Bird Watching
by Edmund Selous · English · Gutenberg #50175 · 599,214 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Bird Watching
Author: Edmund Selous
Illustrator: Joseph Smit
Release date: October 10, 2015 [eBook #50175]
Most recently updated: October 22, 2024
Language: English
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The Haddon Hall
[Illustration]
Library
[Illustration]
Edited by the Marquess Of Granby
and
Mr. George A. B. Dewar
_All rights reserved_
[Illustration: _Male Oyster-Catchers Piping to the Female._]
BIRD WATCHING
by
EDMUND SELOUS
[Illustration]
London
J. M. Dent & Co., Aldine House
29 & 30 Bedford Street, W.C.
1901
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
TABLE OF CONTENTS v
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vii
PREFACE ix
I. WATCHING GREAT PLOVERS, ETC. 3
II. WATCHING RINGED PLOVERS, REDSHANKS, PEEWITS, ETC. 21
III. WATCHING STOCK-DOVES, WOOD-PIGEONS, SNIPE, ETC. 35
IV. WATCHING WHEATEARS, DABCHICKS, OYSTER-CATCHERS, ETC. 67
V. WATCHING GULLS AND SKUAS 96
VI. WATCHING RAVENS, CURLEWS, EIDER-DUCKS, ETC. 129
VII. WATCHING SHAGS AND GUILLEMOTS 163
VIII. WATCHING BIRDS AT A STRAW-STACK 199
IX. WATCHING BIRDS IN THE GREENWOODS 225
X. WATCHING ROOKS 257
XI. WATCHING ROOKS--_CONTINUED_ 274
XII. WATCHING BLACKBIRDS, NIGHTINGALES, SAND-MARTINS, ETC. 301
INDEX 338
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_Male Oyster-catchers piping to the Female_ _Frontispiece_
_Photogravure_
_Dancing of Great Plovers in Autumn_ _facing page_ 12
_Photogravure_
_Great Plovers: A Nuptial Pose_ _Page_ 19
_Master and Pupil: Hooded-Crow flying with Peewits_ " 29
_Stock-Doves: A Duel with Ceremonies_ " 40
_Turtle Doves: The Nuptial Flight_ _facing page_ 50
_Photogravure_
_Great Skuas: Nuptial Flight and Pose_ " " 100
_Photogravure_
_Ravens: The Game of Reversi_ _Page_ 135
_Habet! Great-Crested Grebe Attacked by Another Under Water_ " 150
_Love on a Rock: Shags During the Breeding Season_ _facing page_ 168
_Photogravure_
_On a Guillemot Ledge_ " " 192
_Fairy Artillery: Willow-Warbler Pecking Catkins in Flight_ _Page_ 254
_Rooks: A Winter Scene_ " 279
_In a Sand-Pit_ _facing page_ 328
_Photogravure_
_All the above from Drawings by_ J. SMIT.
PREFACE
I should like to explain that this work, being, with one or two
insignificant exceptions, a record of my own observations only, it
has not been my intention to make general statements in regard to
the habits of any particular bird. In practice, however, it is often
difficult to write as if one were not doing this, without its having a
very clumsy effect. One cannot, for instance, always say, "I have seen
birds fly." One has to say, upon occasions, "Birds fly." Moreover, it
is obvious that in much of the more important business of bird-life,
one would be fully justified in arguing from the particular to the
general: perhaps (though this is not my opinion) one would always be.
But, whether this is the case or not, I wish it to be understood that,
throughout, a remark that any bird acts in such or such a way means,
merely, that I have, on one or more occasions, seen it do so. Also, all
that I have seen which is included in this volume was noted down by me
either just after it had taken place or whilst it actually was taking
place; the quotations (except when literary or otherwise explicitly
stated) being always from my own notes so made. For this reason I call
my work "Bird Watching," and I hope that the title will explain, and
even justify, a good deal which in itself is certainly a want and
a failing. One cannot, unfortunately, watch all birds, and of those
that one can it is difficult not to say at once too little and too
much: too little, because one may have only had the luck to see well a
single point in the round of activities of any species--one feather in
its plumage, so to speak--and too much, because even to speak of this
adequately is to fill many pages and deny space to some other bird. All
I can do is to speak of some few birds as I have watched them in some
few things. Those who read this preface will, I hope, expect nothing
more, and I hope that not much more is implied in the title which I
have chosen. Perhaps I might have been more explicit, but English is
not German. "Of-some-few-birds-the-occasional-in-some-things-watching"
does not seem to go well as a compound, and "Observations on," etc.,
sounds as formidable as "Beobachtungen über." It matters not how one
may limit it, the word "Observations" has a terrific sound. Let a man
say merely that he watched a robin (for instance) doing something, and
no one will shrink from him; but if he talks about his "Observations on
the Robin-Redbreast" then, let these have been ever so restricted, and
even though he may forbear to call the bird by its Latin name, he must
expect to pay the penalty. The very limitations will have something
severe--smacking of precise scientific distinction--about them, and the
implied preference for English in such a case will appear affected and
to be a clumsy attempt, merely, to make himself popular. Therefore, I
will not call my book "Observations on," etc. I have _watched_ birds
only, I have not _observed_ them. It is true that, in the text itself,
I do not shrink from the latter word, either as substantive or verb,
or even from the Latin name of a bird, here and there, when I happen
to know it (for is there not such a thing as childish pride?). But
that is different. I do not begin at once in that way, and by the time
I get to it anyone will have found me out, and know that I am really
quite harmless. Besides, I have now set matters in their right light.
But I was not going to handicap myself upon my very cover and trust
to its contents, merely, for getting over it. That would have been
over-confidence.
Again, in the following pages there are some points which I just
touch upon and leave with an undertaking to go more fully into, in a
subsequent chapter. This I have always meant to do, but want of space
has, in some instances, prevented me from carrying out my intention.
For this, I will apologise only, leaving it to my readers to excuse me
should they think fit. Perhaps they will do so very readily.
Also,--but I cannot afford to point out any more of my shortcomings.
That, too, I must leave to "the reader," who, I hope, will in this
matter but little deserve that epithet of "discerning" which is often
so generously--not to say boldly--bestowed upon him.
[Illustration]
BIRD WATCHING
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I
Watching Great Plovers, etc.
If life is, as some hold it to be, a vast melancholy ocean over which
ships more or less sorrow-laden continually pass and ply, yet there lie
here and there upon it isles of consolation on to which we may step out
and for a time forget the winds and waves. One of these we may call
Bird-isle--the island of watching and being entertained by the habits
and humours of birds--and upon this one, for with the others I have
here nothing to do, I will straightway land, inviting such as may care
to, to follow me. I will speak of birds only, or almost only, as I have
seen them, and I must hope that this plan, which is the only one I have
found myself able to follow, will be accepted as an apology for the
absence of much which, not having seen but only read of, I therefore
say nothing about. Also, if I sometimes here record what has long
been known and noted as though I were making a discovery, I trust that
this, too, will be forgiven me, for, in fact, whenever I have watched
a bird and seen it do anything at all--anything, that is, at all
salient--that is just how I have felt. Perhaps, indeed, the best way to
make discoveries of this sort is to have the idea that one is doing so.
One looks with the soul in the eyes then, and so may sometimes pick up
some trifle or other that has not been noted before.
However this may be, one of the most delightful birds (for one must
begin somewhere) to find, or to think one is finding things out about,
is the great or Norfolk plover, or, as it is locally and more rightly
called--for it is a curlew and not a plover[1]--the stone-curlew.
These birds haunt open, sandy wastes to which but the scantiest of
vegetation clings, and here, during the day, they assemble in some
chosen spot, often in considerable numbers--fifty or more I have
sometimes seen together. If it is early in the day, and especially if
the weather be warm and sunny, most of them will be sitting, either
crouched down on their long yellow shanks, or more upright with these
extended in front of them, looking in this latter attitude as if they
were standing on their stumps, their legs having been "smitten off"
and lying before them on the ground. Towards evening, however--which
is the best time to watch these birds--they stand attending to their
plumage, or walk with picked steps in a leisurely fashion, which,
with their lean gaunt figure, sad and rusty coloured, and a certain
sedateness, almost punctiliousness, of manner, fancifully suggests to
one the figure of Don Quixote de la Mancha, the Knight of the rueful
countenance, with a touch or two, perhaps, thrown in of the old Baron
of Bradwardine of Tullyveolan. One can lie on the ground and watch them
from far off through the glasses, or, should a belt of bracken fringe
the barren area, one has then an excellent opportunity of creeping up
to within a short or, at least, a reasonable distance. To do this one
must make a wide circuit and enter the bracken a long way off. Then
having walked, or rather waded for some way towards them, at a certain
point--experience will teach the safety-line--one must sink on one's
hands and knees, and the rest is all creeping and wriggling, till at
length, lying flat, one's face just pierces the edge of the cover and
the harmless glasses are levelled at the quarry one does not wish to
kill. The birds are standing in a long, straggling line, ganglion-like
in form, swelling out into knots where they are grouped more thickly
with thinner spaces between. As they preen themselves--twisting the
neck to one or the other side so as to pass the primary quill feathers
of the wings through the beak--one may be seen to stoop and lay one
side of the head on the ground, the great yellow eye of the other side
staring up into the sky in an uncanny sort of way. The meaning of this
action I do not know. It is not to scratch the head, for the head is
held quite still; and, moreover, as, like most birds, they can do this
very neatly and effectively with the foot, other methods would seem to
be superfluous. Again, and this is a more characteristic action, one
having stood for some time upright and perfectly still, makes a sudden
and very swingy bob forward with the head, the tail at the same time
swinging up, just in the way that a wooden bird performs these actions
upon one's pulling a string. This again seems to have no special
reference to anything, unless it be deportment.
[1] I understand Professor Newton to say this.
All at once a bird makes a swift run forward, not one of those short
little dainty runs--one and then another and another, with little
start-stops between--that one knows so well, but a long, steady run
down upon something, and at the same moment the glasses--if one is
lucky and the distance not too great--reveal the object which has
occasioned this, a delicate white thing floating in the air which one
takes to be a thistle-down. This is secured and eaten, and we may
imagine that the bird's peckings at it after it is in his possession
are to disengage the seed from the down. But all at once--before you
have had time to set down the glasses and make the note that the great
plover (_Œdicnemus Crepitans_) will snap at a wandering thistle-down,
and having separated the delicate little seed-sails from the seed,
eat the latter, etc., etc.--a small brown moth comes into view flying
low over a belt of dry bushy grass that helps, with the bracken, to
edge the sandy warren, for these wastes are given over to rabbits and
large landowners, and are marked "warrens" on the map. Instantly the
same bird (who seems to catch sight of the moth just as you do) starts
in pursuit with the same rapid run and head stretched eagerly out. He
gets up to the moth and essays to catch it, pecking at it in a very
peculiar way, not excitedly or wildly, but with little precise pecks,
the head closely and guardedly following the moth's motions, the
whole strongly suggestive of professional skill. The moth eludes him,
however, and the bird stops rigidly, having apparently lost sight of
it. Shortly afterwards, after it has flown some way, he sees it again
and makes another swift run in pursuit, catching it up again and making
his quick little pecks, but unsuccessfully, as before. Then there is
the same pause, followed by the same run, then a close, near chase, and
finally the moth is caught and eaten. Other moths, or other insects,
now appear upon the scene, or if they do not appear--for even with the
best of glasses such pin-points are mostly invisible--it is evident
from the actions of the birds that they are there. Chase after chase is
witnessed, all made in the same manner, with sometimes a straight-up
jump into the air at the end and a snap that one seems almost to
hear--a last effort, but which, judging by the bird's demeanour
afterwards, fails, as last efforts usually do.
A social feeling seems to pervade these hunting-scenes, a sort of "Have
_you_ got one? _I_ have. That bird over there's caught two" idea.
This may be imaginary, still the whole scene with its various little
incidents suggests it to one. The stone-curlew, therefore, besides his
more ordinary food of worms, slugs, and the like--I have seen him in
company with peewits, searching for worms, much as do thrushes on the
lawn--is likewise a runner down and "snapper up of" such "unconsidered
trifles" as moths and other insects on the wing. I had seen him chasing
them, indeed, long before I knew what he was doing, for I had connected
those sudden, racing runs--seen before from a long distance--with
something or other on the ground, imagining a fresh object for each
run. Often had I wondered, first at the eyesight of the bird, which
seemed to pierce the mystery of a worm or beetle at fifty or sixty
yards distance, and then at its apparent want of interest each time
it got to the place where it seemed to have located it. Really it had
but just lost sight of what it was pursuing, but aerial game had not
occurred to me, and the tell-tale spring into the air, which would have
explained all, had been absent on these occasions. I have called such
leaps "last efforts," but I am not quite sure if they are always the
last. More than once I have thought I have seen a stone-curlew rise
into the air from running after an insect, and continue the pursuit on
the wing. This is a point which I would not press, yet birds often act
out of their usual habits and assume those proper to other species. I
remember once towards the close of a fine afternoon, when the air was
peopled by a number of minute insects, and the stone-curlews had been
more than usually active in their chasings, a large flock of starlings
came down upon the warrens and began to behave much as they were doing,
running excitedly about in the same manner and evidently with the same
object. But what interested me especially was that they frequently
rose into the air, pursuing and, as I feel sure, often catching the
game there, turning and twisting about like fly-catchers, though with
less graceful movements. Often, too, whilst flying--fairly high--from
one part of the warrens to another, they would deflect their course
in order to catch an insect or two _en passant_. I observed this
latter action first, and doubted the motive, though it was strongly
suggested. After seeing the quite unmistakable fly-catcher actions I
felt more assured as to the other. Yet one may watch starlings for
weeks without seeing them pursue an insect in the air. Their usual
manner of feeding is widely different--viz. by repeatedly probing and
searching the ground with their sharp spear-like bills, as does a
snipe (with which bird they will sometimes feed side by side) with his
longer and more delicate one. This is well seen whilst watching them
on a lawn. They do not study to find worms lying in the holes and then
seize them suddenly as do thrushes and blackbirds. With them it is
"blind hookey"; each time the beak is thrust down into the grass it may
find something or it may not. The mandibles are all the time working
against each other, evidently searching and biting at the roots of the
grass, and at intervals, but generally somewhat long ones, they will be
withdrawn, holding within their grasp a large, greyish grub.
Returning to the stone-curlews. During the day, as I have said,
these birds are idle and lethargic--sitting about, dozing, often, or
sleeping--but as the air cools and the shadows fall, they rouse into
a glad activity, and coming down and spreading themselves over the
wide space of the warrens, they begin to run excitedly about, raising
and waving their wings, leaping into the air, and often making little
flights, or rather flittings, over the ground as a part of the disport.
As a part of it I say advisedly, for they do not stop and then fly, and
on alighting recommence, but the flight arises out of the wild waving
and running, and this is resumed, without a pause, as the bird again
touches the ground. All about now over the warrens their plaintive,
wailing notes are heard, notes that seem a part of the deepening gloom
and sad sky; for nature's own sadness seems to speak in the voice of
these birds. They swell and subside and swell again as they are caught
up and repeated in different places from one bird to another, and
often swell into a full chorus of several together. Deeper now fall
the shadows, "light thickens," till one catches, at last, only "dreary
gleams about the moorland," as now here, now there, the wings are
flung up--showing the lighter coloured inner surface--till gradually,
first one and then another, or by twos or threes or fours, the birds
fly off into the night, wailing as they go. But this note on the
wing is not the same as that uttered whilst running over the ground.
The ground-note is much more drawn out, and a sort of long, wailing
twitter--called the "clamour"--often precedes and leads up to the final
wail. In the air it comes just as a wail without this preliminary.
But it must not be supposed that all the birds perform these antics
simultaneously. If they did the effect would be more striking, but
it is generally only a few at a time over a wide space, or, at most,
some two or three together--as by sympathy--that act so. The eye does
not catch more than a few gleams--some three or four or five--of the
flung-up wings at one time over the whole space. It is a gleam here
and a gleam there in the deepening gloom. "Dreary gleams about the
moorland"--for warren, here, purples into moor and moor saddens into
warren--is, indeed, a line that exactly describes the effect.
These birds, then, stand or sit about during the day in their chosen
places of assemblage, and, if not occupied in catching insects or
preening themselves, they are dull and listless. But as the evening
falls and the air cools, they cast off their lassitude, think of the
joys of the night, there is dance and song for a little, and then forth
they fly. Sad and wailing as are their notes to our ears, they are no
doubt anything but so to the birds themselves, and as the accompaniment
of what seems best described by the word "dance" may, perhaps, fairly
be called "song." The chants of some savages whilst dancing, might
sound almost as sadly to us, pitched, as they would be, in a minor
key, and with little which we would call an air. Again, if one goes by
the bird's probable feelings, which may not be so dissimilar to the
savage's--or indeed to our own--on similar occasions "song" and "dance"
seems to be a legitimate use of words.
But whatever anyone may feel inclined to call this performance--"dance"
or "antics" or "display"--it varies very much in quality, being
sometimes so poor that it is difficult to use words about it without
seeming to exaggerate, and at other times so fine and animated, that
were the birds as large as ostriches, or even as the great bustard,
much would be said and written on the subject. Moreover, so many
variations and novelties and little personal incidents are to be
noticed on the different occasions, that any general description must
want something. I will therefore give a particular one of what I
witnessed one afternoon when the dancing was especially good. It was
about 5.30 when I got to the edge of the bracken, which to some extent
rings round the birds' place of assembly.
"A drizzling rain soon began, and this increased gradually, but not
beyond a smart drizzle. The birds, as though stimulated by the drops,
now began to come down from where they had been standing on the edge of
the amphitheatre, and to spread all over it till there were numbers of
them, and dancing of a more pronounced, or, at least, of a more violent
kind than I had yet seen, commenced. Otherwise it was quite the same,
but the extra degree of excitement made it much more interesting. It
was, in fact, remarkable and extraordinary. Running forward with wings
extended and slightly raised, a bird would suddenly fling them high up,
and then, as it were, _pitch_ about over the ground, waving and tossing
them, stopping short, turning, pitching forward again, leaping into the
air, descending and continuing, till, with another leap, it would make
a short eccentric flight low over the ground, coming down in a sharp
curve and then, at once, _même jeu_. I talk of their 'pitching' about,
because their movements seemed at times hardly under control, and, each
violent run or plunge ending, in fact, with a sudden pitch forward of
the body, the wings straggling about (often pointed forward over the
head) in an uncouth dislocated sort of way, the effect was as if the
birds were being blown about over the ground in a violent wind. They
seemed, in fact, to be crazy, and their sudden and abrupt return, after
a few mad moments, to propriety and decorum, had a curious, a bizarre
effect. Though having just seen them behave so, one seemed almost to
doubt that they had. One bird that had come to within a moderate
distance of me, made three little runs--advancing, retiring, and again
advancing--all the time with wings upraised and waving, then took a
short flight over the ground, describing the segment of a circle, and,
on alighting, continued as before. Half-a-dozen others were gathered
together under a solitary crab-apple tree--a rose in the desert--less
than 100 yards off, and both with the naked eye and the glasses I
observed them all thoroughly well. One of them would often run at or
pursue another with these antics. I saw one that was standing quietly,
caught and, as it were, covered up in a little storm of wings before it
could run away and begin waving its own.
[Illustration: _Dancing of Great Plovers in Autumn._]
"This and the general behaviour of the group makes it evident that the
birds are stimulated in their dance-antics by each other's presence.
