perhaps, as they may well do, that a fierce gust may sweep them over the precipice on to ledges below, or that inexperience may tempt them too near the dangerous brink, take the little ones on their backs—so the climbers say—and fly down with them to the sea. Even if the chicks fall off in the course of the descent, it does them no harm to plunge into the water. It must astonish the youngsters to find themselves sousing into the sea, but the next instant they have discovered that all is right, and before their screaming mother has recovered from her concern at the accident, they are swimming about merrily and enjoying their first bath. And once in the ocean they remain there,
“In the blue vale of water ’twixt the waves
Ever the same, yet ever changed; no mark,
No spot whereon to fix a local love,
No home to be remembered for its peace,
No shapely bough, well known and best beloved
Within the crowded forest,”
till the following May calls them back to the rocks and the cares and pleasures of domestic life.
Man is, of course, the chief enemy of these sea-bird colonies, for in the bleak and barren islands where they breed, human life could be scarcely supported if it were not for the annual harvests of eggs and young. The guillemots’ eggs are collected by tens of thousands. This work commences at Flamborough, for instance, in the middle of May. For the first nine days the climber has a good run of eggs; for the next nine, eggs are scarce. At the end of that time all the birds who had been first robbed have laid again, and he has a second run of large hauls, averaging from two to three hundred a day. Then comes a second “slack” of nine days, after which there is, as it were, the aftermath, sometimes hardly worth the trouble and danger of gathering, sometimes equal in value to the first harvest. The birds themselves, too, are eaten, more especially the puffin.
St. Kilda has been described as “the paradise of puffins: every available spot is burrowed and honeycombed with their holes, and the sea is often black with birds.” Hither in the nesting season come the islanders—men, women, and children—and with short rods, at the end of which are nooses of horsehair or string, drag the little “bougies,” as they call them, out of their burrows. The birds are plucked (the feathers being carefully put by for sale), cleaned, rubbed over with salt, and hung up in strings to the roofs of the cabins, where the peat-smoke partially “cures” them, and in this state they form one of the chief and choicest items of the St. Kildan’s austere fare. But altogether apart from its attractions at the “hardy Norseman’s” winter board, the puffin is a very charming little bird. Its very quaintness makes it engaging, for, whether you take it in profile, with its grotesque beak in completest evidence, or full-face, with its queer, owl-like look, its genuine unaffected comicality commends it to your amused and kindly regard. For it is a most amiable fowl. It never seems to quarrel with its kind, and even when it does the disagreement is rather the make-believe of clowns than in serious earnest. The puffin is almost voiceless, its usual sound being a purring noise, which, when it is submitted to the extreme indignity of handling, becomes a kind of half-hearted grumbling. No birds are more sociable than the “sea-parrots”: they are never seen alone, and even in their colonies they are not exclusive, admitting any other sea-fowl that likes to join them to equal rights of citizenship. But you must not put your fingers into its beak. Puffins are not called “parrots” for nothing.
When breeding commences, the islands or headlands that they frequent present scenes of most delightful activity.
“Above, around, in cloudy circles wheeled,
Or sailing level on the polar gale
That cool with evening rose, a thousand wings,
The summer nations of these pregnant cliffs
Play’d sportive round.”
Puffins are busy in all directions, digging out holes to lay their eggs in, or putting last year’s burrows into thorough repair. Both parents join in the work of excavation, taking turns, and while the one is employed the other either sits with a most absurd expression of pompous self-satisfaction, like a fat little owl-faced page, in close attendance, or flits about in idle amusement in company with vast numbers of the temporarily unemployed. Though so short-winged and plump-bodied, they fly with singular speed, and wheel and circle with great grace; but it is when they dive that they are at their best. Regardless of height, they plunge head-foremost from their cliffs into the sea, and, using their wings just as if they were still in the air, literally fly under the water. But they never stay away long, for all their thoughts are in those little burrows on the cliff, and the constant flying to and fro of the anxious pairs, their whirlings in the air before settling and after rising, keep the air alive with noisy wings, and fill the scene with bustle and happy animation.
So close sometimes are their nest-holes crowded that it is impossible to walk without putting the foot in them, and it even happens that these accommodating birds, when hard pressed for room, inhabit “semi-detached” holes, and live two families in one. But here too falls the shadow of the sea-eagle, and the poor parrots’ nurseries, when the young ones sit outside their burrows, innocent of danger, pay heavy tribute to the paramount lord of the northern sky. No erne’s nest is completely furnished unless it be strewn with puffins’ beaks.