeon at the insult offered to their olfactory organs.

Sea pheasant is the name by which the long tailed duck is known in some localities, and as we watch a flock of them crossing the reef in full flight the synonym is at once apparent. In style of flight and shape, to the long tail feathers, they are similar to the pheasant, but only half the size, with beautiful plumage of black and white. Here they are known as “candlewicks,” their call notes needing but little stretch of the imagination to be rendered “Here’s a candlewick,” repeated several times in shrill falsetto, which on a quiet day becomes somewhat annoying as it clamorously floats through our bedroom window. Some queer visitors we have here at times in the way of birds. Once we captured a large owl dosing sleepily in one of our windows. During the week of his captivity he would not deign to partake of any food we offered him. Coming off watch one night I took one of a flock of larks which were making suicidal attempts to pierce the plate glass of the lantern. Placing it in the room where the owl was roosting, it fluttered to the window, when, like a flash of lightning and equally as noiseless, from the other side of the room the owl came crash against the glass, a few feathers later on testifying his appreciation of this form of dietary.

February 1902.

FEBRUARY 1902.

Piercing cold weather here of late, with a good deal of frost and occasional snow showers. No matter how heavy the snowfall may be here we only see it falling, as it does not lie long round our doors, and only when our gaze is directed Arbroathwards—which, you may be sure, is not seldom—are we reminded of its occurrence. The close of last month saw our barometer taxed to its utmost intelligence, and though a tenth higher would have seen its limit, nothing of a phenomenal nature was noted. The solan geese or gannets, which are pretty much in evidence here during the breeding season, foraging for their families on the Bass Rock, gradually disappeared, till during the month of November not one was to be seen. A solitary one was seen in the first week of December, and since then the number sighted has gradually increased, till in the middle of the present month, as many as eight in one string were counted winging their way southward. The Bass Rock, Ailsa Craig, and the outlying stacks of lonely St Kilda, are said to be the only breeding places of these birds in Scotland. At the beginning of the past century they were considered a dainty article of food by the Edinburgh gentry, and the Bass Rock was rented for the purpose of supplying the market, the birds selling at the rate of half-a-crown a-piece. I have seen it stated that the modus operandi of these birds when engaged in fishing is to flit along the surface till fish are sighted, when they rise to a high altitude, close their wings, and drop hawk-like on their prey. This, I venture to think, is scarcely correct. My experience is that when flitting near the surface if fish are sighted they are invariably struck at without rising to a higher elevation. It is a well known fact that objects under water are more easily distinguished from a height than from near the surface, so that it may be taken for granted that the higher these birds are flying when in pursuit of prey the deeper the fish are swimming. Again, when diving from a high altitude, the wings are kept rigidly outspread, and as the tail is never seen spread rudder-like, as in the case of the hawk, any deviation from their line of descent is controlled by the long narrow wings, and only when nearing the “plunge” are they partially closed.

For the past fortnight we have had the company of a solitary seal. His fishing does not seem to be very successful, either in quantity or quality, as the only catch we have seen him negotiating was a saithe the length of a man’s forearm. Playing with it as a cat would a mouse, he would allow it to swim feebly for some distance, then diving he would bring it to the surface, till latterly, with a toss of his head and a thrust with his fore flipper, he quite disembowelled it, an act of charity which the screaming gulls were not slow to appreciate. Although so long here he has not been seen to rest on the rocks; indeed, I only once saw one ashore here, and as we had a somewhat amusing experience with him it will perhaps bear relating. For several days it was seen, as the tide fell, to rest in one particular place a few yards from the base of the tower. Our outer door opens outwards, and is always closed at night, not that we are afraid of burglars, but merely to prevent the entrance of the seas, and for our own general comfort. The opening of this door always alarmed the seal, and sent him into the water instanter. Dropping a line from the balcony at low water, we made the end of it fast within a few feet of his accustomed resting place. Next day, as the tide fell and the rocks began to appear, he was seen to take up his former position, yawning lazily as he rolled from side to side in the sunshine. Fixing a four ounce charge of tonite to our electric cable, we quietly lowered it down the line we had already made fast till within about six feet from where he lay, apparently in blissful ignorance of what was happening overhead. When yawning at his widest, we, by means of our magneto-exploder, fired the charge, and, well—he stopped yawning and went away! and his going was about the smartest thing I ever witnessed. The force of the explosion, being unconfined, merely tilted him on his side, but quickly recovering himself he flopped into the water and shot seaward through the gully like a flash, a black line under water denoting his course. Rounding the outer end of the gully, he doubled back on the outside of the reef, and when opposite his original position, made his appearance on the surface, a very much startled seal. His aspect was quite comical as he stood, so to speak, on his tip-toes evidently investigating the cause of his hurried departure.

Several schools of porpoises have been seen this month, presumably in pursuit of herring. To anyone who has seen these animals gambolling in front of a ship’s bows when travelling at her best, the ease with which they maintain their distance is a matter of surprise—always on the point of being run down, but ever ahead, snorting playfully as if in derision at the possibility of their being overtaken by their lumbering follower. Off the island of Anticosta, in the Gulf of St Lawrence—where these animals attain a size several times larger than those of our home waters, and are of a cream colour—I had an interesting view of their manner of suckling their young. I have seen it stated that the mother by muscular compression expels the nutritive fluid, which is absorbed by the young one as it floats to the surface. The operation appeared to me to be one of actual contact. The young one—which, by the way, is of a slatey-blue colour—snuggling as close as possible to the mother as she lay somewhat on her side on the surface, all the while exhibiting the tenderest solicitude for her offspring. Truly the one touch of nature which makes the whole world kin. It is surprising to learn the evolution these animals have undergone in order to accommodate themselves to their altered circumstances. Land-dwellers at one stage of the world’s history, but acquiring a taste for fish, they gradually became aquatic in their habits, dispensing with such portions of their anatomy as were no longer necessary, while developing others more appropriate to their new sphere of existence, till, like their big brother the whale, from being a four-footed animal they became quite fish like in appearance, even to the cultivation of a dorsal fin, though still possessing rudimentary traces of their former construction. Change is apparent on every hand in the plan of nature; ages were necessary for the evolution of our present day horse from his five toed ancestors; and after all it does not seem so very startling when the transformation is enacted before our very eyes in a few short stages, as in the case of the common frog, from the gill breathing tadpole to the lung breathing adult. More startling it is to learn that man himself was at one time a gill breather, and, as biologists affirm, still exhibits traces of gill clefts at one stage of his embryonic development.

March 1902.

MARCH 1902.