For these little chases were in sport, clearly, not anger. Very
different is the action and demeanour of two birds about to fight. This
is by far the finest display of the sort that I have yet seen, and
must be due, I think, to the rain, which the birds obviously enjoyed.
They had been quite dull and listless before, but as soon as it fell
they spread themselves over the plateau, and the dancing began. It was
not only when the birds threw up their wings and, as one may say, let
themselves go, that they seemed excited. The constant quick running
and stopping whilst the wings were folded appeared to me to be a
part--the less excited part--of the general emotion out of which the
sudden frenzies arose. There was also the usual vocal accompaniment.
The wailing note went up, and was caught and repeated from one part to
another at greater or lesser intervals, the whole ending in flight as
before."
When I first saw these dances I thought that they arose out of
the excitement of the chase--that chase of moths or other insects
flying low over the ground which I have noticed--that they were
hunting-dances, in fact. I thought the motions of the wings were to
beat down the escaping quarry, and I confounded the little springs
and leaps into the air, arising out of the dance and being a part
of it, with those other ones made with a snap and an object not to
be mistaken; but I soon discovered my error. Insect-hunting is only
indulged in occasionally, when a wandering moth or so happens to fly
by. The general hunt which I have described was incident, I think, to
an unusually large number of insects in the air over the warrens, by
which not only a band of starlings--as before mentioned--was attracted,
but, afterwards, swallows and martins. On such occasions, dancing might
conceivably grow out of the excitement of the chase, so as to appear
a part of it, but though the two forms of excitement may sometimes
intermingle, the tendency would probably be for the one to diminish and
interfere with the other. At any rate, almost every dance which I have
witnessed has been a dance pure and simple.
What, then, is the meaning of this dancing, of these strange little
sudden gusts of excitement arising each day at about the same time
and lasting till the birds fly away? We have here a social display as
distinct from a nuptial or sexual one, for it is in the autumn that
these assemblages of the great plovers take place, after the breeding
is all over; the deportment of the courting or paired birds towards
each other--their nuptial antics--is of a different character. With
birds, as with men, all outward action must be the outcome of some
mental state. What kind of mental excitement is it which causes the
stone-curlews to behave every evening in this mad, frantic way? I
believe that it is one of expectancy and making ready, that these odd
antics--the mad running and leaping and waving of the wings--give
expression to the anticipation of going and desire to be gone which
begins to possess the birds as evening falls. They are the prelude to,
and they end in, flight. The two, in fact, merge into each other, for
short flights grow out of the tumblings over the ground, and it is
impossible to say when one of these may not be continued into the full
flight of departure. They are a part of the dance, and, as such, the
birds may almost be said to dance off. Surely in actions which lead
directly up to any event there must be an idea, an anticipation of it,
nor can the idea of departure exist in a bird's mind (hardly, perhaps,
in a man's) except in connection with what it is departing for--food,
namely, in this case, a banquet. So when I say that these birds "think
of the joys of the night" need this be merely a figure? May it not be
true that they do so and dance forth each night, to their joy?
I have said that the social or autumn antics of the
stone-curlews--their dances, as I have called them, using the usual
phraseology--are distinct from the nuptial or courting ones which they
indulge in in the spring. These latter are of a different character
altogether, but much more interesting to see than they are easy to
describe. The birds are now paired, or in process of becoming so, and
it is fashionable for two of them to walk side by side, and very close
together, with little gingerly steps, as though "keeping company."
They seem very much _en rapport_ with each other--_sehr einig_ as the
Germans would say--also to have a mutual sense of their own and each
other's importance, of the seemly and becoming nature of what they are
doing, and (this above all) of the great value of deportment. Something
there is about them--now even more than at other times--very odd,
quaint, old-world, old-fashioned. The last best describes it; they are
old-fashioned birds. Were the world occupied in watching them, and were
they occasionally to over-hear themselves being talked about, they
would catch that word as often as did little Paul Dombey.
Whilst watching a couple walking side by side in this way that I have
described, one of them may be seen to bend stiffly forward till the
beak just touches the ground, the tail and after part of the body being
elevated in the air. The other stands by, and appears both interested
in and edified by the performance, and when it is over both walk on
as before. Or a bird may be seen to act thus whilst walking alone,
upon which another will come running from some distance towards it, as
though answering to a summons or to some quite irresistible form of
appeal. Upon coming close up to the rigid bird this other one stops,
and turning suddenly, but also setly and rigidly, round, makes a
curious little run away from it with lowered head and precise formal
steps, full of a peculiar gravity and importance. Having thus played
his part he again stops, and, standing idly about, seems lapsed into
indifference. Meanwhile, the rigid one having remained in its set
attitude for some little time longer at length comes out of it, and
advancing with the same little picked, careful, gingerly steps that
I have noticed, before long assumes it again, and then, relaxing,
crouches low on the ground as though incubating. Having remained thus
for a minute or two it rises and stands at ease. "A third bird now
appears upon the scene (for this, I must say, was a little witnessed
drama), advancing towards the two. As he approaches, one of them--the
one which has run up in response to the appeal, and which I take to be
the male--becomes uneasy as recognising a rival. He first either runs
or walks (the pace, though it may be quick, is solemn) to the female,
and makes her some kind of bow or obeisance of a very formal nature.
Then, straightening and turning, he instantly becomes a different bird,
so changed is his appearance. He is now drawn up to his full height,
with the head thrown a little back, the tail is fanned out into the
shape of a scallop-shell (looking very pretty), the broad, rounded end
of which just touches the ground at the centre, and thus 'set,' as
it were, for action, he advances upon the intruding bird with quick
little stilty steps, prepared, evidently, to do battle. The would-be
rival, however, retreats before this display, and the accepted suitor,
having followed him thus for some little way--not rushing upon him
or forcing a combat, but more as gravely and seriously prepared for
one--turns and with his former formal pace goes back to his hen." Or
shall we not, rather, say to his Dulcinea del Toboso? for never does
this strange, gaunt, solemn, punctilious-looking bird, with the tall
figure and the strain of madness in the great glaring eyes, more remind
one--fancifully--of Cervantes' creation than now. Surely in that formal
approach and deep reverence to his mistress, before entering upon
this, perhaps, his first "emprise," we have the very figure and high
courteous action of the knight, and seem almost to hear those words
of his spoken on a similar occasion: "Acorredme, señora mia, en esta
primera afrenta que a este vuestro avasallado pecho se le ofrece; no me
desfallezca en este primera trance vuestro favor y amparo." ("Sustain
me, lady mine, in this first insult offered to your captive knight.
Fail me not with your favour and countenance in this my first emprise.")
[Illustration: _Great Plovers: A Nuptial Pose._]
In the above case it was, presumably, the female bird who assumed
the curious rigid attitude, with the tail raised and head stooped
forward to the ground. The attitude, however, assumed by the male,
which I have described as a bow or obeisance--and, indeed, it has this
appearance--was much of the same nature, if it was not precisely the
same, and as far as I have been able to observe, none of the many and
very singular attitudes and posturings in which these birds indulge are
peculiar to either sex. At any rate, that one which would seem _par
excellence_ to appertain to courtship or matrimony, and which is often
(as it was in the instance I am about to give) immediately followed
by the actual pairing of the birds, is common to both the male and
the female. The following will show this:--"A bird which has for some
time been sitting now rises and shakes itself a little, presenting,
as it does so, a very 'mimsy' and 'borogovy' appearance (for which
adjectives, with descriptive plate, see 'Through the Looking-Glass').
It then begins uttering that long, thin, 'shrilling' sound, which
goes so far and pierces the ear so pleasantly. This is answered by a
similar cry, quite near, and I now see, for the first time, another
bird advancing quickly to the calling one, who also advances to meet
it. They approach each other, and standing side by side, with, perhaps,
a foot between them, but looking different ways, each in the direction
in which it has been advancing, both of them assume, at the same time,
a particular and very curious posture, worth waiting days to see. First
they draw themselves tall-ly up on their long, yellow, stilt-like
legs, then curving the neck with a slow and formal motion, they bend
the head downwards--yet still holding it at a height--and stop thus,
set and rigid, the beak pointing to the ground. Having stood like
this for some seconds, they assume the normal attitude. This wonderful
pose, conceived and made in a vein of stiff formality, but to which
the great, glaring, yellow eye gives a look of wildness, almost of
insanity, has in it, both during its development and when its acme has
been reached, something quite _per se_, and in vain to describe. But
again one is reminded of what is past and old-fashioned, of chivalry
and knight-errantry, of scutcheons and heraldic devices, of Don Quixote
and the Baron of Bradwardine."
It is not only when two birds are by themselves that these or other
attitudes are assumed. They will often break out, so to speak, amongst
three or four birds running or chasing each other about. All at once
one will stop, stiffen into one of them--that especially where the head
is lowered till the beak touches, or nearly touches, the ground--and
remain so for a formal period. But all such runnings and chasings are,
at this time, but a part of the business of pairing, and one divines at
once that such attitudes are of a sexual character. The above are a few
of the gestures or antics of the great plover or stone-curlew during
the spring. I have seen others, but either they were less salient, or,
owing to the great distance, I was not able to taste them properly,
for which reason, and on account of space, I will not further dwell
upon them. What I would again draw attention to, as being, perhaps, of
interest, is that here we have a bird with distinct nuptial (sexual)
and social (non-sexual) forms of display or antics, and that the former
as well as the latter are equally indulged in by both sexes.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II
Watching Ringed Plovers, Redshanks, Peewits, etc.
The pretty little ring-plover (_Ægialitis kiaticola_) belongs properly
to the sea-shore, but he haunts and breeds inland also, and is
especially the companion of the stone-curlew over the stony, sandy
wastes that they both love so well. These little birds have both a
nuptial flight and a courting action on the ground. In the former a
pair will keep crossing and recrossing as they scud about, or they
will sweep towards and then away from each other in the softest and
prettiest manner imaginable, or each will sweep first up to a height
and then swiftly down again and skim quite low along the ground, thus
delighting the eye with the contrast. Their flight is all in graceful
sweeps, for even when they beat the air with their slender, pointed
pinions, it is rather as though they kissed than beat it, and they
seem all the while to be sweeping on without effort, so soft is their
motion. Another salient feature is the varied direction of their
flight, for though this is in wide, spacious circles around their
chosen home, yet within this free limit they set their sails to all
points of the compass, veering from one to another with so joyous a
motion, each change seems an ecstasy--as indeed it is to behold. Their
mode of alighting on the ground after flight is very pretty, for they
do so as if they meant to continue flying. Sometimes the wings are
still raised, still make their little spear-points in the air as they
softly stop; or the bird will hold them drooped and but half-spread,
and skim like this, just above the ground. At once he is on it, but
there has been no jerk, no pause. He has been smooth in abruptness:
settling suddenly, there has been no sudden motion. These things are as
magic,--they are, and yet they cannot be. It is a contradiction, yet it
has taken place.
In formal courtship on the ground "the male approaches the female with
head and neck drawn up above the usual height, so that he presents for
her consideration a broader and fuller frontage of throat and breast
than upon ordinary occasions. He does not raise or otherwise disport
with his wings, but through the glasses one can see that his little
legs--which now that he is more upright are less invisible--are being
moved in a rapid vibratory manner, whilst he himself seems to be
trembling, quivering with excitement. The motion of the legs does not
belong to the gait, for the bird stands still whilst making it, and
then advances a few steps at a time, with little pauses between each
advance, during which the legs are quivered." The legs of the ringed
plover are of a fine orange colour, and the male's drawing himself up
so as to display them more fully, and then moving them quickly in this
way before the female, suggests that they are appreciated by her. But
it is not only the legs that are thus well exhibited. By drawing up the
head, the throat, in which soft pure white and velvet black are boldly
and richly contrasted, as well as the little smudged pug face and the
bright orange-yellow bill, are all shown off to advantage.
The wings, however, in the instance which I observed and noted at the
time, were kept closed. I can hardly think this is always the case.
If it is, it may be because, though pretty enough--indeed lovely to
an appreciative human eye--they yet do not in their colouring present
anything like so bold and salient an appearance as the parts mentioned,
with the display of which they might, perhaps, interfere, though I
confess I do not think they would.
With the redshank this is different, for "the redshank, when standing
with wings folded, is a very plain-looking bird, the whole of the
upper surface being of a drabby brown colour, and the under parts not
being seen to advantage. But as he rises in flight all is changed,
for the inner surface of his wings--with, in a less degree, the whole
under part of his body--are of a delicate, soft, silky white, looking
silvery, almost, as the light falls upon it and causes it to gleam.
This, with an upper quill-margin of bolder white on the wings, which,
when they are closed, is concealed, now catches the eye, and the bird
passes from insignificance into something almost distinguished, like
a homely face flashing into beauty by virtue of a smile and fine
eyes." Now the male redshank, when courting the female, makes the
most of his wings, whilst at the same time moving his legs--which are
coloured, as his name implies--in the same manner as does the ringed
plover. He did so at any rate in the following instance. "The male
bird, walking up to the female, raises his wings gracefully above his
back. They are considerably elevated, and for a little he holds them
thus aloft merely, but soon, drooping them to about half their former
elevation, he flutters them tremulously and gracefully as though to
please her. She, however, turned from him, walks on, appearing to be
busy in feeding. The male takes, or affects to take, little notice of
this repulse. He pecks about, as feeding too, but in a moment or so
walks up to the hen again, and now, raising his wings to the fluttering
height only, flutters them tremulously as before. She walks on a few
steps and stops. He again approaches and, standing beside her (both
being turned the same way), with his head and neck as it were curved
over her, again trembles his wings, at the same time making a little
rapid motion with his red legs on the ground, as though he were walking
fast, yet not advancing." Now here (and this, if I remember, was the
case with the ringed plovers also) the female did not appear to take
much notice of the male bird's behaviour. She was turned away and,
for some time, feeding. But it must not be forgotten that the eyes
of most birds are not set frontally in the head as are ours, but on
each side of it, so that their range of clear vision must be very much
wider, probably including all parts except directly behind them. They
also turn the head about with the greatest ease, and the slightest
turn must be very effective. They would, therefore, often see quite
plainly whilst appearing to us not to be noticing, and that the female
should get the general effect of the male's display is all that is
required by the theory of sexual selection--as conceived by Darwin.
Darwin has expressly said that he does not imagine that the female
birds consciously pick out the most adorned or best-displaying males,
but only that such males have a more exciting effect upon them, which
leads, practically, to their being selected. But though he has said
this, it seems hardly ever to be remembered by the opponents of his
view who, in combating it, almost always raise a picture of birds
critically observing patterns and colours, as we might stuffs in a
shop. However, having regard to the bower-birds, and especially that
species which makes an actual flower garden, even this does not seem so
absolutely impossible. The fact is, we are too conceited. With regard
to the female bird sometimes, as here, keeping turned from the male
while thus courted by him, this is, I think, capable of explanation in
a way not hostile but favourable to the theory of sexual selection. At
any rate, in both these instances, "_il faut rendre à cela_" either
was, or seemed to be, the final conclusion of the female.
As the nuptial season approaches, the peewits begin to "stand," singly
or in pairs, about the low, marshy land, or to fly "coo-ee-ing" over
it. "Coo-oo-oo, hook-a-coo-ee, coo-ee," is their cry, far more, to
my ear, resembling this than the sound "pee-weet" or "pee-wee-eet,"
as imitated in their name. At intervals one or another of them
will make its peculiar throw or somersault in the air. This, in its
completest form, is a wonderful thing to behold, though so familiar
that no attention is paid to it. The bird in full flight--in a rushing
torrent of sound and motion--may be seen to partially close the wings,
and fall plumb as though it had been shot. In a moment or two, but
often not before there has been a considerable drop, the wings are
again partially extended, and the bird turns right head over heels.
Then, sweeping buoyantly upwards, sometimes almost from the ground,
it continues its flight as before. Such a tumble as this is a fine
specimen. They are not all so abrupt and dramatic, but there is one
point common to them all, which is the impossibility of saying exactly
how the actual somersault is thrown. Do these tumblings add to the
charm of the peewit's flight? To the charm, perhaps; certainly to the
wonder and interest, but hardly (unless we are never to criticise
nature) to the grace. The contrast is too great, there is something of
violence, almost of buffoonery, about it. It is as though the clown
came tumbling right into the middle of the transformation scene.
As the birds sweep about, they begin to enter into their bridal dances,
pursuing each other with devious flight, pausing, hanging stationary
with flapping wings one just above the other, then sweeping widely
away in opposite directions. Shortly afterwards they are again flying
side by side, or the sun, "in a wintry smile," catches both the white
breasts as they make a little coquettish dart at each other. Then
again they separate, and again the joyous "coo-oo-oo, hook-a-coo-ee,
coo-ee" flits with them over marsh and moor. Sometimes a bird will
come flying alone, somewhat low over the ground, in a hurrying manner,
very fast, and making a sound with the wings, as they beat the air,
which is almost like the puffing of an engine--indeed, one may easily,
sometimes, imagine a train in the distance. As one watches him thus
scudding along, tilting himself as ever, now on one side, now on
another, all at once he will give a sharp turn as if about to make one
of his wide, sweeping circles, but almost instantly he again reverses,
and sweeps on in the same direction as before. This trick adds very
much to the appearance, if not to the reality, of speed, for the
smooth, swift sweep, close following the little abrupt twist back,
contrasts with it and seems the more fast-gliding in comparison. Or
one will fly in quick, small circles, several times repeated, a little
above the spot where he intends to alight, descending, at last, in the
very centre of his air-drawn girdle with wonderful buoyancy.
A hooded crow now flies over the marsh, and is pursued by first one
and then another of the peewits. There is little combination, nor does
there seem much of anger. It is more like a sport or a practical joke.
It is curious that the crow's flight has taken the character of the
peewit's, for they sweep upwards and downwards together, seeming like
master and pupil. I have never seen a crow fly so, uninfluenced, and
this, again, gives an amicable appearance. I have seen a peewit make
continual sweeps down at a hen pheasant as she stood in a wheat-field,
striking at her each time with its wings, in the air, obviously not
in play but in earnest. The pheasant dodged, or tried to dodge, each
time, and this lasted some while. Here it seems very different; and
now again a compact little flock of peewits is flying backwards and
forwards over the river with a hooded crow--not the same bird but
another--right amongst them. This continues for some little time, till
the peewits go down on the margin, and the crow then flies into a
tree hard by. After a little interval the peewits fly off again, and
almost directly the crow is with them, and again they fly backwards
and forwards over the water, for some time, as before. And again I
note--and this time it is still more marked and unmistakable--that the
crow is flying amongst the peewits exactly as they fly. At least he is
speaking French with them "after ye school of Stratford--at-y-Bow," for
who flies _exactly_ like a peewit _but_ a peewit? But he sweeps with
them--now upwards, now downwards--in smooth, gliding sweeps, a curious,
rusty-looking, black and grey patch in the midst of their gleaming
greens and whites. Yet he is a handsome bird too, is the hooded crow,
but not when he flies with peewits. Now the peewits again go down, and
the crow straightway flies into another tree. Shortly afterwards, a
moor-hen, feeding on the grass, is hustled by one of the peewits into
the water. Here, again, hostility was evident, whereas with the crow I
could see no trace of it. He seemed to be enjoying himself, whilst the
peewits, on their part, showed no objection to his company.
