The Project Gutenberg eBook, Bird Watching, by Edmund Selous, Illustrated by Joseph Smit

THE
HADDON HALL
LIBRARY

EDITED
BY THE
MARQUESS OF GRANBY
AND MR.
GEORGE A. B. DEWAR

All rights reserved

Male Oyster-Catchers Piping to the Female.

BIRD WATCHING

BY
EDMUND SELOUS

LONDON
J. M. DENT & CO., ALDINE HOUSE
29 & 30 BEDFORD STREET, W.C.
1901

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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.

BIRD WATCHING

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.

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.")

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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 intending to strike with them. When he does this, he may be some five or six feet above one's head—a little more, perhaps, or a little less—and presents an odd, uncouth appearance. The skuas swoop in silence, though the great one continually says "ik, ik" (or words to that effect), whilst circling between the swoops. "On another occasion two of the lesser black-backed gulls acted in this way, though one of them continued to do so for a much longer time. These two seemed to be angry with each other, making little motions and opening their bills in the air as though each thought it was the other's fault." This little trait, which would seem to raise them nearer humanity, I particularly noted. The mode of attack, when thus aerially delivered, is the same in all these birds, and, as it seems to me, curiously ineffective. The beak, a powerful weapon, is not employed, nor is a blow—which, if it were, might be of real force—delivered with one of the wings. Instead, the webbed feet, which would seem to be weak in comparison, and have no talons or grasping power, are made use of in the way I have already described in the case of the two gulls fighting, when, after the tussle on the ground, the one was swooped at by the other.

The following account of the attack of the smaller or Arctic skua, will apply almost equally to the great one. "The bird comes swooping down in a slanting direction, with great speed and impetus, and as it passes over one's head, makes a slight drop with the feet hanging down, so that they administer a flick just on the top of it, as it shoots by. Having made its demonstration, it shoots on and upwards, and turning in a wide sweep, again comes rushing down to repeat it, and so forwards and backwards for perhaps some half-a-dozen times, after which the intervals will become longer, the circling sweeps which fill them up wider and more numerous, till the attacks cease, and the bird flies away." (The great skua, however, will attack almost indefinitely.) "The force of the downward rush is in all cases very great, and the 'swirr' which accompanies it quite startling, suggesting a larger bird, or something of a more portentous nature altogether. In striking, the bird shoots the feet forward as they dangle, so that they hit one with the anterior surface, and there is not the slightest attempt to scratch or grasp with them. The force that can be put into such a blow is but slight, and, even in appearance, there is something trivial and inadequate about it that takes away from the effect of the bold sweep, which, in the case of the great skua especially, strikes the imagination, and is, indeed, a fine sight. A terrific blow with the wing, or a seizing and tearing with beak and claw, as with an eagle, would seem the fitting sequel to such power and fierceness."

This failure of the sublime, and falling almost into the ridiculous, cannot be observed when one is oneself the object of attack, and, moreover, the buffets that one is constantly receiving, though quite out of proportion to the size and fury of the birds, are often so stinging and disagreeable as to spoil one for looking at the matter from such a point of view. A ruse, however, may be adopted, and the scales then fall from one's eyes. For instance: "To-day I sat down by the almost fledged chick of a pair of great skuas, and, drawing my plaid over my head, numbered the attacks of the parent birds. When I began to count it was 3.13 P.M., and at 3.30 they had made between them—turn and turn about—136 swoops at me. Of these, 67 were hits and 69 misses. Some of the hits were very—indeed, extremely—violent, so that without the plaid I could not have stood it, and even as it was, it was unpleasant. The blow is always delivered with the feet, though sometimes (and pretty often as it seemed to me) a portion of the bird's body touches one at the same time, thus giving more weight and force to it. The force of the swoop is tremendous, and did the bird strike one full with its whole bulk, it would, I believe, knock one over, as a hare, it is said, has sometimes done by accident, in leaping over a hedge. After this heroism, I stuck my umbrella (staff, or even stick, would sound better, but it was an umbrella) into the ground, arranged my plaid upon it, and walked to a little distance. The birds, one after another, swooped at the plaid but never hit it. As they got just above it they stretched down their legs, but at the last moment seemed to think something was wrong, and rose, so as just to clear it. 'But out upon this half-faced fellowship!' This dangling down of the legs, in which the speed is checked and the grand appearance lost, is quite pitiful. Why cannot the birds fell you with a blow, or tear you with the hooked beak? This would be 'Ercle's vein, a tyrant's vein,' but a flick with the feet merely—it is a tame conclusion!"

I doubt now, if the bird ever does strike you with the body even lightly. It feels as if there must be more than the feet at the time, but, probably, this is not the case.