[Illustration: _Master and Pupil: Hooded-Crow flying with Peewits._]
"Late in the afternoon there is a pause and hush. The birds have ceased
flying till dusk, and are either standing still or walking over the
ground. One I can see motionless amidst the brown, tufted grass. No,
not quite motionless. Ever and anon there comes the strained, grating
call-note of another peewit, and then this one rears up the body and
jerks the head a little back, then jerks it flexibly forward again. At
first he does this in silence, but soon answering the cry. You see the
thin little black bill divide as he bobs, and the sound comes out of it
as though drawn by a wire--so roopy and raspy is it. Now he can contain
himself no longer, but begins to walk about through the grass, making a
devious course, and uttering the call at intervals. Very different is
this note from the joyous, musical 'coo-oo-oo, hook-a-coo-ee, coo-ee.'
Still, it is in harmony with nature, with the stillness, the sadness,
the loneliness. This standing or pacing about whilst calling roopily,
and, as it were, in a stealthy manner to each other, should be a very
prosaic affair, one would think, for a pair of peewits after such
glorious flying, but, no doubt, there is some excitement in it. Perhaps
it is thought a little fast, as some slow things with us are, and hence
the peculiar charm.
"Now these two birds are standing lazily on two of the black molehills
which are all about the marshy land--some of them of a size beyond
one's comprehension--and making the wire-drawn cry at intervals to each
other. Lazily they stand, lazily they utter it, and seem as though they
had taken up their roosting-place for the night. But when the night
falls they will be hurrying shadows in it, and their cries will come
out of the darkness, mingling with the bleatings of the snipe."
There is a sameness and yet a constant difference in the aerial sports
and evolutions of peewits. It is like a continual variation of the
same air or a recurrent thread of melody winding itself through a
labyrinth of ever-changing notes. Parts of the melody are where two
skim low over the ground in rapid pursuit of each other. One settles,
the other skims on, then makes a great upward sweep, turns, sweeps down
and back again, again rises, turns and sweeps again, and so on, rising
and falling over the same wide space with the regular motions and long
rushing swing of a pendulum. Each time it comes rushing down upon the
bird that has settled, and each time, at the right moment, this one
makes a little ascension towards it, sometimes floating above it as it
passes, sometimes beneath, alighting again immediately afterwards. This
may continue for some little time, the one bird passing backwards and
forwards over or under the other as long as he is received in the same
way. Gradually, however, these little sorties against him from being at
first hardly more than balloon-jumps--springs with aid of wings--become
more and more prolonged, and extended outwards into his own radius of
flight. The bird making them no longer alights in the same or nearly
the same place as where he went up, but farther and farther away from
it, the figure is lost, or becomes indistinct, "as water is in water,"
till at last the two are flying and chasing each other again.
This upward sweep from near the ground--sometimes from nearly touching
it--with its attendant sweep back again, is one of the greatest
beauties of the peewit's flight--a flight that is full of beauties. He
does it often, but not always in quite the same way; it is a varying
perfection, for each time it is perfect, and sometimes it seems to vie
with almost any aerial master-stroke. The bird's wings, as it shoots
aloft, are spread half open, and remain thus without being moved at
all. The body is turned sideways--sometimes more, sometimes less--and
the light glancing on the pure soft white of the under part, makes it
look like the crest of foam on an invisible and swiftly-moving wave.
As the uprush attains its zenith, there is a lovely, soft, effortless
curling over of the body, and the foam sinks again with the wave. Such
motions are not flight, they are passive abandonings and givings-up-to,
driftings on unseen currents, bird-swirls and feathered eddies in the
thin ocean of the air. It is, I think, the cessation of all effort
on the bird's part which makes the great loveliness here. The impetus
has been gained in flight before--acres of moorland away sometimes--it
"cometh from afar." The upward fall, the delicious, crested curl and
soft, sinking swoon to the earth are all rest--rhythmical, swift-moving
rest.
Another curious and extremely pretty performance--a familiar bar of
that thread of melody, that "main theme" of the "movement"--is when two
birds, one just a little behind the other, and at slightly different
elevations, both make the same movements, in quick succession, the
bird behind mimicking the one in front of him in a kind of aerial
follow-my-leadership. Does the one pause and hang on extended wings
that rapidly beat the air, the other does so too. Does it sail on a
little, and then make a sideway dive, it is imitated in the same way,
and thus, often for quite a little while, the two will understudy each
other--for each, I think, may alternately become the leader. Again--if
this is not merely a development of the above--two of them will hover
on outstretched wings directly over and almost touching each other.
Sometimes, indeed, they do touch, for the bird that is stretched above
is continually trying to strike down on the other one with his wings,
and often succeeds by making a sudden little drop on to him--a drop
which is only of an inch or so--quite covering him up for a moment.
Then, disjoining, they will flap along for some while, still close
together, flashing out alternately dark and silver, as if showing their
glints to each other, till in two "dying falls" they sweep apart, and
skim the ground and double-loop the heavens.
When peewits seem thus to battle together with their wings, in the air,
it may well be that they are really fighting, in which case we may
perhaps assume that they are two males, and not male and female. But as
what I shall have to say with regard to the stock-dove on this point
may be applied to the peewit, and as I have better evidence in the case
of the former bird, I will not dwell on it longer here.
But the question arises whether in many other cases, when the sporting
birds would seem to be male and female, this is really the case. One
is apt to think so at first, but when one sees, often, a third bird
associate itself with a pair who are thus behaving, and join for a
little in their antics, or when one of a pair desisting and alighting
on the ground, the other continues to sport in precisely the same way
with another bird, or when, again, the supposed lovers become two
of a small flock or band, and all sport thus together, crossing and
intermingling till they again separate: one must suppose that these
evolutions, though they may be mostly of a nuptial character, are not
sexual in the strictest sense of the term, but that the social element
enters more or less largely into them. But amongst savages there are,
I believe (if not, let us imagine that there are), dances, the theme
of which is marriage, where sometimes men, sometimes women, sometimes
men and women, dance together, all having in their mind the primitive
ideas suggested by that great institution, men thinking of women, women
of men, under every kind of grouping. One may suppose it to be thus
with the peewits, as they sport with one another in the air during the
nuptial season, in which case the social and sexual elements would be
a changing and varying factor. One may say, indeed, that there can be
no sexual sport or play into which the social element does not also,
and necessarily, enter. This is, no doubt, true, strictly speaking, but
the latter may be so merged in the former that practically it does not
exist.
Some of the peewits' nuptial and non-aerial bizarreries are of this
nature, but as they are peculiar, and seem to stand in some relation
to another great class of avian activities, I shall reserve them for a
future chapter.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER III
Watching Stock-doves, Wood-pigeons, Snipe, etc.
I have alluded to the aerial combats of the stock-dove during the
nuptial season as elucidating similar movements on the part of the
peewit, though I was not able so fully to satisfy myself as to the
meaning of these in the latter bird. The fighting of birds on the
wing has sometimes--to my eye, at least--a very soft and delicate
appearance, which does not so much resemble fighting as sport and
dalliance between the sexes. Larks, for instance, have what seem, at
the worst, to be delicate little mock-combats in the air, carried on
in a way which suggests this. Sometimes, rising together, they keep
approaching and retiring from each other with the light, swinging
motion of a shuttlecock just before it turns over to descend, and this
resemblance is increased by their flying perpendicularly, or almost so,
with their heads up and tails down. Indeed, they seem more to be thrown
through the air than to fly. Then, in one fall, they sink together
into the grass. Or they will keep mounting above and above each other
to some height, and then descend in something the same way, but more
sweepingly (for let no one hope to see exactly how they do it), seeming
to make with their bodies the soft links of a feathered chain--or as
though their own "linked sweetness" of song had been translated into
matter and motion. In each case they make all the time, as convenient,
little kissipecks, rather than pecks, at each other.
Again, in the case of the redshank, though I have little doubt now that
the following, which was both aquatic and aerial, was a genuine combat
between two males, yet often at the time, and especially in its preface
and conclusion, it seemed as though the birds were of opposite sexes,
and, if fighting at all, only amorously.
"Two birds are pursuing each other on the bank of the river. The water
is low, and a little point of mud and shingle projects into the stream.
Up and down this, from the herbage to the water's edge and back again,
the birds run, one close behind the other, and each uttering a funny
little piping cry--'tu-tu-oo, tu-oo, tu-oo, tu-oo.' It is one, as
far as I can see, that always pursues the other, who, after a time,
flies to the opposite bank. The pursuer follows, and the chase is now
carried on by a series of little flights from bank to bank, sometimes
straight across, sometimes slanting a little up or down the stream,
whilst sometimes there is a little flight backwards and forwards along
the bank in the intervals of crossing. This continues for something
like an hour, but at last the pursuing bird, as both fly out from the
bank, makes a little dart, and, overtaking the other one, both flutter
down into the stream. They rise from it straight up into the air like
two blackbirds fighting, then fall back into it again, and now there
is a violent struggle in the water. Whilst it lasts the birds are
swimming, just as two ducks would be under similar circumstances, and
every now and then, in the pauses of exhaustion, both rest, floating
on the water. The combat would be as purely aquatic as with coots or
moor-hens, if it were not that the two birds often struggle out of the
water and rise together into the air, where they continue the struggle,
each one rising alternately above the other and trying to push it
down--it would seem with the legs. These were the tactics adopted in
the water too, but yet, with a good deal of motion and exertion, there
seems but little of fury. The birds are not _acharné_, or, at least,
they do not seem to be. It is a soft sort of combat, and now it has
ended in the combatants making their mutual toilette quite close to one
another. One stands on the shore and preens itself, the other sits just
off it on the water and bathes in it like a duck."
Even here, owing principally to the friendly toilette-scene, I was not
quite clear as to the nature of the bird's actions. How completely I at
first mistook it in the case of the stock-dove with the way in which it
was afterwards made plain to me, the following will show:--
"Most interesting aerial nuptial evolutions of the male and female
stock-dove.--They navigate the air together, following each other in
the closest manner, one being, almost all the while, just above the
other, their wings seeming to pulsate in time as soldiers (if sweet
birds will forgive such a simile) keep step. Now they rise, now sink,
making a wide, irregular circle. Both seem to wish, yet not to wish,
to touch, almost, yet not quite, doing so, till, when very close, the
upper one drops lightly towards the one beneath him, who sinks too;
yet for a moment you hear the wings clap against each other. This
sounds faintly, though very perceptibly; but the distance is great,
and it must really be loud. Every now and again the wings will cease
to vibrate, and the two birds sweep through the air on spread pinions,
but, otherwise, in the manner that has been described. I must have
watched this continuing for at least a quarter of an hour before they
sunk to the ground together, still maintaining the same relative
position, and with quivering wings as before. Here, however, something
distracted me, the glasses lost them, and I did not see them actually
alight. Another pair rise right from the ground in this manner,[2]
one directly above the other, quiver upwards to some little height,
then sweep off on spread pinions, following each other, but still at
slightly different elevations. They overtake one another, quiver up
still higher, with hardly an inch between them, then suddenly, with an,
as it were, 'enough of this,' sweep apart and float in lovely circles,
now upwards now downwards. As they do this another bird rushes through
the air to join them, he circles too, all three are circling, the
light glinting on one, falling from another, thrown and caught and
thrown again as if they played at ball with light."
[2] But I did not see what they were doing before they rose.
I thought, therefore, that birds when they flew in pairs like this were
disporting themselves together in a nuptial flight, and making--as
indeed this, in any case, is true--a very pretty display of it. What
was there, indeed--or what did there seem to be--to indicate that
angry passions lay at the root of all this loveliness? But I had not
taken sufficiently into consideration that sharp clap of the wings
indicating a blow--a severe one--on the part of one of the birds with a
parry on that of the other. This is how stock-doves, as well as other
pigeons, fight on the ground, and it is as an outcome and continuation
of these fierce stand-up combats--which there is no mistaking--that
the contending birds rise and hover one over the other, in the manner
described. My notes will, I think, show this, as well as the curious
and, as it were, formal manner in which the ground-tourney is conducted.
[Illustration: _Stock-doves: A Duel with Ceremonies._]
"Two stock-doves fighting.--This is very interesting and peculiar.
They fight with continual blows of the wings, these being used both as
sword--or, rather, partisan--and shield. The peculiarity, however, is
this, that every now and again there is a pause in the combat, when
both birds make the low bow, with tail raised in air, as in courting.
Sometimes both will bow together, and, as it would seem, to each
other--facing towards each other, at any rate--but at other times
they will both stand in a line, and bow, so that one bows only to the
tail of the other, who bows to the empty air. Or the two will bow at
different times, each seeming more concerned in making his bow than in
the direction or bestowal of it. It is like a little interlude, and
when it is over the combatants advance, again, against each other,
till they stand front to front, and quite close. Both, then, make a
little jump, and battle vigorously with their wings, striking and
parrying. One now makes a higher spring, trying, apparently, to jump
on to his opponent's back, and then strike down upon him. This is all
plain, honest fighting, but there is a constant tendency--constantly
carried out--for the two to get into line, and fight in a sort of
follow-my-leader fashion, whilst making these low bows at intervals. It
is a fight encumbered with forms, with a heavy, punctilious ceremony,
reminding one of those ornate sweeps and bowing rapier-flourishes which
are entered into before and at each pause in the duel between Hamlet
and Laertes, as arranged by Sir Henry Irving at the Lyceum. There were
four or five birds together when this fight broke out, but I could not
feel quite sure whether the non-fighting ones watched the fighting of
the other two. If they did, I do not think they were at all keenly
interested in it. Also, the fighting birds may sometimes, when they
bowed, have done so to the birds that stood near, but it never seemed
to me that this was the case, and it certainly was not so in most
instances."
In the spring from the ground which one of the fighting birds sometimes
makes, coming down on the other one's back and striking with the wings,
we have, perhaps, the beginning of what may develop into a contest in
the clouds, for let the bird that is undermost also spring up, and both
are in the air in the position required; and it is natural that the
undermost should continue to rise, because it could more easily avoid
the blows of the other whilst in the air, by sinking down through it,
than it could on the ground at such a disadvantage. Whether, in the
following instance, the one bird jumped on to the other's back does not
appear, but, as will be seen, the flight, which I had thought to be of
a sexual and nuptial character, was the direct outcome of a scrimmage.
"A short fight between two birds.--It is really most curious. There
is a blow and then a bow, then a vigorous set-to, with hard blows and
adroit parries, a pause with two profound bows, another set-to, and
then the birds rise, one keeping just above the other, and ascend
slowly, with quickly and constantly beating wings, in the way so often
witnessed. It would appear, therefore, that the curious flights of
two birds up into the air, the one of them exactly over, and almost
touching, the other--wherein, as I have noted, there is frequently a
blow with the wings which, to judge by the sound reaching me from a
considerable distance, must be sometimes a severe one--are the aerial
continuations of combats commenced on the ground." Sometimes, that is
to say. There seems no reason why birds accustomed thus to contend,
should not sometimes do so _ab initio_, and without any preliminary
encounter on mother earth--and this, I believe, is the case.
Here, then, in the stock-dove we have at the nuptial season a kind of
flight which seems certainly to be of the nature of a combat, very
much resembling that of the peewit at the same season. I have seen
peewits fighting on the ground, and once they were for a moment in the
air together at a foot or two above it, and the one a little above
the other. This, however, may have been mere chance, and I have not
seen the one form of combat arise unmistakably out of the other, as
in the case of the stock-doves. But assuming that in each case there
is a combat, is it certain that the contending birds are always, or
generally, two males, and not male and female? It certainly seems
natural to suppose this, but with the stock-dove, at any rate (and I
believe with pigeons generally), the two sexes sometimes fight sharply;
and, moreover, the female stock-dove bows to the male, as well as
the male to the female, both which points will be brought out in the
following instances:--
"A hen bird is sitting alone on the sand, a male flies up to her and
begins bowing. She does not respond, but walks away, and, on being
followed and pressed, stands and strikes at her annoyer with the wings,
and there is, then, a short fight between the two. At the end of it,
and when the bowing pigeon has been driven off and is walking away,
having his tail, therefore, turned to the one he is leaving, this one
also bows, once only, but quite unmistakably. The bow was directed
towards her retiring adversary, and also wooer, the two birds therefore
standing in a line." And on another occasion "A stock-dove flies to
another sitting on the warrens, and bows to her, upon which she also
bows to him. Yet his addresses are not successfully urged."
The sexes are here assumed, for the male and female stock-dove do not
differ sufficiently for one to distinguish them at a distance through
the glasses. When, however, one sees a bird fly, like this, to another
one and begin the regular courting action, one seems justified in
assuming it to be a male and the other a female. Both, however, bowed,
and there was a fight, though a short one (I have seen others of longer
duration), between them. It becomes, therefore, a question whether
the much more determined fights which I have witnessed are not also
between the male and the female stock-dove, and not between two males.
If so, the origin of the conflict is, probably, in all such cases--as
it certainly has been in those which I have witnessed--the desires
of the male bird, to which he tries to make the female submit. That
she, in the very midst of resisting, taken, as it would seem, "in her
heart's extremest hate," should yet bow to her would-be ravisher seems
strange, but she certainly does so. Whether it would be more or less
strange that two male birds, whilst fiercely contending, should act in
this way, I will leave to my readers to decide, and thus settle the
nature of these curious ceremonious encounters and their graceful and
interesting aerial continuations, to their own satisfaction.[3]
[3] With this suggestion, however, that fighting may be blended with
sexual display in the combats of male birds owing to association of
ideas, for rivalry is the main cause of such combats.
However it may be, the bow itself--which I will now notice more
fully--is certainly of a nuptial character, and is seen in its greatest
perfection only when the male stock-dove courts the female. This he
does by either flying or walking up to her and bowing solemnly till
his breast touches the ground, his tail going up at the same time to
an even more than corresponding height, though with an action less
solemn. The tail in its ascent is beautifully fanned, but it is not
spread out flat like a fan, but arched, which adds to the beauty of
its appearance. As it is brought down it closes again, but, should the
bow be followed up, it is instantly again fanned out and sweeps the
ground, as its owner, now risen from his prostrate attitude, with head
erect and throat swelled, makes a little rush towards the object of
his desires. The preliminary bow, however, is more usually followed
by another, or by two or three others, each one being a distinct and
separate affair, the bird remaining with his head sunk and tail raised
and fanned for some seconds before rising to repeat. Thus it is not
like two or three little bobs--which is the manner of wooing pursued by
the turtle-dove--but there is one set bow, to which but one elevation
and depression of the tail belongs, and the offerer of it must not only
regain his normal upright attitude, but remain in it for a perceptible
period before making another. This bow, therefore, is of the most
impressive and even solemn nature, and expresses, as much as anything
in dumb show can express, "Madam, I am your most devoted."
I believe--but I am not sure, and quite ready to be corrected--that the
stock-dove's bow is either a silent one, or, at least, that the note
uttered is subdued--the latter seems the more probable. At any rate, I
was never able to catch it, either when watching on the warrens at a
greater or less distance, or when not so far, amongst trees--for the
stock-dove woos also amongst the leafy woods, as does the wood-pigeon,
of which it is a smaller replica, but without the ring. "The male
wood-pigeon, when courting, bows to the female lengthways along the
branch on which he is sitting, elevating his tail at the same time,
in just the same way as does the stock-dove. As he does so, he says
'coo-oo-oo,' the last syllable being long drawn out, and having a very
intense expression, with a rise in the tone of it, sometimes almost to
the extent of becoming a soft shrillness. Having delivered himself of
this long 'coo-oo-oo,' he says several times together in an undertone,
and very quickly, 'coo, coo, coo coo,' or 'coo, coo, coo, coo, coo,
coo, coo,' after which, rising, and then bowing again, he recommences
with the long-drawn, impassioned 'coo-oo-oo,' as before. All this he
repeats several times, the number, probably, depending on whether
the female bird stays to hear his addresses or, as is usual in the
contrary, flies away. If she admits them pairing may take place, and at
the conclusion of it both birds utter a peculiar, low, deep, and very
raucous note which I have heard on this occasion, but on no other."
If the courting of the female stock-dove by the male whilst on the
ground, or amongst the branches of a tree, is of a somewhat heavy
nature--more pompous than beautiful--as is, I think, the case, it is
lightened in the most graceful manner by the aerial intermezzos--the
broidery of the theme--which charmingly relieve and set it off; for
often, "after bowing and walking together a little, near, but not
touching--a Hermia and Lysander distance--both rise, both mount, attain
a height, then pause, and, as from the summit of some lofty precipice,
descend on outspread joy-wings in a very music of motion. It is pretty,
too, to watch two of them flying together and then alighting, when one
instantly bows before the other with _empressé_ mien. Before, you have
not known which was which, or who was escorting the other. Now you feel
sure that it is _he_--the _empressé_, the pompously bowing bird--who
has taken _her_--the retiring, the coy one--for a little fly." For
though it is undoubted that the female stock-dove bows to the male,
yet, in courting, it is the male, I believe, who commences and carries
it to a fine art.
There are no birds surely--or, at least, not many--who can sport more
gracefully in the air than these. "One is sitting and cooing almost
in a rabbit-burrow, and so close to a rabbit there that it looks like
a little call. Sure enough, too, after a while, the bird, who, of
course, is the visitor, rises--but into the air _sans cérémonie_--and
makes as though to fly away. But having gone only a little distance,
with quick strokes of the wings, it rests upon their expanded surface,
and, in a lovely easy sweep, sails round again in the direction from
whence it started. It passes beyond the place, the wings now again
pulsating, then makes another wide sweep of grace and comes down near
where it was before. In a little it again rises, again sweeps and
circles, and again descends in the neighbourhood. Another now appears,
flying towards it, and as it passes over where the first is sitting,
this one rises into the air to meet it. They approach, glide from each
other, again approach, and thus alternately widening and narrowing the
distance between them, one at length goes down, the other passing on
to alight, at last, at that distance which the etiquette of the affair
prescribes. This circling flight on swiftly resting wings is most
beautiful. The pausing sweep, the lazy onwardness, the marriage, as it
were, of rest and speed is a delicious thing, another sense, a delicate
purged voluptuousness, a very banquet to the eye." Such beauty-flights
are almost always in the early morning, when appreciative persons are
mostly in bed, seen only by the dull eye of some warrener walking to
find and kill the beasts that have lain tortured in his traps all
night, exciting (if any) but a murderous thought at the time, with the
after-reflection, "If I'd a had a gun now----"
Stock-doves, as is well known, often choose rabbit-burrows to lay
their eggs in, and, having regard to their powers of flight and
arborial aptitudes, it might be thought that but for the rabbits they
would never be seen on these open, sandy tracts, the abode of the
peewit, stone-curlew, ringed plover, red-legged partridge, and other
such waste-haunting species. But the nesting habits of a bird must
follow its general ones almost necessarily in the first instance, and
though there are many apparently striking instances to the contrary,
they are probably to be explained by the former having remained fixed
whilst the latter have changed. No doubt, therefore, the stock-dove
began to spend much of its time on the ground before it thought of
laying its eggs there, and of the facilities offered by rabbit-holes
for so doing. That the habits as well as the organisms of all living
creatures are in a more or less plastic and fluctuating state is, I
believe, a conclusion come to by Darwin, and it agrees entirely with
the little I have been able to observe in regard to birds. I have seen
the robin redbreast become a wagtail or stilt-walker, the starling a
wood-pecker or fly-catcher, the tree-creeper also a fly-catcher, the
wren an accomplished tree-creeper, the moor-hen a partridge or plover,
and so on, and so on, all such instances having been noted down by me
at the time. Most birds are ready to vary their habits suddenly and
_de novo_ if they can get a little profit on the transaction, and the
extent to which they have varied gradually in a long course of time and
under changed conditions is, of course, a commonplace after Darwin.
The wood-pigeon has not yet begun to lay its eggs in rabbit-holes or
anywhere but in trees and bushes, but that it may some day do so is not
improbable, for it comes down sometimes, though not very frequently,
on the same sandy wastes that are loved by the stock-dove, and here,
like him, the male will court the female as though on the familiar
bough.[4] When I have seen him courting her thus on the ground, the
low bow which he makes her has been prefaced by one or more curious
hops, which I have not seen in the stock-dove's courting. They look
curious because they are so out of character, hopping being, as far as
I know, a mode of progression foreign to all the _columbidæ_. Whether
the wood-pigeon hops upon any other occasion I cannot be sure. If he
does not--and it is certainly not his usual habit--his adoption of it
here may be looked upon as a purely nuptial antic. In this the lark,
which is also a stepping and not a hopping bird, keeps him company,
as would the cormorant, were it not that he hops often as a matter
of convenience. Larks I have not seen hop in everyday life, though
sometimes I have thought that they did when running quickly over
ploughed land in winter, as starlings often do when they break from
a run which has become too quick for them into a running hop. But I
came to the conclusion that this was only apparent, and due to their
up and down motion over the clods of earth. A hop is quite foreign to
the lark's disposition, yet, when courting, "the male bird advances
upon the female with wings drooped, crest and tail raised, and with
a series of impressive hops." The hop of the wood-pigeon, under
similar circumstances, is of a heavy and deliberate nature, as might
be expected his build and size, and has the same set and formal from
character as the bow which immediately follows it.
[4] The same remark applies to the turtle-dove.
The turtle-dove bows too, in courtship, but it is a series of quick
little bows, or, rather bobs, which he makes to his _fiancée_ instead
of one or more slower and much more imposing ones. Essentially,
however, it is the same thing. The pace has been quickened and the
interval lessened, whilst, to allow of the increased speed, the bow
itself has been shorn of much of its pomp and circumstance, so that
it has become, as I say, a mere bob. The turtle-dove may perform some
half-dozen or more of these bobs, taking less time, perhaps, to get
through them than do his larger relatives to achieve one of their
solemn and formal bows. Still he is pompous too, he bends down low at
the shrine, and though each little bob may not be much in itself, yet,
when thus strung together, the display as a whole is equal to the other
two.
All the time he is thus bowing or bobbing the turtle-dove utters a
deep, rolling, musical note which is continuous (or sounds so), and
does not cease till he has got back into his more everyday attitude.
The hen looks sometimes surprised, sometimes as though she had expected
it, and sometimes, I think,--but of this I am not quite positive--she
will return the little series of musical bobs. This is in tree-land;
but I have seen the turtle-dove court on the ground, and he then,
between his bobbings, made a curious dancing step towards the female,
who retired and gave her final answer by flying away. But, besides
this, these birds have another and most charming nuptial disportment.
Sitting _à deux_ in some high tree, one of them will every now and
again fly out of it, mount upwards, make one or two circling sweeps
around and above it, then, after remaining poised for some seconds,
descend on spread wings in the most graceful manner, alighting on
the same branch beside the waiting partner. This is a beautiful thing
to see, and especially in the early fresh morning of a clear, lovely
day. It seems then as if the bird kept flying up to greet "the early
rising sun," or as rejoicing in the beauty of all things. These are
the coquetries, the prettinesses of loving couples, as to which--on
one side at least--what has not been said by the writers of our clumsy
race! But "if the lions were sculptors"--How might a bird novelist
expatiate!
[Illustration: _Turtle-Doves: The Nuptial Flight._]
Not less beautiful is the nuptial flight of the wood-pigeon. Of
this, the clapping of the wings above the back is the most salient
feature, a sound which is never heard during the winter or after the
breeding-season is fairly over. In full flight, the bird smites its
wings two or three times smartly together above the back, then, holding
them extended and motionless, it seems to pause for one instant--if
there can be pause in swiftest motion--before sinking and then rising
and sinking again, as does a wave, or as though it rested on an aerial
switchback. Then continuing his flight--recommencing, that is to say,
the strokes of his wings--he may do the same when he has gone a few
air-fields farther, and so "pass in music out of sight." Sometimes
there will be only a single clap of the wings instead of two or
three,[5] but always it is made just before the still-spreading of
them, and the hanging pause in the air; for let the speed be never
so great--and it hardly seems possible that it could be checked so
suddenly, and why should the bird wish to check it?--yet the effect
upon the eye of the wings extended and motionless after they have
been pulsating so rapidly is as of a pause. This pause, or rather
this rest-in-speed, as the bird, renouncing all effort, is carried
swiftly and placidly onwards in a curve of the extremest beauty has
a delicious effect upon one. One's spirit goes out until one seems
to be with the bird oneself, hanging and sweeping as it does. Yet in
this glory of motion it will often be shot by beings, in all grace and
beauty and poetry of life, how infinitely its inferiors! This makes
me think of Darwin's comment upon Bate's account of a humming-bird
caught and killed by a huge Brazilian spider, wherein the destroyer and
the victim--"one, perhaps, the loveliest, the other the most hideous
in the scale of creation"[6]--are contrasted. Spiders, too, had they
their Phidiases, might be idealised and made to look quite beautiful
in marble, even perhaps to our eyes (what cannot genius do?) whilst
to their own, of course, the _spider_ form would be "the spider form
divine."
[5] Sometimes, too, not any, the flight being the same.
[6] I quote from memory.
Wood-pigeons will also fly circling about above the trees in which
they have been sitting, in rapid pursuit of each other, and whilst
doing so, one or other of them may be heard to make a very pronounced
swishing or beating sound with the wings, reminding one of the peewit,
nightjar, and a great many other birds. Of instrumental music produced
during flight, the snipe is a familiar example. Here, however, the very
peculiar and highly specialised sound known as bleating or drumming is
produced, not by the feathers of the wing, but by those of the tail,
which have been specially modified, as we may suppose (those, at least,
of us who are believers in that force), by a process of musical sexual
selection. To quote Darwin: "No one was able to explain the cause until
Mr Meves observed that on each side of the tail the outer feathers are
peculiarly formed, having a stiff sabre-shaped shaft with the oblique
barbs of unusual length, the outer webs being strongly bound together.
He found that by blowing on these feathers, or by fastening them to
a long thin stick and waving them rapidly through the air, he could
reproduce the drumming noise made by the living bird. Both sexes are
furnished with these feathers, but they are generally larger in the
male than in the female, and emit a deeper note."
The possibility of reproducing the sound in the manner described seems
conclusive as to the cause of it. Otherwise I should have come to the
conclusion, by watching the bird, that the wings and not the tail were
the agency employed.
"I have just been watching for some time a snipe continually coursing
through the air and making, at intervals, the well-known drumming or
bleating sound,--bleating certainly seems to me the word which best
expresses its quality. The wings are constantly and quickly quivered,
not only when the bird rises or flies straight forward, but also during
its swift oblique descents, when one might expect that they would be
held rigid in the ordinary manner. From each sweep down the bird rises
and beats again upwards, but when the flight has been continued long
enough the wings are pressed to the sides as the plunge to earth is
made, which is also one way in which the lark descends. It is during
these downward flights--but not during the descent to earth--that
the sound strikes the ear. A second bird flies, to my surprise and
interest, quite differently. After scudding about for some little
time in a devious side-to-side pathway, less up and down, as it seems
to me, than the other, it suddenly tilts itself sideways, or almost
sideways--one wing pointing skywards, the other earthwards--and makes
a rapid swoop down, with the wings not beating. I watch it doing this
time after time, both with the naked eye and through the glasses, and
each time that the swoop is made no bleating or other sound accompanies
it: the flight is noiseless, like that of an ordinary bird. Two other
snipes are now flying about in this latter way and chasing each other.
At first--and this included a great many sweeps down--I heard no sound.
Afterwards I thought I heard it faintly sometimes, but could not be
sure that it was not made by another bird--a frequent difficulty in
watching snipe." Again, "A snipe is standing alone 'in the melancholy
marshes,' quite still, and uttering the creaky, see-sawey note. I can
see the two long mandibles of the beak dividing slightly and again
closing. The note is now thin and subdued, but, the bird taking flight
suddenly, it becomes much accentuated. It joins two other birds in the
air, and all three now sport and pursue each other about, constantly
uttering this cry, but bleating only occasionally. I am lying flat on
the ground, and they often fly close about and over me, the light, too,
being good, it being all before 5.40, and not much after 5, perhaps,
when it commenced (this was April 4th). I note that they often descend
through the air without vibrating the wings, and there is then no
bleating sound--this whilst quite close. I think--but am not yet quite
sure--that they sometimes descend in this way uttering the cry. When
they bleat, however, there is never the cry at the same time. It is
impossible to tell when these birds are going to alight, as they often
descend in the manner that they use when alighting, but, when almost
down, skim a little just over the ground, and, rising again, continue
their flight as before. Yet that they have had it in their mind to
alight I feel sure, for they always do so with that particular action."
Since, then, the snipe has two ways of making his rapid descents
through the air, in one of which he quivers his wings and in the
other not, and since, on the latter occasion, the bleat is not heard
or, if heard, only faintly, it would be natural to suppose that the
sound--if not vocal--was produced by the rapidly vibrating feathers
of the wing when in swift downward motion rather than by those of the
tail, which should not, one would think, be affected by the difference.
Also the fact of the vocal note not being uttered at the same time
as the bleat might make one think that this, too, was vocal. Such
arguments, however, would be at best but "poor seemings and thin
likelihoods"--the last one, I believe, not supported by what we know
(at least I cannot at the moment think of a bird that produces vocal
and instrumental music at the same time). If the sound can really be
reproduced by waving the modified feathers of the tail, then this is a
demonstration.[7]
[7] I have lately observed that when the snipe descends with quivering
wings, some outer feathers of the tail on each side are shot out from
it in a most noticeable manner, making--or looking like--two little
curved tufts. They are not seen before, which seems to me strong
evidence. The tail itself is fanned.
Snipe, as already observed, descend to the ground in order to alight
upon it in a manner quite different to the oblique downward-shooting
sweeps, with wings extended, whether vibrating or not, as practised
in ordinary nuptial flight. There are three ways, possibly more; but
three I have seen. In the first the bird shoots gracefully down, with
the wings pressed to the sides, as already described. In the second the
wings are raised straight, or almost straight, above the back, and this
gives, perhaps, a still more graceful appearance. The third way is not
nearly so usual a one as the other two--in fact, I only recall having
seen it once. In this the wings are but half spread (whilst held in
the ordinary manner) and motionless, and the bird descends in several
sweeps to one side or the other, something after the manner in which
a kite comes to the ground. No sound attends any of these forms of
descent.
The cry of the snipe which I have alluded to, is of a curious
nature, something like the word "chack-wood, chack-wood, chack-wood,
chack-wood," constantly repeated, and having a regular rise and fall
in it, which is why I call it a "see-saw note." Sometimes, when the
bird is a little way off, it sounds very much like a swishing of the
wings; but when these are really swished, as they often are--purposely,
I believe, and as a nuptial performance--the difference is at once
apparent. "Two snipes will often fly chasing each other, uttering this
note, and making from time to time the loud swishing with the wings.
Often, too, there will be a short, harsh cry--harsh, but with that
wild, loved harshness that lives in the notes of birds that haunt the
waste--which is instantly followed by a swishing of the wings, making
quite a music in the air. When at its loudest and harshest, this cry,
which then becomes a scream, is quite an extraordinary sound, having
a mewing intonation in it suggesting a cat as the performer. Yet it
is nothing so extraordinary as some notes of the snipe which I have
heard, mostly during the winter, and which are indeed--at least they
have struck me as being so--amongst the most wonderful that ever
issued from the throat of bird. I will recur to them again when I
come to the moor-hen (for it was in his company I heard them), a bird
that is itself as a whole orchestra of peculiar brazen instruments.
These wild cries and screams blend harmoniously with the curious,
monotonous, yet musical bleating, and come finely out of the gloom
of the evening thickening into night, as it descends over the wide
expanse of the fenlands. Best heard then--and there: the darkening sky,
the wide and wind-swept waste of coarse tufted grass, amongst which
brown dock-stalks stand tall-ly and thinly, the long, raised bank with
its thin belt of reeds beyond, emphasising rather than relieving the
flatness, the lonely thorn-bush, the stunted willow or two, the black
line of alders marking the course of the sluggish river, the wind, the
sad whispered music in the grasses, the wilder music in the air, the
aloneness, the drearness--such voices fit such scenes."
The male and female snipe both bleat, but the feathers in the tail
which produce the sound are less modified in the female, and the sound
which they produce is said to be different in consequence. That there
must be a difference would seem to follow of necessity; but, according
to my own experience, it requires a nice ear to distinguish the
bleating of the one sex from that of the other. There is, indeed, some
slight difference in the sound made by each individual snipe, but I
only once remember hearing one bleating with a markedly different tone.
Here the sound had a lower, softer, and deeper intonation, and was, to
my mind, a more musical sound altogether. When heard just before or
after the bleat of another snipe the difference was very marked, but I
considered it to be rather an individual than a sexual distinction, for
I do not know that there is any reason to suppose that the female snipe
bleats less frequently than the male except when she is sitting on her
eggs.
Snipe, when bleating, fly round and round in a wide irregular circle,
and for a long time one will not overstep the invisible boundary so as
to encroach upon the domain of the other. It seems--but the illusion
will be broken after a time--as though each bird had his allotment
in the fields of air and knew that he would be guilty of a rudeness
in entering that of another. Thus, though three or four of them may
be flying and bleating in the neighbourhood, it is often difficult
to watch more than one at a time with anything like closeness of
observation, a difficulty which is often increased by the failing
light; for, in my own experience, snipe bleat best either in the
early--though not very early--morning, or when evening has begun to
close in. To follow their wide, swift, eccentric circle of flight one
must keep turning round on a fixed point, and this, amidst swamp and
grass-tufts, is difficult to do without losing one's balance. Yet
still one watches and turns and strains one's eyes into the darkness,
unable to go, for one loves to see that small, swift, vocal shadow
appearing out of the great, still, silent ones and disappearing, again,
into them. When thus disporting, each within its own charmed circle,
the downward rush and bleat of one snipe will often for a long time
immediately precede or follow that of another, bleat answering to
bleat, till at length the duet is broken and complicated by a third
intermingling voice. At last a bird, trampling on etiquette, will flit
into the circle of the one you are watching, and the two, excitedly
pursuing each other with "chack-wood, chack-wood," or, with the harsh,
wild scream and loud swish of pinions, will speed off and vanish
together.
No doubt the male snipes bleat against each other in rivalry, but it
would also seem (a sentence, I confess, which I never use when I have
an undoubted instance to give) that the male and female bleat to one
another connubially, or in a lover-like manner. Here, however, is an
instance (as I translate it) of the one bleating whilst the other sits
listening and responding vocally on the ground.
"A snipe flies with a scream over the marshy meadows. As he passes one
little swampy bit another snipe utters from out of it the see-sawey,
'chack-wood' note, in answer, as it appears, to the scream. The first
snipe now flies round about over the meadows and land adjoining,
bleating, whilst the other one in the grass continues to see-saw."
Many birds, as is well known, have the instinct, when suddenly
discovered with their young ones, of tumbling over or fluttering along
the ground as though they had sustained some injury which had rendered
them unable to fly, so that the murderous or thievish longings of "the
paragon of animals" being diverted from their progeny to themselves,
the former may take thought and escape. The nightjar, partridge, and,
especially, the wild-duck, are good instances of this, and in every
case where I have come upon them under the requisite conditions they
have never failed to show me their shrewd estimate of man's nature.