Both the male and female of the great skua defend the nest—and especially the young—in this manner, but the swoopings of one of them, probably of the female, are generally fiercer than those of the other. In my limited experience this dual attack was almost invariable, but in one instance the nest was guarded by one bird alone. This bird, as though to make up for the deficiency, was even more than usually fierce, making long rushing swoops from a great height and distance, which would, I believe, have been effective each time had I not bobbed. The other bird circled at a still greater height, and never once joined in the attack. The height, I may say, from which the birds swoop is not, as a rule, very considerable. The above does not apply equally to the Arctic skua—at least in my own experience—for though often the two birds would attack, yet in the greater number of cases only one of them did so. Now the Arctic skua, as I have mentioned elsewhere, is one of those birds which employs strategy (begging here the question for the sake of brevity) as well as force to defend its young, and it occurred to me that here might be a case of co-operation, the male bird most probably attacking, and the female employing the ruse. I satisfied myself, however, that the same bird sometimes does both one and the other. How often this is so, and whether there is a tendency on the part of either sex to resort by preference to one or the other method, it might be difficult to find out. Yet I cannot help thinking that this is the case, and that a process of differentiation is in course of taking place. The facts are—or appeared to me to be—these. In the case of the great skua, both sexes—almost, but not quite, always—attack, and there is no ruse. In that of the Arctic skua both sexes sometimes attack, but far more frequently (that, at least, was my own experience) one alone does so, and here a ruse is employed. In the former case we just see occasionally, as an exception, the raw material (the non-attacking of the one bird) that might conceivably be utilised by nature for the elaboration of another form of defence. In the latter we may see this other form being elaborated.

Questions of this nature might be settled in the future on facts observed now, as easily as a reference to an iron ring where boats were once moored settles the question as to whether the coast has risen or the sea encroached. The coast and the sea, however, remain. Birds, slaughtered by millions each year, must cease almost as a class before any great period has gone by. Of what use then the ring, the record when what it speaks of is no more?

Another interesting point in the Arctic skua (which it shares with at least one other species of the genus) is its dimorphism—or rather, to describe it more properly, its polymorphism. To me it seems to offer a case of a species in course of variation from one form into another. In the two extreme forms the plumage is, respectively, either entirely sombre both above and below, or the whole throat, breast and under surface, with a ring round the neck, and more or less of the sides of the head, is of a fine cream colour. Between these extremes there are various gradations, the cream being sometimes on the breast only, whilst the throat is of a lighter or deeper grey, more or less mottled with the still darker shade, or the lighter colour is hardly or not at all discernible on these parts, whilst lower down it becomes less and less salient till it is merely a not so dusky duskiness. The cream-coloured birds, though numerous, are in the minority, and both this and their being much handsomer suggests that the process of change is in this direction, whilst the intermediate tintings may represent the steps in this process. To what form of selection (if to any) are we to attribute the change? As the cream colouring makes the bird more conspicuous, natural selection (as distinct from sexual) seems excluded, unless it could be shown that the change of colour is correlated with some still greater advantage, and this is neither apparent nor likely. There remains sexual selection, which to my mind is strongly suggested. The modified colouring is, it is true, shared by the two sexes, but this is quite compatible with the theory, which supposes the tintings of the male kingfisher and numerous other brilliant birds to have been thus acquired and transmitted in each stage of progress to the female. It would, therefore, be interesting, though, no doubt, difficult, to determine by observation whether the creamy-coloured male birds were on an average more attractive to the females than the other kind, and also whether the more handsome form was increasing. In regard to the last point, this was the opinion of a man guiltless of theories, but with a large amount of experience of the birds.

Of these two species of skua, the great and the lesser or Arctic one, the latter appears to me to be the boldest and most aggressive. It will chase not only gulls, but occasionally the great skua also, this last, as it would seem, for sport or pleasure rather than for any particular object. In the same way they often chase each other. A too near approach to the nest may, perhaps, be the reason in either case, but having watched them attentively I do not think that the pursuing bird is often under any real apprehension. Gulls are persecuted by them in the manner I have described, and sometimes, I think, also in mere wantonness. The larger ones seem never to resist, but the kittiwake will sometimes go down upon the water, turn to bay, and drive the robber off. Gulls seem to fear the great skua less than the Arctic one, and will sometimes mob and molest it. A single pair that had nested on the outskirts of a gullery were a good deal subject to this annoyance. One and then another gull would pursue them when they flew near, and sometimes even swoop at them from side to side as they stood upon the heather. But I never saw them annoy the Arctic skuas in this manner. The latter, however, were much more numerous.

CHAPTER VI

Watching Ravens, Curlews, Eider-ducks, etc.