With all these three birds, however, it has always been the presence
of the young that has moved them to act in this manner, their conduct
during incubation being quite different. The instance which I am now
going to bring forward with regard to the snipe has this peculiarity,
if it be one, that the bird was hatching her eggs at the time and was
still engaged in doing so a few days afterwards, proving that the young
were not just on the point of coming out on the occasion when she was
first disturbed. As I noted all down the instant after its occurrence,
the reader may rely upon having here just exactly what this snipe did.
"This morning a snipe flew out of some long reedy grass within a few
feet of me, and almost instantly taking the ground again--but now on
the smooth, green meadow--spun round over it, now here, now there, its
long bill lying along the ground as though it were the pivot on which
it turned, and uttering loud cries all the while. Having done this for
a minute or so, it lay, or rather crouched, quite still on the ground,
its head and beak lying along it, its neck outstretched, its legs bent
under it, with the body rising gradually, till the posterior part, with
the tail, which it kept fanned out, was right in the air. And in this
strange position it kept uttering a long, low, hoarse note, which,
together with its whole demeanour, seemed to betoken great distress. It
remained thus for some minutes before flying away, during which time
I stood still, watching it closely, and when it was gone, soon found
the nest, with four eggs in it, in the grass-tuft from which it had
flown. Its action whilst spinning over the ground was very like that
of the nightjar when put up from her young ones." It is to be noted
here that this snipe flew a very little way from the nest, and when on
the ground did not travel over it to any extent, but only in a small
circle just at first, after which it kept in one place. The Arctic skua
(Richardson's skua, as some call it, but I hate such appropriative
titles--as though a species could be any man's property!) behaves in
the same kind of way, for, lying along on its breast, with its wings
spread out and beating the ground, it utters plaintive little pitiful
cries, keeping always in the same, or nearly the same, spot. This
has, of course, the effect of drawing one's attention to the bird,
and away from the eggs or young (whether it acts thus in regard to
both I am not quite sure, but believe that it does), but the effect
produced on one--though here, of course, as throughout, I only speak
for myself--is that the bird is in great mental distress--prostrated
as it were--rather than acting with any conscious "intent to deceive."
The same is the case with the nightjar, whose sudden spinning about
over the ground in a manner much more resembling a maimed bluebottle
or cockchafer than a bird, seems to proceed from some violent nervous
shock or mental disturbance. The same, too, though in a lesser degree,
may be said of the partridge, and in all cases it is obvious that the
bird is very much excited and _ausser sich_.
Darwin, if I remember rightly,[8] found it difficult to believe that
birds, when they thus distract our attention from their young to
themselves, do so with a full consciousness of what they are doing and
why they are doing it. When the female wild-duck, however, acts in this
manner, it is difficult, I think, to escape from this conclusion. She
flaps for a long way over the surface of the water, pausing every now
and again and waiting, as though to see the effect of her ruse, and
continuing her tactics as soon as you get up to her. Having thus led
you a long distance away, she rises, and leaving the river, flies in
an extended circle, which will ultimately bring her back to it by the
other bank when you are well out of the way. The chicks, meanwhile,
have (of course) scuttled in amongst the reeds and rushes, though they
often take some little while to conceal themselves. She acts thus on
a river or broad stretch of water, which enables her to keep you in
sight for some time. But it is obvious that if you come upon her with
her family in a very narrow and sharply winding stream, the first bend
of it will hide you from her, and she would then, assuming that she
is acting intelligently, have all the agony of mind of not knowing
whether her plan was succeeding or not. It was in such a situation
that I met her only last spring, and to my surprise--and indeed,
admiration--instead of flapping along the water as I have always known
her to do before in such a _contre-temps_, she instantly flew out on
to the opposite bank, and began to flap and struggle along the flat
marshy meadow-land, of course in full view. I crossed the stream and
pursued her, allowing her to "fool me to the top of my bent," and
this she appeared to me to do, or to think she was doing, on much the
same kind of _indicia_ as one would go by in the case of a man. Now,
unless this bird had wished to keep me in view, and thus judge of the
effect of her stratagem, or unless she feared that "out of sight"
would be "out of mind" with regard to herself (but this would be to
credit her with yet greater powers of reflection), why should she have
left the water, the element in which she usually and most naturally
performs these actions, to modify them on the land? Yet to suppose
that it has ever occurred suddenly, and as a new idea, to any bird to
act a pious fraud of this kind, would be to suppose wonders, and also
to be unevolutionary (almost as serious a matter nowadays as to be
un-English).
[8] But I have not been able to find the passage, so may be mistaken.
But may we not think that an act, which in its origin has been of a
nervous and, as it were, pathological character, has become, in time,
blended with intelligence, and that natural selection has not only
picked out those birds who best performed a mechanical action--which,
though it sprung merely from mental disturbance, was yet of a
beneficial nature--but also those whose intelligence began after a time
to enable them to see whereto such action tended, and thus consciously
to guide and improve it? There is evidence, I believe--though neither
space nor the nature of this slight work will allow me to go into
it--that such abnormal mental states as of old inspired "the pale-eyed
priest from the prophetic cell," and to-day influence priests or
medicine-men amongst savages (to go no farther), can be, and are,
combined with ordinary shrewd intelligence; nor does it seem too much
to suppose that a bird that was always seeing the effect of what it
did when it, as it were, fell into hysterics, should have come in time
to reckon upon the hysterics, to know what they were good for, and
even to some extent to direct them--as a great actor in an emotional
scene must govern himself in the main, though, probably, a great deal
of the gesture, action, and facial expression is unconsciously and
spontaneously performed.
Now, if we assume that these ruses employed by birds for the protection
of their young--as in the case of the wild-duck--have commenced in
purely involuntary movements, without any proposed object, the instance
here given of the snipe may perhaps throw some light upon their origin.
A bird, whilst incubating, and thus, hour after hour, doing violence
to its active and energetic disposition, is under the influence of a
strong force in opposition to and overcoming the forces which usually
govern it. Its mental state may be supposed to be a highly-wrought and
tense one, and it therefore does not seem surprising that some sudden
surprise and startle at such a time, by rousing a force opposite to
that under the control of which it then is, and producing thereby
a violent conflict, should throw it off its mental balance and so
produce something in the nature of hysteria or convulsions. But let
this once take place with anything like frequency in the case of any
bird, and natural selection will begin to act. As the eggs of a
bird are stationary, and do not run away or seek shelter whilst the
parent bird is thus behaving in their neighbourhood, it would, on the
whole, be better for it to sit close or to fly away in an ordinary and
non-betraying manner. Allowing this, then, as the eggs of a bird would
be less exposed to danger the less often the sitting bird went off them
in this way, might not natural selection keep throwing the impulse
to do so farther and farther backwards till after the incubatory
process was completed? Then the tendency would be encouraged--at
least in the case of birds whose young can early get about--for, as
a rule, such antics would shield them better than sitting still. The
young would generally be in several places--giving as many chances of
discovery--and, on account of the suddenness of the surprise, would
often be running or otherwise exposing themselves. Take, for instance,
the case of the wild-duck, where I have always found the brood a most
conspicuous object at first, and taking some time, even on reedy
rivers, to get into concealment.
And I can see no reason why an aiding intelligence in the performance
of such movements should not be selected _pari passu_ with the
movements themselves, though of a nervous and, originally, purely
automatic character. Natural selection would, in this way, develop a
special intelligence in the performance of some special actions, out of
proportion to the general intelligence of the creature performing them,
though, no doubt, this also would tend to be thereby enlarged. And this
is what, in fact, we often do see or seem to see.
I may add that when, a few days afterwards, I again approached this
same nest the bird went off it without any performance of the sort.
This, if we could be sure that it was the same bird, would seem to show
that the habit was in an unfixed and fluctuating condition. On the
other hand, a bird that acts thus in the case of its young, would, I
think, always act so.
Perhaps it may be wondered why I have not included the peewit in the
list of birds which employ, or appear to employ, a ruse in favour of
their young ones, since this bird is always given as the stock instance
of it. The reason is, that whilst the birds I mentioned have always,
in my experience, gone off, so to speak, like clock-work, when the
occasion for it arrived, I have never known a peewit to do so, though
I have probably disturbed as many scores--perhaps hundreds--of them,
under the requisite conditions, as I have units of the others. I have
also inquired of keepers and warreners, and found their experience to
tally with mine. They have spoken of the cock bird "leading you astray"
aerially, whilst the hen sits on the nest, and of both of them flying,
with screams, close about your head when the young are out, which
statements I have often verified. But they have never professed to
have seen a peewit flapping over the ground as with a broken wing, in
the way it is so constantly said to do. I cannot, therefore, but think
that, by some chance or other, an action common to many birds has been
particularly, and yet wrongly, ascribed to the peewit. As it seems to
me, this is just one of those cases where negative evidence is almost
as strong as affirmative, and though, of course, quite ready to accept
any properly witnessed instance of the peewit's acting in this way, I
cannot but conclude that it does so very rarely indeed.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER IV
Watching Wheatears, Dabchicks, Oyster-catchers, etc.
The wheatear is common over the warren-lands, and as I have been so
fortunate as to witness for a whole afternoon, and very closely, a
series of combined displays and combats on the part of two rival males,
which struck me as very interesting, and as bearing on the question of
sexual selection, I will give the account _in extenso_, as I noted it
down from point to point between the intervals of following the birds
about on my hands and knees. Should the narrative be tedious--and it
is, I confess, somewhat minute--I need not ask my readers to absolve
nature and give me the blame of it, for I am assured that anyone in
the least degree interested in birds and their ways might have lain and
watched these bizarreries a hundred times repeated, without wishing to
get up and go. My observations were made on the last day but one of
March, and are as follows:--
"2.30 (about).--Two male wheatears have for some time been hopping
about in each other's company, and one now makes a hostile
demonstration against the other. This he does by advancing and lowering
the head, with the beak pointed straight forward, ruffling out the
feathers, fanning the tail, and making a sudden, swift run towards him.
He stops, however, before the point of actual contact, and the two
birds hop about, each affecting to think very little about the other."
The wheatear, I should say, always hops, and, by so doing, always give
me something of a surprise, for there is that in his appearance which
does not suggest hopping, but rather that he would run over the ground
like a wagtail. His hops, however, are so quick, and take him forward
so smoothly, that the effect on the eye is often much more like running
than hopping. I therefore often speak of him as running, though, I
believe, he never does so in the strict sense of the word. To continue.
"After some time, during which there was nothing specially noteworthy
in their behaviour, the two birds flew, one after the other, to some
little distance off on a higher and more sandy part of the warren, and
here a female wheatear appeared, hopping near them. One of the males at
once ran to her, but had instantly to fly before the fierce wrath of
the other. The hen then flew to a stunted willow in the neighbourhood,
where she sat perched amongst the topmost twigs, the males not
following her, but continuing to hop about in each other's vicinity
as before. She remained there some five or ten minutes, when she flew
out over the warrens, and with my attention concentrated on the rival
birds, I lost her, and cannot say where she went down.
"One of the male wheatears now enters a shallow depression in the
ground--not a hole, or the mouth of a rabbit-burrow, but one of
those natural fallings away of the soil which make rugged and give
a character to these sandy, lichen-clothed wastes. As soon as he is
in it he seems to become excited, and running forward and coming out
on the opposite brink, he flies from this to the one by which he has
entered, hardly two feet off, then instantly back again, again to the
other, and so backwards and forwards some dozen or twenty times, so
rapidly that he makes of himself a little arch in the air constantly
spanning the hollow, all in the greatest excitement. Finishing here,
he runs a little way to another such depression, enters it, and coming
out again, acts in precisely the same way, making the same little
rapidly moving arch of two black up-and-down-pointed wings, moving now
this way, now that, now forwards, now backwards, from edge to edge of
the trough, perching each time on each edge of it, but so quickly, it
seems rather to be on the points of the wings than the feet that he
comes down. Wings are all one sees; they whirl forwards and backwards,
backwards and forwards, making a little arch or bridge, the highest
point of which, in the centre--which is the point of the upper wing--is
some two feet from the floor of the trough, whilst the point of the
lower one almost touches it. All this time the other male bird is quite
near, but seems to take little notice of the performance. At length the
frenzied one desists from his madness of motion, and the two now hop
about over the warren as before, closely in each other's company. In
some ten minutes or so there is the same display--or rather frenzy--but
whether made by the same bird or the other one I am unable to say. This
time it commences on the even turf and not in a hollow, but after a
few throws the bird finds one and throws, thenceforth, over that." I
have seen, I think, a Japanese acrobat throw a wonderful succession of
somersaults backwards and forwards within his own length. With the bird
there was no somersault, but the effect was something the same. The
man's body also presented the appearance of an arch in the air (as when
one vibrates a lighted joss-stick from side to side), but, as the bird
moved much more quickly, the resemblance in its case was more perfect.
"Once or twice again, now, one of the two birds acts in the same way,
always seeming to prefer to do so over a depression in the ground.
One then flies up a little way into the air, descends again, and,
on alighting, instantly recommences as before, again, I think, over
a slight hollow. The motion is equally violent, but not so long
continued, some seven or eight flings, perhaps, in all. At the end of
it he stops still, advances the head straight forwards, lowering it a
trifle, swells the feathers, and broadly fans the tail. Then the two
birds fly at each other, but almost in the act of closing they part,
with a little twitter, and commence hopping over the warren as before.
It is a constant little run of hops, a pause, and then another little
run of hops, each bird following the other about in turn, the distance
between them being, as a rule, from two or three feet to five or six
paces.
"3.10.--Another little fly up into the air, followed by the frenzied
dance on descending. Then the two come together in the mouth of a
rabbit-burrow, fly at each other as before, separate again almost
immediately, and continue their hopping over the warren, the one still
dogging the other.
"3.30.--The two fly at each other as though to fight; but, again, just
as they seem about to meet, they avoid, and quicker than the eye can
follow they are a yard or so apart. One of them then dances violently
from one depression of the soil to another, arching the space between
the two; at the end of it he fans out the tail and stands looking
defiantly at his rival, who fans his and returns the glance, then makes
a little run towards him, sweeping the ground with it. Instead of
fighting, however, which both the champions seem to be chary of, one of
them again runs into a hollow--this time a very shallow one--and begins
to dance, but in a manner slightly different. He now hardly rises from
the ground, over which he seems more to spin in a strange sort of
way than to fly--to buzz, as it were--in a confined area, and with a
tendency to go round and round.[9] Having done this a little, he runs
quickly from the hollow, plucks a few little bits of grass, returns
with them into it, drops them there, comes out again, hops about as
before, flies up into the air, descends, and again dances about.
[9] Very like the action of the nightjar when disturbed with the young
chicks.
"At about four the female reappears, flying from the warren towards the
same willow-tree where she had before sat. She perches in it again, and
after remaining but a short time, flies down, and once more becomes
invisible. Shortly afterwards one of the male birds flies to a little
distance, but whether towards her or not I cannot say. He then rises
into the air and descends with a twittering song, upon which the other
one, who has remained where he was, does so too. The two are now a good
way apart, but the distance is soon diminished till they are again
quite near, when one of them flies away, then turns and flies back
again and settles not quite so near. As he does so, the other one flies
in an opposite direction, and at the end of his flight rises into the
air with the twitter-song and descends, when the other immediately does
the same, just as before. Then again they hop, now this way, now that
way, but always diminishing the distance, till at length not more than
some three or four feet separates them. But it must not be supposed
(and this applies throughout) that the birds seem to have any sinister
intention, or even any impertinent curiosity, in regard to each other.
They do not advance openly to the attack, but get to close quarters in
a very odd sort of way. Seeming for the most part to be unconscious of
each other's presence, hopping constantly away from and approaching
one another but obliquely, they in reality dog each other's steps and
keep a constant eye on each other's movements. When at length there is
but this short space between them, they stand for a moment looking
at each other, yet without any very warlike demonstration. Then, all
at once, one darts upon the other--so swiftly that I cannot be sure
whether he flies, hops, or does both--and there is now a fierce and
prolonged fight. For a moment or two they are in the air (though not
at any height), then struggling on the ground, when one, getting
uppermost, holds the other down. At last they separate, and for a few
seconds stand close together as though recovering breath. Then, as by
mutual consent, they retire from each other to a short distance and
hop about again in the same manner as before. One of them then again
flies singing into the air, and on coming down dances, but to this
the other does not respond, and now all goes on in the usual way, the
birds getting once or twice again quite close, but separating without
fighting. At half-past four there is another twittering flight into the
air, and a dance on descent, which is emulated in a few minutes by the
rival bird. Shortly afterwards one flies a considerable way off, but is
followed almost at once by the other, and the same thing goes on. Then
there is another flight and song with, this time, no dance on descent,
but, as though to make up for this omission, on the next occasion,
which is some few minutes afterwards, there are two distinct transports
on alighting, separated by a short interval. On this occasion the bird
did not sing either in ascending or descending.
"Here some other birds claimed my attention, and I was away for a
quarter of an hour. On returning, at a quarter to five, I found the
two wheatears still together, and precisely the same thing going on.
Shortly after five they again fought, but this time entirely in the
air. They mounted, fighting, to a considerable height, descended,
still doing so, and separated in alighting. Afterwards both of them
sang whilst on the ground, and then one mounted up, still singing, and
danced when he came down. At half-past five I could only see one of the
birds, and this one I noticed to run several times in and out of one
of those sandy depressions I have spoken of, and which seem to play
such a part in these curious performances. A little later both of them
seem gone, but now, at a quarter to six, as I am about to follow their
example, I again see them, in company with the hen. She shortly runs a
little away from them, the two males remaining together, but making no
further demonstration. In a little, one of them flies to her, and these
two are now in each other's company, singing, flying, and twittering,
for some ten minutes. It would seem as though she had made her choice,
and that this was submitted to by the rejected bird, but just before
leaving at six o'clock all three are again together."
It is to be observed here that these two birds, though they were in
active and excited rivalry for the greater part of an afternoon, and
though they made many feints and, as it were, endeavours to fight,
yet only really fought twice, seeming, indeed, to have a considerable
respect for each other's prowess, and "letting I dare not wait upon
I will" during most of the time. Perhaps they were brave, but the
idea given me by the whole thing was that of two cowards trying to
work themselves up into a sufficient degree of fury to overcome, for
a moment or two, their natural timidity. "Willing to wound, but yet
afraid to strike," seemed to me to describe their mental attitude.
Much has been said as to the pugnacity of birds, but I think that a
large amount of timidity often mingles with this pugnacity, even in
the most pugnacious kinds. I have seen, for instance, two pheasants
sit, first, face to face, pecking timidly at, or rather towards, each
other, and then, on rising, make various little half-hearted feints
and runs, one at another, as though trying to fight and not being
able to, and this for quite a long time. At last one of them ran to
some distance away, and then, turning, made a most tremendous, fiery
rush down upon the other one, like a knight in the tilt-yard. Nothing
could have looked bolder, more spirited, more full of fire and fury,
but--just like these wheatears--at the very moment that he should
have hurled himself upon his foe he swerved timidly aside, and all
his brave carriage was gone in a moment. And what struck me (and,
indeed, as humorous) was that this other bird--the one thus charged
down upon--who had been just as timid, and had seemed to find fighting
equally difficult, did not retreat, as one might have expected, before
this great show, but sat quietly, as knowing it to be "indeed but
show," and that there was nothing really to fear. In fact, it was like
the drawing of swords between Nym and Pistol in _Henry V._, each being
afraid to use his, and knowing the other to be so too. Black-cocks,
again, are often very ready to avoid a conflict, and dance much more
fiercely than they fight. A bird, indeed, which is a very demon in the
"spiel" or "lek-platz" may, as I have seen, become meek and retreat
from it upon the entry of another, which other is then, of course,
_ipso facto_, the boldest bird in existence. Blackbirds are considered
to be quarrelsome,[10] and I know that even the hens--or, perhaps, they
especially--will sometimes fight in the most vindictive manner. But, as
with these wheatears, I have seen in the case of rival cock blackbirds
a great deal of chariness of real fighting mingle with much ostentation
of being ready to fight.
[10] Whereas the thrush (it is usually added) is peaceable. But this is
one of those passed-on things with which natural history is burdened.
From my own experience, I know it to be otherwise. I have watched
thrushes fighting furiously, not only with one another but with the
blackbird also.
I am not, of course, disputing the pugnacity of birds during the
breeding season and often at other times. That is quite beyond doubt,
and proofs or instances of it are altogether superfluous. But the
pugnacity is all the greater if, in order for it to assert itself, a
greater or less degree of timidity, varying, of course, in different
species and individuals, must first be overcome. Assuming that this is
sometimes the case (and I know not how else such instances as I have
given are to be explained), is it so unlikely that rival birds, wishing
to fight yet half afraid to, and being thus in a state of great nervous
tension, should fall into certain violent or frenzied movements, into
little paroxysms of fury, as when a man is popularly said to "dance
with rage"? Anything that excites highly tends to exalt the courage and
conquer fear, as we know with our own martial music, to say nothing of
the "pyrrhic" and other dances. It seems possible, therefore, that
such violent movements as are here imagined might have this effect,
and thus, though excited originally by rage--or some high state of
emotion--only, might be persisted in and increased through experience
of their efficacy. But if this does ever happen, may we not have here
the origin--or one of the origins--of those undoubted displays made by
the male bird to the female, on which the theory of sexual selection
is chiefly based? That the male birds should, in the beginning, have
consciously displayed their plumage, in however slight a manner, to
the females, with an idea of it striking them, seems improbable, and,
even if we might assume the intelligence requisite for this, the theory
of sexual selection supposes the beauty of the plumage to have been
gained by the display of it, not that the display has been founded
upon the beauty. Then what should first lead a bird of dull plumage
consciously to display this plumage before the female? A mere habit of
the male, increased and perfected by the selective agency of the female
(as this is explained by Darwin), has hitherto--as far as I know--been
considered a sufficient explanation of the origin and early stages of
such displays as are now made by the great bustard, the various birds
of paradise, or the argus pheasant. But if we can show a likelihood as
to how this habit has arisen we are, at least, a step farther forward,
even if a slight difficulty has not thereby been removed.
Now, with regard to these wheatears, it will, I think, be admitted that
the little frenzies of the male birds--as I have described them--were
of a very marked, and, indeed, extraordinary nature, and also,
perhaps, that it is more easy to look upon them as sudden bursts of
excitement--nerve-storms or emotional whirlwinds, so to speak--than
as displays intended to attract the attention of the female bird.
Certainly there was nothing like a set display of the plumage; and,
with regard to the female, the question arises, Where was she, at least
during the greater part of the time? The two male birds in the course
of their drama got over a considerable amount of ground, and constantly
flew from one part to another, so that, in order to have had anything
like a good view, the female must have accompanied them, and I must
then, perforce, have seen her, which I did not, except on the occasions
related. She was, therefore, not with them, and, if watching them
at all, could only have been doing so from such a distance that the
dancings of the male birds would have been very much thrown away. Yet
that she took some interest in what was going on appears likely from
her flying up twice into the willow tree during its continuance, and
being with the two rivals at the end of the day. She might, too, have
been listening to the song and observing the flights up into the air,
which would have been much more noticeable from a distance.
One might expect a female bird to take _some_ interest in two male ones
fighting for her merely, without any adjunct, and if they added to the
fighting peculiar violent movements, such as those here described, that
interest would tend to become increased. Now I can imagine that with
this material of violent motions on the one side and some amount of
interested curiosity on the other, the former might gradually come to
be a display made entirely for the female, and the latter a greater or
lesser degree of pleasurable excitement raised by it with a choice in
accordance, which is sexual selection. And that the display would come
at last to be made intelligently, and with a view to a proposed end--as
in the case supposed of the female wild duck (or other bird) diverting
attention from its young--I can also understand. In both instances mere
nervous movements due to a high state of excitement would have been
directed into a certain channel and then perfected by the agency either
of natural or sexual selection.
On this view the curiosity (passing insensibly into interest and
satisfaction) of the female bird would have been directed, at first,
not to the plumage but to the frenzied actions--the antics--of the
male, and he, on his part, would have first consciously displayed
only these. From this to the more refined appreciation of colours and
patterns may have been a very gradual process, but one can understand
the one growing out of the other, for waving plumes and fluttering
wings would still be action, and action is emphasised by colour.
Where, however, such movements had not been seized upon and controlled
by the latter of these two powers--_i.e._ sexual selection--(and there
is no necessity that they should be), we should have antics not in the
nature of sexual display properly speaking, but which might yet bear a
greater or less resemblance to such. That this is, in fact, the case
has been pointed out by the opponents of sexual selection, and often
as if it were evidence against it (though no one, unfortunately, can
point to men as a ground for disbelief in armies). Mr Hudson, for
instance, in his very interesting work, "The Naturalist in La Plata,"
after bringing forward a number of cases of curious dance-movements (or
of song), performed by birds, and which are, in his opinion, not to be
explained on the theory of sexual selection, says, in regard to other
cases brought forward by Darwin in support of that theory:
"How unfair the argument is, based on these carefully selected cases
gathered from all regions of the globe, and often not properly
reported, is seen when we turn from the book[11] to nature, and closely
consider the habits and actions of all the species inhabiting any _one_
district!"
[11] But from _which_ "book"? Not, I suppose, from Darwin's alone.
Now, had Darwin been of opinion that antics performed by a bird which
could not, or could not easily, be explained by his theory, were fatal
to it in other cases--if he had thought that the one was inconsistent
with the other--then, no doubt, it would have been unfair on his
part to have marshalled the affirmative evidence without concerning
himself with the negative. But why should he have held that view, or
on what good grounds can such a view be maintained? As well might it
be argued--so it appears to me--that woollen or other goods could
only have been produced through the action of the loom, or some such
special machinery. But let the wool be there, and it can be worked
up in various ways. Mr Hudson would account for all such displays or
exhibitions by "a universal joyous instinct" present throughout nature,
but to which birds are more subject than mammals. I do not dispute
the instinct--or rather, perhaps, the emotion--or that some of the
displays in question may be due to it simply and solely: but I cannot
believe that all are. Why should this be the case, or how can movements
which are often of a complex and elaborate nature be explained solely
by reference to some large general factor, such as joy or vital energy?
These may lie at the root of all; but something else, some more special
process is, I think, in many cases required. One would not be content
to explain all the phenomena of history by a reference to human nature,
and though it may be true, as the Kaffirs say, that in a cattle-kraal
there can only be one bull, yet nature is a good deal larger than a
cattle-kraal. I believe myself that various antics which are performed
by birds have grown out of various nervous, excited, or automatic
movements arising under the influence of various special causes. Two
such possible causes--viz. (1) sudden alarm whilst incubating, and
(2) paroxysms of rage or nervous excitement during rivalry for the
female I have already indicated. Two other possible ones have also been
suggested to me by some of my observations, and I will now, by the aid
of these, make an attempt--I daresay a lame one--to throw light on the
possible origin of a very extraordinary case of bird-antics, described
by Mr Hudson in the work I have mentioned, and which is believed by him
to be unique.
The bird in question is the spur-winged lapwing, and the following is
Mr Hudson's account of its performances:--
"If a person watches any two birds for some time--for they live in
pairs--he will see another lapwing, one of a neighbouring couple, rise
up and fly to them, leaving his own mate to guard their chosen ground;
and instead of resenting this visit as an unwarranted intrusion on
their domain, as they would certainly resent the approach of almost any
other bird, they welcome it with notes and signs of pleasure. Advancing
to the visitor, they place themselves behind it; then all three keeping
step begin a rapid march, uttering resonant drumming notes in time
with their movements, the notes of the pair behind being emitted in a
stream, like a drum-roll, while the leader utters loud single notes
at regular intervals. The march ceases; the leader elevates his wings
and stands erect and motionless, still uttering loud notes; while the
other two, with puffed-out plumage, and standing exactly abreast, stoop
forward and downward until the tips of their beaks touch the ground,
and, sinking their rhythmical voices to a murmur, remain for some time
in this position. The performance is then over, and the visitor goes
back to his own ground and mate, to receive a visitor himself later on."
Now the most curious point in this remarkable performance, so well
described, is that three birds--a pair (male and female), and one
other, whether male or female is not stated--take part in it, and how
is this fundamental peculiarity to be explained better on the theory
of "a universal joyous instinct" than on that of sexual selection, if,
indeed, the former one helps us so well? Joy, no doubt, is there, but
something else--some shaping force--is surely required to account for
the particular form in which it finds expression. Now with regard to
the peculiarity pointed out--the odd bird (though all act oddly)--I
have, whilst watching birds in the early spring, been struck by the
frequency with which three of the same species will be seen in each
other's company, usually chasing one another about, and, as with the
spur-winged lapwing, these three are almost always made up of a pair (a
male and female) and another bird, a male, as I believe. It may be said
that here there can be no analogy, for that it is either merely a case
of two males courting one female, or that the odd male is both a rival
and intruder, endeavouring to come between the married happiness of two
who have made their choice. This latter explanation is the one that has
generally seemed to me to meet the case, but what I have frequently
noticed with surprise is that the state of anger, or, indeed, fury,
which one might imagine would obtain under such circumstances between
the two male birds, is either wholly absent, or very much subdued. Now
it is in the case of our own peewit, more than with any other species,
that I have noticed this quite amicable association of three birds, two
of which would often seem to be a paired couple, and as my notes, made
whilst I had the birds under observation, both illustrate the point and
contain the explanation of it which I have to offer, I will here quote
from them:
"_February 25th._--Three peewits in company with each other. Two are
flying close together, as though they were a paired couple, whilst one
follows them at a short interval.
"_February 27th._--Three peewits flying together in the same way as
before--that is to say two, which may be paired birds, are close
together, whilst there is commonly a short space between them and the
third one. This arrangement may be temporarily suspended or reversed
by the bird that has been separated getting up to the other two, when
one of these will often fall behind, so that now the bird which was the
follower makes one of the two advanced ones, whilst one of these has
taken its place. As there is no sexual distinction in the plumage of
peewits,[12] it is impossible to be quite sure to what sex each of these
birds belongs, but I believe that two of them are male and female, and
the third a male, either of the two males being alternately in the
close company of the female. This, indeed, may be in the nature of the
matter. The pairing off of the birds, we will suppose--as is likely
at this time--is not yet completed, and, assuming two of the three
to be of one sex, it may not be quite settled with which of them the
third will pair. It is not, indeed, necessary to suppose that either
of the three will eventually pair with one of the others, though this
may be probable. But what appears to me to obtain is this, that the
association of two birds (male and female) together has a tendency
to bring up a third, presumably a male, who envies this arrangement,
and would fain itself make one of the two. But how, then, is the
amicableness--or, at any rate, the absence of any marked evidence of
hostility--to be accounted for? I believe that at this early season the
sexual feelings have not yet become fully developed, or so strong as
to produce jealousy to any active extent. Things are only beginning,
the emotions are, as yet, in their infancy, and thus, I believe,
the curious, not fully defined nature of the actions of the three
birds--their seeming to be half unconscious of what they really want
or mean--may be accounted for. As the season advances, the tendency
will be more and more for the two birds (but I here speak of birds
generally) to avoid, or actively to drive away, the third, and for the
third to find another bird for a partner, the whole being tempered by
the character both of the species of bird and the individual birds
belonging to it. The three birds being thus brought together, without
the feelings being of a very strong or defined character, and the
feelings of animals generally being, as I believe they are, of a very
plastic nature (by which I mean that they pass easily from one channel
into another), I can understand a sort of sport or game of three
birds together arising, at first almost imperceptible, till, by the
fundamental laws of evolution--variation and inheritance--it might
pass into something highly peculiar, as in the case of the spur-winged
lapwing--for though such sport might commence in the air, there would
be no reason why it should not pass from thence on to the ground. And
that the number should be three, and not more, is thus also explained,
for whilst the sight of a paired male and female bird would be likely
to excite the sexual feelings--even though, as here supposed, somewhat
languid--of another male, so as to make it join them, three together
would hardly have this effect in an equal degree, and, moreover, more
than three would tend to become a flock, when other feelings would
come into play. However this may be, I have, as a matter of fact, been
struck with the frequency with which, in the early spring, three birds
will keep together, as and in the manner before stated."
[12] For ordinary field observation at least.
This, it will be observed, was written at a time of year when peewits
are only beginning their nuptial antics, though, as to their having
begun them, there is no doubt, as I had carefully noted this at a still
earlier date. But long subsequent to this, and when the theory of a
not fully developed state of the sexual feelings could no longer be
tenable as an explanation of non-combativeness, I noticed, or thought I
noticed, a more than usual tendency in this species for a single bird
to project itself, so to speak, into the midst of a married pair, and
for its presence not to be resented, but rather otherwise. If this be
really so--for, of course, I may be deceived--it is interesting, and
perhaps assists the suggestion which I have offered as to the origin of
the astonishing conduct of the spur-winged lapwing, the two being such
near relations. When the habit had once commenced, it might continue
and become fixed, irrespective of season.
But it may be said that all the evidence which I here bring forward
is of three birds being together, and that there is none as to any
sport or antic, of however incipient or rudimentary a nature. I have,
however, often seen peewits sport and wanton in the air in threes, but
I admit that more evidence in this direction is wanted. The little
that I have, and will here give, relates, not to the peewit, but to
two birds very different both to it and to each other. The first of
these is that attractive and delightful little creature, the dabchick
or little grebe (_Podiceps fluviatilis_), a bird whose society I have
always cultivated to the best of my ability. My first note, taken on
14th December, I give merely by way of showing that sexual feelings
in birds may not always lie entirely dormant, even in the depth of
winter; for, from having long watched the same birds in the same little
reedy creek, I feel sure that the two I here chronicle were male and
female.
These were "pursuing each other, first over the water--fly-flapping
along the surface in their peculiar way--then on and under it, ducking,
coming up close together, ducking again, and so on, flapping, ducking,
and swimming, each in turn. It is very sustained and animated,
suggesting an amorous pursuit of the female by the male, even at
this time of year. They make a great noise and splashing, they are
obstreperous, and a hen moor-hen standing staidly on some bent reeds
gives a look as though doubtful of the strict propriety of such
conduct,--in the winter,--then with an 'Ah, well! dabchicks will be
dabchicks, I suppose, at all times,' resigns herself to the inevitable,
and takes to preening her feathers." In the other case, which is the
one that bears more directly on the question under discussion, three
dabchicks pursued each other in this manner, one behind the other, and
following the course of the stream. The last bird was particularly
energetic, and seemed determined to interfere with the pursuit of the
foremost by the one just in front of him. "When quite near me they all
three pitch down and instantly dive. The first to come up stops dead
still on the water, looking keenly and expectantly over it, his neck
stretched rigidly out, his head darting forward from it at a right
angle, as rigid as the neck. The instant another one appears, he dives
again with a suddenness as of the lid of a box going down with a snap,
and this other one has seen him at the same time, and dives still more
quickly, if that were possible--so quickly that there is just a swirl
on the water, the appearance seems part of the disappearance, 'and
nothing is but what is not.' And this, as I think, continues, but owing
to the rapid progress of the birds under the water, and their getting
amongst flags and weeds, I never have an equally 'convincing' sight of
it."
Now, here, on the 4th February, we have, as in the case of the peewits,
three birds together, all in pursuit of each other, but two, as it
appeared to me, in a little more intimate association, and the third
seeming to wish to _make_ a third. They chase each other excitedly down
the stream for a little, then all pitch down upon it and dive, and one,
upon coming up, dives again at the merest sight of another who behaves
similarly, a peculiarly set and rigid attitude being adopted by the
waiting bird. Is this not something like a little romp or water-dance
following on the excitement of the chase? True, it may have been
fighting between the two males, for dabchicks, like the great crested
grebe and other water-birds, probably fight by diving and attacking
each other beneath the surface. To my eyes, however, it had very much
the appearance of a romp, or, at any rate, a something betwixt sport
and earnest. Assuming it to have been so, then here is a habit of a
sport or antic between three birds at the end of an excited chase of
each other. Now supposing this habit to increase, then, as the birds
became more enamoured of their little sport--as it became more and
more a fixed habit with them--is it not likely that the preliminary
chase before the romp began would be thrown more and more into the
background? The more one enjoys a thing, the more eager is one to begin
it, and as here, the longer the chase lasted, the longer must the romp
at the end be postponed, the tendency would be for the former to become
shortened and shortened, till at length it ceased altogether, the
approach of the one bird getting to be associated in the minds of the
other two with the sport or game alone. In the final stage this last
might be extraordinary in a high degree, but every trace of its origin,
as here suggested, would have vanished. And so strongly might the habit
or instinct of thus romping _à trois_ be now implanted, that one of
any pair of birds would be ready to join any other pair, and they to
receive him, in order to indulge in it.
I can, indeed, see no reason why birds that sported well should succeed
in life better than others, but if such sporting were an outcome of
general vigour, and vigorous birds were selected, their sportings would
be selected also. And that movements of this sort would tend sooner
or later--if only by mere preference--to fall into some sort of form,
also seems not unlikely. It will be remembered that what I have just
recounted took place early in February, whereas the dabchick does not,
in my experience, commonly build before May. One would not, at so early
a period, expect to find the jealous and combative feelings of the
male in regard to the female bird fully awake, but if there were apt
to be occasional sudden outbursts of this--little flare-ups, inducing
appropriate action for a few moments and then passing quickly away--the
birds might be left, as it were, surprised at themselves and not
quite knowing what had started them off. The originating cause would
have ceased or subsided, but the excitation consequent on the bodily
activity which had been thus aroused would require a further outlet,
and this might pass in time into some prescribed play or antic which
might afterwards be indulged in for its own sake.
My other instance is that of the oyster-catcher. If anyone will watch
these birds closely, he may see three of them go through a performance
bearing the same sort of resemblance to that of the spur-winged
lapwing, that the combs of the humble-bee do to the more perfect ones
of the hive-bee. He may see, for instance, two standing side by side
with their heads bent forwards and downwards, as the two lapwings bend
theirs, though here the length of the brilliant, orange-red bills,
the tips of which, also, almost touch the ground, make the angle of
inclination a much lesser one. In this attitude they both of them utter
a long, continuous, piping note, of a very powerful and penetrative
quality, sometimes swaying their heads from side to side as though in
ecstasy at their own performance, and seeming to listen intently in a
manner strongly suggestive of the musical connoisseur. The third bird,
who is obviously the female, either stands or walks at a short distance
from the two pipers, who will frequently follow and press upon her, and
then, though the march is not quite so formal and regular, it yet bears
for a few moments a considerable resemblance to that of the spur-winged
lapwing, as described and figured in Mr Hudson's work. Of course, there
is really no march at all in the proper sense of the word, but there is
the occasional resemblance, and the resemblance suggests the origin.