A pair of ravens on our island are also molested by the gulls, and when either of them flies from one point to another of the coast in their neighbourhood its path is marked by a constant succession of "annoying incidents" of this nature. That these stately birds should have to put up with rudeness from mere gulls does not seem right; but so it is, nor did I ever see either of the two make any serious attempt to over-awe them. Personally, I must say that I was at first so little impressed by these ravens, that for a long time I did them the injustice of looking upon them as carrion crows. Certainly, the hoarse, bellowing croak which they uttered as they flew round when disturbed by me impressed me and made me wonder, but their size appeared altogether incompatible with the state of being a raven. I suppose the great frowning precipices over which they commonly circled had a dwarfing effect upon it, but they were manifestly smaller than any of the gulls which molested them, and this I was not prepared for from the specimens which I have seen in museums or languishing in captivity. That they were ravens however, is, I think, certain from the very peculiar croaking note to which I have alluded, and which they uttered at this time almost constantly.

When I came to the island these birds had already hatched out their young, of which there were four lying in a loose cradle of what looked like sticks, but could not have been, since these were nowhere procurable. It was a mass of something having the general appearance of a battered and flattened rook's nest, but what the actual materials of which it was constructed were, I am unable to say. The nest was on a ledge half-way down the face of a huge precipice forming one side of a fissure in the coast-line—the mouth of an immature fiord—dug out in the course of ages by the slow but ceaseless sapping of the sea. From the summit of the opposite side I could look across at and down upon it, having an excellent view. The young birds—five in number—who were well fledged, and within, perhaps, a fortnight of leaving the nest, lay in it very flatly with their wings half spread out, and so motionless that for some time, upon first seeing them, I almost thought they must be dead. The sudden yet softly sudden rearing itself up of one with an expressive opening of the beak—expressive of "surely, surely, it must be meal-time again now"—gave a delightful assurance that this was not the case, and then there were more such risings and expressed convictions. At intervals only, however, for it was wonderful how still the young birds would lie for quite a long time, and so closely inwoven within the cup of the nest that it was only when they stirred that five became a possibility. The ledge being quite bare and open, the nest with the young in it, making a black bull's-eye in the midst of a great sheet of white, was conspicuously apparent. Several times I saw the young birds move themselves backwards to the inner edge of the nest, and then void their excrements over it, so that only a little of the quite outer portion was contaminated. By this means the nest is kept clean and dry, whilst all around it is defiled. It would seem as though this power of ejecting their excrements to a distance which various birds possess was, sometimes at least, in proportion to the size and bulk of the nest which they construct. The nest of the shag, for instance (and in a still greater degree that of the common cormorant), is a great mass of seaweed and other materials, and the force with which the excrement is shot out over this, both by the young and the parent birds, astonishes one, as does also its upward direction. I had always felt surprise when seeing cormorants and shags perform this natural function whilst standing on the rocks, but it was not till I had watched the latter birds for hour after hour, as they sat on their nests, that I understood (or thought I understood) the significance of it. In spite of the popular saying, it does not seem probable that all young birds act in this way, and many nests are so constructed that it would hardly be possible for them to do so. In most cases everything necessary for sanitation or convenience could be effected afterwards by the parent birds, but this would not be the case with ravens and cormorants, or with other such carnivorous or fish-eating species. Perhaps, therefore, the power which I speak of may stand in joint relation to the diet and habits of the bird, and the kind of nest which it builds.

I made many attempts to witness the feeding of these young ravens by their parents, but owing to there being no kind of cover from which I could watch, and no means of erecting a proper shelter, I was unable to do so. I did what I could by means of pieces of turf, and a plaid or waterproof stretched over them, but this was not sufficient to allay the suspicions of the old birds, who had always seen me as I came up, and from my first appearance over the brow of the hill flew around croaking and croaking, awaiting impatiently the moment of my departure. It would have been difficult not to sympathise with them, not to feel like an intruding vulgarian amidst that lonely wildness. For my part, I never tried not to, but yielded at once to the feeling, and retired each time with the humiliating reflection that the scene would be the better without me. Yet it seems strange that in any scene of natural beauty or grandeur, the one figure—should it happen to be there—that has the capacity to feel it is just the one that puts it out. Scott, for instance—though he were Scott—would not have improved any Highland bit, and Shakespeare's Cliff would hardly have looked the better for the presence even of Shakespeare himself. The samphire-gatherer, however, would have blended artistically, but neither he nor a kilted shepherd or clansman would have had any more appreciative perception of the beauties into which they fitted, than the "choughs and crows" themselves, the sheep, or the majority of tourists.[13] It is not a matter of clothes alone. It would seem as though one must stand outside of a thing, and therefore be out of keeping with it, before one can feel and grasp it, though, heaven knows, the one need not involve the other.