In the case of the spur-winged lapwing the play is commenced by one
bird of a pair flying to another pair, and thus making the trio. There
is the same kind of rough and imperfect resemblance to this in the way
in which these oyster-catcher trios commonly open, but as an account of
what I actually saw may give a better idea of how the birds act than
can a mere generalisation, I will illustrate the last point, as well as
those others which I have mentioned, by this means.
"When one of the male birds--standing near the female--commences thus
to pipe, the other one, if on the same rock, runs excitedly up to
him, and pushing him out of the way so as to occupy almost his exact
place, pipes himself, as though he would do so instead of him. The
other, however, is not to be silenced, but standing close by him the
two pipe together, throwing their heads from time to time in each
other's direction, and then back again, in a frenzy or ecstasy, as
though they were Highland bagpipers of rival clans piping against each
other, and swinging their instruments as they grew inspired by their
strains. Continuing thus to act, the two male birds approach and press
upon the female. She flies to a corner of the rock, the two, still
piping vigorously, follow and again press upon her. She flies down
upon a lower ledge of it, the two pipe down at her from above. She
flies from the rock, they half raise their heads, and cease to pipe,
then with single querulous notes, and in their ordinary attitude, walk
disconsolately about.
"After some ten minutes the female flies back again. The demeanour
of the two birds is at once visibly affected, and they begin to pipe
again, though not so vigorously as before. They continue to do so, more
or less, at intervals, the third bird (the female) remaining always
passive, and never once piping. All at once one of the two pipers flies
violently at the other, who flies off, and is closely pursued by him.
They alight--it would seem together--on the edge of a great rocky slab,
but are instantly at some little distance apart, looking at each other
and bearing themselves after the manner of rivals. How they separated,
whether as recoiling from a conflict, or avoiding it, I cannot now say.
The movements of birds are often so quick, that the eye, though it may
follow, forgets them as they pass. On another occasion, a bird close to
where I sit, on hearing the pipe from a rock a little off the shore,
becomes excited, pipes for a moment itself, and then darts off to the
rock. On alighting, he instantly runs to the piping bird, and the two
pipe together to a third, exactly as before. This third one, silent and
unresponsive, soon flies away. The piping instantly ceases, and the two
birds assume normal attitudes.
"The note of the male oyster-catcher when thus courting the female
differs both from its ordinary one, and, as I think, from that of the
female. The usual note is a loud 'wich, wich, wich,' or some similar
sharp, penetrative cry, constantly reiterated. The pipe is a much more
wonderful affair, and, though harsh, is like a real composition. It is
of long continuance, beginning with something like 'kee, kee, kee, kee,
ker-vie, ker-vie, ker-vie, ker-vie, ker-vie,' a loud and ear-piercing
clamour. Gradually, however, it sinks, becoming in its later stages
quite faint, and ending, commonly, in a sort of long-drawn-out,
quavering trill which the bird seems to pause upon with pleasure.
Holding down its head all the time, it seems to drink in every tittle
of the sound, and to strive to give it its full and just expression.
So much has it, whilst doing this, the appearance of a musician, and
so much does the long, straight, orange bill resemble a pipe it is
playing on, that if fingers were to appear there of a sudden, and begin
to 'govern the stops,' one would hardly feel surprise--for a moment or
two. A point to be noted is that the piping bird is not always turned
towards the female he is courting, even when close beside her. He turns
towards her, commonly (perhaps always), when he begins, but having
once begun, he seems more enthralled by his own music than by her, and
will turn from side to side, or even right round and away from her, as
though in the rhythmical sway of his piping."
Here, then, at last, we have upon our own shores, and amongst our own
birds, an unmistakable case of a display or performance of a very
marked character, in which three birds are present, though one takes
only a passive part. The motive power here is obviously sexual; two
males are, at least to all appearance, courting one female. But I made
at the time this special observation, that, though the rival birds
did, upon two occasions, fly at each other, and though the piping of
one always brought the other over to him to pipe in rivalry, yet,
when once they began to pipe vigorously, their interest seemed to
become centred in, and, as it were, abstracted into this. The actual
display, in this case vocal, seemed to have become, or to be in
process of becoming, of more importance than the emotion which had
given birth to it, the essence seemed merged into the form, the book
had become its binding. I suggest that this may be sometimes actually
the case in nature, that a movement, or a note, or series of notes, may
become itself so all-absorbing as to demand the whole consciousness
of the bird who, in performing it, forgets the why and the wherefore
of the performance. Let this process once commence, and certain
movements--antics--performed at first with a definite object, might be
gone through at last for themselves alone, the object having become now
merely to perform them. In this case, we should have a pure antic or
display, the reason of it being unobvious and its origin a puzzle. Such
a principle, if it exists, might, perhaps, be called the "law of the
formalisation of actions once purposive" (which sounds learned enough),
and perhaps traces of it may be seen amongst ourselves. What, for
instance, are our civilised dances except movements which have become
quite formal and meaningless, but which once, as in the war-dance of
the savage, had an intense significance? The analogy is not quite
perfect, unless we could show that actual war, for instance, had
sometimes passed into a dance. Whether this has ever been the case with
man I do not know, but I believe that it may have actually happened
with some birds, for which idea I will further on adduce my, perhaps,
somewhat slender evidence. But, coming back to the oyster-catchers, I
can understand that under such a law as this, the actions of the two
male birds in regard to the female might gradually get to be of a
quite formal and non-courting nature, and, though I will not here try
to indicate the steps by which the female bird might gradually enter
into the dance-movements or the song, they do not seem to me impossible
to conceive of. The number of performers, however, having once become
fixed, would be likely to continue, through habit, as long as no other
influence arose to affect it.
The fact that it was in the early days of July, when the true
courting-season should have been over, that I witnessed these
movements, may perhaps strengthen the above view.
In seeking to explain such performances as those of the spur-winged
lapwing in this latter way, one must assume the number of three
birds to have originated in accordance with general principles, and
that first there has been a real courtship of the female bird by two
males, the antics proper to which have, at last, become stereotyped
into a formal dance or display. This, however, would not exclude the
possibility of what I have suggested in the case of the dabchicks and
common peewit, and I believe myself that it is not by one only, but by
many causes, that the many curious antics of birds are to be explained.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER V
Watching Gulls and Skuas
The oyster-catcher brings us to the sea, so to sea-birds I will
consecrate the next few chapters.
Gulls and skuas are best watched on some lonely, island, where they
breed, and thither we will now transfer ourselves.
They breed together, or, more strictly speaking, conterminously, and
more than half of the whole island--all that part where it is a peaty
waste clothed with a thin brown heather--is now, in early June, their
assembly ground and prospective nursery. The gulls are in much the
greater numbers, and all of them here are of the black-backed species,
mostly the lesser of the two so named, but with a fair sprinkling of
the greater black-backed also. Lying down and sweeping the distance
with the glasses--for near they have risen and float overhead in a
clamorous cloud--one sees everywhere the bright, white dottings of
their breasts, soft-gleaming amidst the uniform brown of the heather.
They are not at all crowded, but scattered widely about at irregular
and, for the most part, considerable intervals. There is rarely a
group, and though many pairs may be seen standing closely together, yet
this is the exception rather than the rule. Most birds of such pairs as
are present are some three or four to a dozen or twenty yards apart,
whilst the greater number of the whole assembly stand singly, the bird
nearest to each, at a much greater distance, being one of another pair.
This is because the partner birds are for the time being absent, but
every now and again one may be seen to fly up and join the solitary
one, whilst, similarly, one of a couple will from time to time fly
off and leave the other alone. Thus, though the eye will distinguish
at any time many paired couples, to the majority of the birds it will
not be able to assign a partner with certainty. But this varies very
much. On some occasions there will be many more close couples than on
others, and it is when this is the case that the gullery has the most
pleasing appearance. Here and there one sees a bird, not standing, but
couched closely down amidst the heather. These birds have laid, and are
now hatching, their eggs. For the most part they are alone, but as the
season advances and they become more and more numerous, the partner may
often be seen standing near the nest, and presenting every appearance
of a joint interest and proprietorship in it.
When a bird flies up to its partner it usually comes down close beside
it. The two will then be together for awhile, but soon they either walk
or fly to a little distance from one another. After remaining apart
for a longer or shorter time they visit again, then again separate, and
so they continue to act, at longer or shorter intervals, till one or
other of them flies off to sea.
This system of making each other little visits and then going away
and remaining for some time apart, seems a feature of the gull tribe
generally, and it is particularly marked in the case of the great skua.
A pair of these birds will each have its apartments, so to speak, and,
by turns, each will be the caller on or the receiver of a call from the
other. Either, one will walk or fly directly over to where the other is
standing or reclining, or it will make several circling sweeps before
coming down beside it, or else--for this is another fashion--each of
them will set out to call on the other, and meeting in the centre
between their respective places, have their gossip there.
However the meeting takes place, when the birds are together one of
them will commonly bow its head down towards the ground in a heavy sort
of manner, whilst the other stands facing it with the head and bill
lifted into the air. All at once one of the birds--usually, I think,
the caller, if either has remained at home--turns round, raises its
wings above its back, and holding them thus, makes a heavy sort of
spring or running leap forward along the ground. This it does several
times, lowering the wings each time that it pauses, and raising them
again to make the leap. From this it might be thought that the bird
flew rather than leapt, but this, when I saw it, did not appear to me
to be the case. It did not fly, but only jumped with the wings held up.
The birds are now apart again as before, but after a short interval
the one that has behaved in this odd way returns, and they again stand
_vis-à-vis_, regarding each other, but this time without so much bowing
or raising of the head. Then one of them--and I think it is the same
one--turning as before, there is almost an exact repetition, and this
may take place some three or four times in the course of an hour.
The two will then often take wing and fly for a while together,
sometimes over the sea, but more often in a series of wide circles
round and about their home. They are masters of flight, and, after
two or three flaps, will glide for long distances without an effort,
alternately rising and sinking, varying their direction by a turn of
the head or, as it seems, by presenting the broad surface of their
wings to the different points of the compass, and sweeping either with
or against the wind, apparently with equal ease. Or, with the wind
blowing violently (its normal state), they will neither advance nor
recede, and it is certainly a very surprising thing to see one of these
great sombre-plumaged birds hanging motionless, or almost motionless
at but a foot or so above the long coarse grass, which is being all
the while bent and swayed in the direction towards which its head is
turned; if it advances at all, it is against the bend of the grass.
But though I have said that the great skua is a master of flight, I
have not yet termed its flight either graceful or majestic. For a
long time, indeed (during which I had only seen it near its temporary
home), I was unable to do so, not, at least, with a full conviction,
for though I admired it, yet there seemed always to be in it some want
which I felt, but was unable to define. It puzzled me, but at last I
discovered what it was, and my discovery, which acquits the bird and is
to the honour of nature, I will give as I wrote it down directly after
I had made it.
"One of the great skuas has now flown right out to sea. There its
flight, which is peculiar, becomes instantly very graceful. Descending
with a sweep, which, though majestic, is yet soft and gentle, it seems
about to sink upon the waves, when, almost as it touches them, it
glides again softly upwards, to descend once more in the same manner.
Thus, ever rising and sinking, seeming always about to rest, yet never
resting, it glides, tireless, and seems to coquet with the sea. On
land, too, these wide circling sweeps had had a grace and charm, but
it had not entirely pleased the eye. Something had been absent, but
what that something was, it had been beyond me to say. Now, I knew
it. What it wanted had been the illimitable plain of the ocean which,
in a moment, took away all heaviness from the form and all harshness
from the colouring. The sombreness of the sea blends now with its own,
and the waves are moving with its own motion. All is in harmony, the
picture has found its frame." Gulls, too, are more graceful when they
sweep over the sea than the shore near it. They have then softness and
expanse as a background. The latter, I think, is the more important,
and may be unconsciously demanded by association of ideas. Earth had
not been wide enough for the great skua.
[Illustration: _Great Skuas: Nuptial Flight and Pose._]
Often when one of the great skuas is circling round, and the other
standing at its post, this one will stretch itself up and raise its
wings above the back every time its partner passes. This raising of
the wings enters into one of the most salient of the many nuptial
antics of this bird, which I will now describe. In its completest form
it commences aerially. "The two birds have been circle-soaring one
above the other, and are now at a considerable height above one of
their chosen standing-places, when the lower one floats with the wings
extended, but raised very considerably--half-way, perhaps, towards
meeting over the back--an action which, in their flight, is uncommon.
As it does this it utters a note like 'a-er, a-er, a-er' (a as in
'as'), upon which, as at a signal, the other one floats in the same
manner, and both now descend thus, together, to the ground. Standing,
then, the one behind the other, at about a yard's distance and faced
the same way, both of them throw up their heads, raise their wings
above their backs, pointing them backwards, and stand thus for some
seconds fixed and motionless, looking just like an heraldic device. At
the same time they utter a cry which sounds like 'skirrr' or 'skeerrr.'
The foremost bird then flies off, and is instantly followed by the
other."
If the wings were not extended, this pose would somewhat resemble that
of the great plovers, for though the neck is stretched more forwards,
it is curved in the same curious way, and the head, though held
high, is bent towards the ground. The wings, however, give it quite
a different character, and I have, I feel sure, seen some figures of
birds on a shield whose attitude bore a wonderful resemblance to that
of these skuas. May not some of the figures of animals in heraldry
have come right down from savage times, even if they do not represent
totems? Savages, as we know, catch the more salient and strongly
characterised attitudes of animals with wonderful truth and force.
The two birds will often (as might be expected) assume this pose
without any previous descent on upraised wings, and, presumably, such
descent need not be followed either by this or any other special
attitude. Also, when so posing, they do not always stand in line, but
indifferently sometimes, as far as relative position is concerned,
though at the same approximate distance from one another. I have seen
the descent followed by the pose, but not in line, and I have seen the
pose exactly as I have described it, but not preceded by the descent.
Obviously (or, at least, in all probability), the birds would be as
likely to stand in line when posing on one occasion as on another, and
I have therefore put them into line here to give a picture of this
nuptial sport when at its best and fullest.
Sometimes during these visits that the birds pay to each other, the two
will bend their heads down together and pick and pull at the grass.
When they raise them there may be a blade or two of it in the bill of
one, which is allowed to drop in a negligent, desultory way. Or one,
which I take to be the female, plucks up a tuft and walks with it to
the male as though to show him. She lets it drop, and then both birds,
standing front to front, lower their heads at the same time and utter
a shrill though not a loud cry. This seems as though one bird were
suggesting to the other the propriety of building a nest, but it
may be the actual manner in which the nest is built. There would, of
course, be no doubt as to this, if the birds--or one of them--were to
continue thus to pluck and bring tufts or blades of grass. But this
was never the case when I saw them, nor did I ever remark any action
on their part that had more the appearance of systematic nest-building
than this. The nest of the great skua is very slight, a mere
pressed-down litter of coarse long grass, shallow, and having a pulled,
tattered look round the edges suggestive of the crown of a shabby straw
hat or bonnet from which the remaining portion has been torn. Compared
to it, the nest of a gull, being formed of quite a considerable
quantity of bog-moss and heather, basin-shaped, and fairly regular and
with well-formed, soft, cushiony rim all round it, is almost a work of
architecture.
Yet neither do gulls seem to work regularly or systematically in the
building of their nests. One may be seen piking into the ground with
its powerful beak and then withdrawing it with a tuft of moss or a
sprig of heather held between the mandibles. After making a few sedate
steps with this the bird lays it down, but instead of fetching some
more, now, and continuing the work, it merely stands there and appears
to forget all about it. Another will fly up with some material, and,
after circling a little above its partner on the ground, will alight
and lay it down as a contribution beside it, in a very stolid sort
of way. The other bird does not help, and does not seem particularly
interested, and the two now stand side by side for about half-an-hour,
when the one that has last arrived flies away, and, on returning
again, brings nothing. Sometimes a gull may be seen walking with
moss or heather in the bill, whilst its consort walks beside it, but
without having anything. When the heather is placed by the one bird,
the other stands by and seems interested, but does not assist, and no
further supply is brought. It would appear, therefore, that only one
bird--and this, no doubt, the female--actually builds the nest, though
the other--the male--may look on and take a greater or less amount of
intelligent interest in what she is doing. But though the above is from
the life it hardly seems possible that gulls could get their nests done
at all if they worked no better than this. When I first got to that
island "de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme," but few eggs had yet been
laid and many of the nests were only half finished, or not even so far
advanced as that. Most, however, were completed, or nearly so, and it
is probable that what I saw represented merely the finishing touches,
which will also apply to the great skuas.
What I saw was, indeed, very little, and it is only a surmise that the
female gull builds the nest without being aided by the male. I think
so, however, because usually, when both the male and female assist in
the building, they work together, and whilst collecting the materials
keep more or less in each other's company, arriving with them either at
the same time or shortly after each other. This, at least, has been the
case with those birds which I have watched. I have, indeed, seen two
gulls pulling up the moss or heather within a yard or so of each other,
and these I at first put down as a married couple. This, however, was
not the case, for they laid down what they pulled in different places,
and several times they attacked each other and fought quite fiercely.
With other birds, too, I have noticed a kind of rivalry between the
females when collecting materials for the nest. Hen chaffinches seem
particularly jealous of each other in this respect. They pull the
lichens from the trunks of trees, fluttering up against them, and using
both their claws and beaks, and when thus engaged, or when flying off
with what they have got, two will often fly at each other and fight
furiously in the air. I do not think that the one tries to take what
the other has collected--there ought, one would think, to be enough
for all--but, rather, that the sight of one when thus occupied, has an
irritating effect on the other, and so it seemed to be with these two
gulls.
Male gulls fight, too, as might be expected, the motive being usually,
if not always, jealousy. Sometimes a little drama may be witnessed,
as when a pair who would fain be tender are annoyed and hampered by a
rejected suitor--the villain of the piece. This odious bird advances
upon them with a menacing and, it would almost seem, a scandalised
demeanour every time that he detects the smallest disposition towards
an impropriety of behaviour, and when the husband-lover rushes
furiously upon him he flies just out of his danger, and acts in the
same way on the next occasion, which is immediately afterwards.
This goes on for some time, the envious bird becoming more and more
rancorous and more and more torn between rage and discretion every
time valour assaults him. At last rage carries it, and, strange to
say,--considering it as melodrama--he, the villain, makes quite a
spirited stand against the "good" hero, who, by all the laws of such
things, should fell him to the ground and spurn him, so as to make the
orthodox situation. Instead of this there is an equal combat which ends
only in "nothing neither way," except that, as the bad gull still goes
on afterwards, it is more in his favour than the other's. He wins, in
fact, for the lovers are at length wearied out, and the contemplated
impropriety never does take place. It is a pity almost that it cannot
sometimes go like this in stage reality. To see the hero, just when
most reeking with noble utterance, put suddenly into an unshowy
position by the "hound" or the "cringing cur" would be a glorious
thing, a delightful--almost a Gilbertian--_dénouement_. One could
applaud it "to the very echo that should applaud again," but one never
gets the chance--or, rather, one would not if one tried, for I will not
suppose that anyone with a taste for nature affects the melodrama--or
even the drama nowadays.
Gull-fights are sometimes very fierce and determined, and when this is
the case they often cause great excitement among a number of others.
As on the human plane, fights between birds make impressions upon one
according to the greater or lesser amount of intensity manifested,
becoming sometimes quite tragic in their interest. Not only is this the
case with oneself, but birds that are not fighting seem affected in
the same way. I have noticed this with partridges somewhat--but more
in the gullery. An ordinary scuffle between two birds attracts little
if any notice from the others, but when it is sustained and bitter,
supported with great courage on either side, there may be quite a crowd
of excited onlookers. I have seen a very desperate combat which I at
first thought was a general scrimmage. It was not so, however. Two
alone were engaged, but a cloud of gulls swept over and hovered about
them, often hiding them from view. All were interested, and interested,
it seemed to me, against one of the two birds who stood all the time
on the defensive, beating or trying to beat off with wings and beak
the continual eager rushes of his assailant. Many times they closed
and went struggling and flapping over the ground, attended all the
time by gulls in the air and gulls walking about and near them. When
they disengaged, the same bird--as I inferred from the dramatic unity
of its conduct--attacked again in the same eager way, as though the
greater vivacity of its feelings or disposition made it always more
quick than the other, though this one was equally brave and determined.
One might almost fancy that the attacking gull had had some great wrong
done it by the one it attacked. This latter, however, a powerful and
steady fighter, finally beat off its assailant, who now took to the
air. Sweeping backwards and forwards above the hated one, it made each
time that it passed a little drop down upon it with dangling legs and
delivered, or tried to deliver, a blow with the feet, a strategy which
the other met by springing up and striking with the beak.
Such a conflict as this makes quite a commotion in the gull world,
all those birds that have been standing anywhere in the neighbourhood
flying and circling excitedly about above the combatants, or settling
and walking up to them. I did not see the _casus belli_, so merely
assume it to have been jealousy between two rival males. Quite possibly
the birds were females. In none of these fights, nor in others that
I have seen between black-backed gulls on the island, did there seem
to be any special set method either of attack or defence, as is so
noticeable in the case of some birds. It was a generalised fight--"a
pankration"--in which each bird did whatever it could without art or
plan. A fight between two herring-gulls that lasted a long time was of
another character. "They fought most savagely, but in a curious manner.
Each seized the other by the beak, which they then (or one of them)
endeavoured to extricate by pulling backwards, so that the stronger
bird, or each alternately, dragged the other over the ground, a process
which the one being dragged tried to resist by spreading the wings at
right angles and opposing them to the ground. To me it seemed that one
of the birds had each time seized the other to advantage and strove
to retain its hold against the efforts of the less fortunate one to
disengage. The length of time during which they remained with the beaks
thus interlocked was remarkable. I was not able to time them, but it
was so long as to grow tedious, and I several times turned the glasses
on to other objects and, after a short interval, brought them back
again, always finding them as before. A quarter of an hour, or, at the
very least, ten minutes, would not, I think, be an over-estimate of the
time they sometimes remained in this connection. The instant the beaks
were unlocked the birds fiercely seized each other by them again, there
was the same dragging and resistance, the same lengthy duration, and
this was repeated three or four times in succession. At length there
was a very violent struggle, and the bird that seemed to have the
advantage in its hold, by advancing upon the other while never relaxing
this, forced its head backwards and at length right down upon its back,
the bird so treated being obviously much distressed. At last, with a
violent effort, this latter got its bill free, and the two, grappling
together, and one, now, seizing hold of the other's wing, rolled
together down the steep face of the rock. At the bottom they separated.
The bird, as I think, that had had the worst of it all along flew back
to the place from which they had fallen, while the other remained,
seeming somewhat hurt by the fall. Some time later there was another
conflict between the same two gulls which was similar in all respects,
including the place at which it was fought, except in its ending. This
time there was no fall down the rock, but the one bird flew off, soon,
however, to alight again, the other one pursuing and continuing to
molest it with savage sweeps from side to side."
No doubt, in a fight like this, each bird seizes the other by the beak,
as fearing what it might otherwise do with it, as two men with knives
might seize hold of each other's wrists. But this might become in time
so confirmed a habit that the birds, when fighting, would have no idea
of doing anything else, and thus not attack each other in any less
specialised way, however much one might have the other at an advantage.
I do not mean to say that it has really come to this with the gulls in
question--the facts, indeed, do not bear out this view--but several
times, when watching birds fighting, I have seen, as I believe, a
tendency in this direction, and it has occurred to me that the process
might be carried even further.
There was no other bird very near to these two gulls during all the
long time that they fought, no female who was obviously the cause of
the affair, and to whom either of them went, or showed a desire to go,
either in the interval between the two combats or at the end of it all.
Yet that the two were rival males seems hardly to be doubted, taking
the season into consideration. This--and the same observation applies
to the two wheatears who fought for hours without the female being at
all _en évidence_--seems to show a power of retaining a vivid mental
impression of the loved or coveted bird in her absence, to which is
added a tranquil pleasure of the paired birds in each other's society
apart from mere sensual gratification. It is absurd, therefore, to
keep the word "love" to ourselves, as we do in the spirit if not the
letter. As in other things, there is no line drawn here in nature,
and it is in watching animals that one gets to know the real meaning
of all our high terminology. It is wonderful how long two birds who
have chosen each other will stand quite motionless close together, as
though they were a couple of stones, and then show by some mutual or
dependent action that each is in the other's mind. Here is an instance.
"A pair of herring-gulls have been standing for a long time one just
behind the other on the edge of the grassy slope of the cliff, quite
motionless, looking like the painted wooden birds of a Noah's ark. All
at once both, as in obedience to a common impulse, burst into wild
clamorous cries for a few seconds and then fly out over the sea. Quite
soon they return and, settling again in precisely the same spot and
relative position, stand motionless as before, for full three hours,
when one, uttering a little chattering, almost talking note, again
launches himself from the verge and flies around for some three or four
minutes in the near neighbourhood, with a frequent 'how, how, how.' He
then re-settles just in his old place behind the other, talks a little,
again flies off, returns and talks as before. The other gull has
remained motionless, or almost so, all the time, and the two now stand
silently as before." It seems strange that the birds should first act
so mutually and then so independently of each other, but far stranger,
as it struck me, was the absolute instantaneousness with which, on the
first occasion, they both burst out screaming.
It is possible that close attention to animals might lead to evidence
pointing in a new and unexpected direction, but I will leave this for
another chapter.
Gulls have no very salient or pronounced courting antics--I mean I have
observed none--and, in the same sense, there is no special display of
the plumage by one sex to the other. When amorous, they walk about
closely together, stopping at intervals and standing face to face.
Then, lowering their heads, they bring their bills into contact, either
just touching, or drawing them once or twice across each other, or
else grasping with and interlocking them like pigeons, raising then,
a little, and again depressing the heads with them thus united, as
do they. After this they toss up their heads into the air, and open
and close their beaks once or twice in a manner almost too soft to be
called a snap. Sometimes they will just drop their heads and raise them
again quickly, without making much action with the bills. This is
dalliance, and between each little bout of it the two will make little
fidgety, more-awaiting steps, close about one another. Always, however,
or almost always, one of the birds--and this one I take to be the
female--is more eager, has a more soliciting manner, and tender-begging
look, than the other. It is she who, as a rule, commences and draws
the male bird on. She looks fondly up at him, and raising her bill to
his, as though beseeching a kiss, just touches with it, in raising, the
feathers of his throat--an action light, but full of endearment. And in
every way she shows herself the most desirous, and, in fact, so worries
and pesters the poor male gull that often, to avoid her importunities,
he flies away. This may seem odd (to non-evolutionists), but I have
seen other instances of it. No doubt in actual courting, before the
sexes are paired, the male bird is usually the most eager, but after
marriage the female often becomes the wooer. Of this, I have seen some
marked instances. That of a female great plover calling up the male
by her cries, when pairing took place between them, I have already
given, and I have seen precisely the same thing in the case of the
kestrel hawk. Female rooks, too, are often very importunate with the
males in the rookery when building is going on. It is always a great
satisfaction when the male and female of a species differ noticeably in
their plumage, as then one is never in uncertainty as to which of them
it is that performs any act. Often one must remain quite in the dark as
to this, and often, again, one can only surmise. Of course, when one
watches birds for any time in the breeding season, one gets clear ideas
as to which is the male and which the female, but certainty is better,
and certainty, at any moment or on any occasion, unless there is some
marked difference between the sexes, one cannot have. In the case of
gulls, however, though the plumage is alike, there is a difference in
size sufficient to strike the eye, the male being larger--in the great
black-backed gull, greatly larger--than the female.
Leaving the palled blandishments of its spouse, the gull husband
cleaves the air, cuts the dark line of beetling precipice, and seeks
the free haven of the open sea, where, with other sensible, repentant
Benedicts, it wheels and circles. Suddenly a dusky form, slender and
swallow-like, though as large as a pigeon, shoots over the rounded
bastion of the heather, and sweeping upwards as it nears the cliffs,
darts upon one of the gulls. A second pirate follows. With wild cries,
and long, gliding sweeps, they press and harass the larger bird, who,
doubling, twisting, avoiding, dodging, but never resisting, utters
again and again a cry of distress and complaint. Its companions sweep
and eddy about them, shooting athwart and between. They protest, they
cry to heaven, their wild voices mingle in harsh, discordant unison
with the rock-dash of the waves, and the everlasting notes of the wind.
Suddenly something drops from the oppressed gull. There is a sinking
towards it of one of the dark shadows--swift beyond telling, but so
soft that the speed is not realised--the object is covered, lost, and
almost with a jerk, the eye--or rather the brain--realises that it
has been caught in the descent. Empty, and now unregarded, the robbed
bird sweeps on, the pirates sweep back to the heather, the cloud of
witnesses disperse themselves, and, as with us each day, each hour,
things smooth themselves again over the high-placed acts of successful
villainy. Who troubles over a robbed gull? What moral Nemesis concerns
itself with the wrongs of some cheated, done-to-death savage or tribe
of savages? Over both there is some shrieking, some eloquence at the
time, but both are soon lost in oblivion, the waves close over, the
world jogs on its way. Retribution, retributive justice--such fine
things may exist, perhaps, but, if so, it is for showier matters. Had
the skuas robbed an albatross, something, perhaps, would have happened.
Their sin might have found them out--then. A gull is like an Armenian,
or ... but there are so many.
Thus closes one of nature's wild dramas. The gulls are circling again
now, and all is as before.
"Es pfeift der Wind, die Möven schrein
Die Wellen, die wandern und schäumen."
Such a scene as the above may often be witnessed as one lies on the
heather and watches, but for one actual robbery that one sees there
will be a dozen or so unsuccessful attempts at it. Yet, if one believes
those who have the best opportunities of knowing, neither the great
nor the Arctic skua--the latter is the bird to which attention has
just been called--ever eat a fish that has not first been swallowed
by a gull or tern. They say, moreover--at least, this assertion is
made in regard to the great skua--that if the booty is not secured in
mid-air, but falls either on the sea or land, no further attention is
paid to it by the robber. For myself, I believe that the skuas always,
or almost always, feed in this way, because I think that when, in the
satisfaction of such a daily and almost constant want as hunger, some
curious and bizarre method had been adopted it would tend to become
habitual, to the exclusion of all others. Two such different plans of
obtaining fish as are, respectively, swooping upon them whilst swimming
in the water, and catching them in the air upon their being disgorged
by another bird, after a chase which is often long and arduous,
could hardly be carried on by the same bird; for it is probable that
either one, to be successful, would have to be habitually employed,
thus leaving no room for the other. Moreover, the adoption of such a
peculiar method of obtaining food at all implies a great advantage over
the older method, and this being the case it would tend entirely to
supersede it. But that the Arctic skua, at any rate, thus habitually
chases and robs gulls one can easily satisfy oneself, nor have I ever
seen either it or the great skua stooping on fish, like terns, gulls,
or gannets.
The young of the great skua are fed entirely on herrings, which are
first swallowed by the parent bird, and then disgorged on to the ground
in the neighbourhood of the nest. I cannot say that I have myself seen
this done, for it is impossible to watch the nesting habits of a bird
that always attacks you when you approach its nest, and continues to
do so as long as you stay anywhere near it. In these grey desolate
islands there is no sort of cover, no tree or bush with the branches of
which one can make oneself a shelter, and watch unobserved. Moreover,
as there is no night properly so speaking, only a portentous lurid
murkiness towards midnight, which seems neither to belong to night
nor day, and in which, as you can read small print, the skua can very
naturally see you, there is no approaching under cloud of darkness and
being there, ensconced, when morning dawns. But that the bird disgorges
the herrings for the young ones after the manner of gulls generally,
and does not carry them in its beak or claws, which is contrary to
their practice, there can be no doubt. Now, as every one of these
herrings has--as I believe it has--been secured in the manner above
described, it is curious to reflect that, when finally swallowed by the
young skua, it "goes a progress" for the third time, nor would it be
easy, perhaps, to find another instance (outside this family of birds)
of prey that has been twice given up, through fear once, and then,
again, through love.
The herrings lying about the nest, and which have thus been recently
disgorged for the second time, look almost as fresh and clean as if
nothing peculiar had happened to them. They are disgorged whole, or
nearly so; for, as I myself observed, in the great majority of cases
the head is absent. Thus at one nest, in the neighbourhood of which
(but this means often a considerable space of ground) forty-one
herrings or their remains were lying, only ten retained the head
or any part of it. At another, where there were thirteen, all were
entirely headless: at another there were eight, of which one only
had part of the head remaining: at another ten, eight of which were
headless: at another seven, six of which were: and at another four,
of which one retained the entire head. Thus, out of eighty-three
herrings, only fifteen had the heads to them, though the proportion
of the one to the other was different at different nests. The heads
when thus absent are entirely so--that is to say, they are not to be
found lying about separately. That the chick should eat the head of
the herring by preference seems unlikely, and particularly when it is
quite young. Yet I have seen four herrings lying about a newly-hatched
chick, which were quite fresh and almost untouched, but headless. The
question, therefore, arises whether the parent-bird eats the head after
disgorging the whole fish, or whether, in the majority of cases, it
is disgorged minus the head. Fish are, I believe, always swallowed
by birds which prey upon them, head first, and would therefore, one
would suppose, lie in the gullet in this direction. If disgorged again
tail first, as they lay, the gills, by expanding, might offer such
resistance that the head would be in most cases torn off. If this be
so, then the skua may often receive the fish headless from the gull,
or, if otherwise, the head would be still more likely to be torn off,
on a second disgorgement. This, however, one would think, must be a
very disagreeable process for the bird disgorging, and it would seem
more probable that the fish can be turned or shifted in the gullet, by
some muscular action on its part, so as to be brought up head foremost,
as it descended; but whether there is any evidence as to this, I do not
know. If the head of the herring does not remain in the gullet, then
it must be eaten by the parent skuas after ejection, and it would seem
that they looked upon this portion as their _peculium_, to which they
were honestly entitled, for they seem to leave the rest, mostly, for
the chicks, of which there are, commonly, two. At any rate, a number
of the herrings will have only a small portion eaten off them. There
is a great profusion, amounting to waste, and there does not seem any
reason why the skuas should vary their diet during the breeding season,
as they are asserted to do, since they have the sea always at hand, and
the gulls, that are to them as their milch cows, breed in their close
proximity.
In the skuas we see the habit of obtaining food by forcing another bird
to disgorge what it has swallowed, perfected and become permanent,
so that the birds practising it have risen--shall we say?--into
rapacious parasites; but amongst the gulls themselves, who suffer
by the practice, we may see, if I am not mistaken, the habit in its
incipiency, and may get a hint as to how it might have arisen. When
fishing-smacks are in harbour they are thronged round, sometimes, by
hundreds of gulls, all the more common kinds--viz. the lesser and
greater black-backed, herring-gulls, and kittiwakes--being mixed and
crowded together. When some offal is thrown out, the birds that secure
any are at once mobbed, and often it is torn away from them almost
before they have swallowed a mouthful. To avoid this, they often rise
with it in the beak and get it down as fast as they can on the wing,
dodging and jerking their head from side to side amongst the pursuing
crowd. But I have observed that the pursuit does not always cease
after the morsel has been swallowed, and sometimes--whether rarely or
frequently I am unable to say--the oppressed gull disgorges it again,
in order to be left in peace. Now, amongst a crowd of birds like this,
the greater number would be unable to see whether the one they were
pursuing had swallowed his morsel or not, and would therefore keep
pressing about him in the hope of being able to snatch at it. But, of
course when birds that were hustled began to disgorge, this would be
noticed and soon remembered, and they would then be hustled so that
they might do so. In this, or in some similar way, I can understand the
habit arising without any initial act of intelligence on the pursuing
bird's part.
Perhaps, however, there would be no great unlikelihood in assuming such
an act of intelligence. For one gull to conceive the idea of making
another bring up what it had swallowed, might not be so very much more
than for the sea-eagle to think, in regard to the osprey with the
fish in his talons, "I'll make him drop it." With all the gull tribe
the bringing up of the food again after swallowing it is an easy and
habitual action. Not only are the young fed thus, but I have some
reason to think that, during the nuptial season, the presenting in
this manner of some "pretty little tiny kickshaw" by the male bird to
the female is looked upon as a chivalrous and lover-like act. Perhaps
such acts are reciprocal, but I will give my two little instances and
let my readers draw their own conclusions. The first is the case of a
herring-gull. I was watching the mother bird (as I suppose) sitting
on the nest over two young ones, one of which had been hatched either
only that day or the day before, and the other a day or two earlier.
"At 12 o'clock a chick moves out from under the mother, and leaves the
nest. It is quite active, and has the general appearance of a young
chicken, being fluffy and of a yellowish grey colour, speckled with
black. At 12.40 the second young one appears, pushing itself out from
under the mother bird as she rises a little in the nest. At half-past
one the male gull, which has been near all the while, walks slowly
and importantly to the nest, which he passes and then, turning back
towards it, disgorges on to the rock a small fish, which he takes up
in just the tip of his bill and pushes towards both the chick on the
rock and the mother on the nest, all slowly and with a dry sort of
manner, as though the bird were a cynic. The mother gull leans forward
from the nest and takes it, and, first, holds it on the ground, while
the chick outside pecks at it. Then she swallows it herself. The male
now produces in the same way a small something--I suppose a gobbet
of fish--and draws the chick's attention to it by touching it with
his bill and pushing it a little towards him. The chick then swallows
it, upon which the male flies off and takes his accustomed stand on a
large projecting point of rock close at hand." This is a conjugal, a
domestic, picture. The other, which I shall now give, and in which the
hero was an Arctic skua, was, perhaps, "more condoling."
"The one bird stands still and upright, whilst the other, holding
the neck constrainedly down, but with the head raised as far as is
compatible with this, keeps moving round and round it. After revolving
thus several times, keeping, always, very close to and, sometimes,
actually touching the standing bird, this one also stands still, always
in the same attitude, and opens his beak. The other one, standing as
before, now raises the head and opens the beak also, upon which the
satellite bird, assuming, at last, his proper height, delivers into
it, from his own, something which he appears to bring up, and this,
as it seems to me, is swallowed by the bird receiving it. The morsel
is small, but the actions of giving and taking, and, afterwards, the
movements of the beak and throat of the bird that has parted with it,
are unmistakable. This would appear, therefore, to be a little friendly
act, or, perhaps, an act of courtship--a love-token between the male
and female bird--and I take the bird who delivers the morsel, and who
is cream-marked, to be the male, and the other, who is uniformly dark,
the female."
Skuas, as is well known, attack one if one comes at all near to
their nest, and gulls--at any rate the two black-backed kinds--will
sometimes, though much more rarely, come very near to doing so too.
For instance, the greater black-backed gull swoops at one backwards
and forwards, in the same way (though more clumsily) as do the skuas,
except that he neither touches you nor comes so near. Every time he
passes he gives a loud, harsh, tuneless cry, and drops down his legs
as though intendi
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