[13] Scott, however, credits the Highlanders—I mean the rank and file—with an artistic appreciation of the scenery amidst which they lived (see "Rob Roy"). I should bow to such an authority, but confess I find it hard to believe.

But, though I missed the feeding, I twice saw the raven mother—the real one—cling on to the side of the nest and look in upon her young ones, who rose and greeted her hungrily. That was a glorious thing to see. There was something in the bird's look almost indescribable, a blending—as it seemed to me—of cunning, criminal knowledge combined with lightheartedness, and strong maternal affection. With the first two of these, and with the stately, yet half grotesque action, the bright, black eyes, and steely, glossy-purpling plumage (it never looked black through the glasses), a faint, flitting idea, as of the devil, was communicated, enhancing and giving piquancy to the delight. She hung thus for some moments, seeming to enjoy the sight of her children, yet all the while having her black, cunning eyes half turned up towards myself. Then she flew away, joining her mate, who had waited for her some way off at the accustomed place on the cliffs. It was when I saw her like this, and when the glasses isolated her from the general of rock and sea, that this raven seemed to assume her true size and dignity, and to become really a raven. When she flew it was different. Her sable pinions beating against the face of the precipice added no effect to it, but she was instantly dwarfed and dwindled, and became as nothing, a mere insignificant black speck, against its huge frowning grandeur.

Though, really, their plumage is all of gleaming, purply blues, at a little distance, and when they fly, ravens look a dead ugly black, which is also the case with rooks, who are almost equally handsome when seen closely. Their flight is peculiar, and though it strikes the imagination, yet it cannot be called at all grand or majestic in the ordinary sense of those words. The wings, which are broad, short, and rounded—or at any rate present that appearance to the eye—move with regular, quick little beats, or, when not flapped, are held out very straightly and rigidly. When thus extended, they are on a level with or, perhaps, a little below the line of the back, and from this, in beating, they only deviate downwards, and do not rise above it, or very triflingly so, giving them a very flat appearance. A curious curve is to be remarked in the anterior part of the spread wing, at first backwards towards the tail, and then again forwards towards the head. All the primary quills seem to partake of this shape, and they are also very noticeably disjoined one from another, so that the interspace, even whilst the wing is beaten, looks almost as wide as the quill—by which I mean the whole feather—itself. I tried to imagine the effect of a number of these sombre, quickly-beating pinions with the short eager croak, having something of a bellowing tone in it ("the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge") over the wide-extended carnage of an ancient battlefield, and I thought I could do it pretty well—in spite of the difficulty, in the present day, of conjuring up such scenes.

Raven: The Game of Reversi.

But, though the ordinary flight of ravens be as I have described, it does not at all follow that they may not sometimes soar or sail for long distances through the air, or descend through it at great speed, and with all sorts of whirring and whizzing evolutions. For all these things do the rooks, and yet their ordinary flight is of a heavy and plodding character. One very peculiar antic, or "trick i' the air," the raven certainly has. Whilst flapping steadily along with regular, though quick beat of the wings, it closes these all at once, quite tightly, as though it were on the ground, and immediately rolls over to one side or the other. Either the roll is complete, so that the bird comes right round again into its former position, or else, having got only so far as to be back downwards, it rolls back the reverse way. This has a most extraordinary appearance. The bird is stretched horizontally in the position in which it has just been flying, and in rolling over makes one think of a barrel or a man rolling on the ground. Being in the air, however, it may, by dropping a little as it rolls, make less, or, possibly, no progress in a latitudinal direction, though whether this is the case or not I am not sure.

To watch this curious action through the glasses is most interesting. Each time there is a perceptible second or two during which the bird remains completely reversed, back to earth and breast to sky. The appearance presented is equally extraordinary, whether it makes the half roll and returns, or goes completely round. I have sometimes seen rooks make a turn over in the air, but this was more a disorderly tumble, recalling that of the peewit, and, though striking enough, was not nearly so extraordinary as this orderly and methodical, almost sedate, turning upside down. The feat is generally performed four or five times in succession, at intervals of some seconds, during which the steady flight is continued. Most often it is done in silence, but sometimes, at each roll over, the raven cries "pyar," a penetrating and striking note.

Sometimes these ravens would roll in this manner whilst pursued by or skirmishing with a gull, and once I saw one of them do so during a curious kind of skirmish or frolic—it was hard to tell its exact character—with a hooded crow. Whether the hooded crow turned itself almost at the same time in a manner somewhat or entirely similar, I am not quite sure, but it struck me that it did do so. Of course, one may very easily just miss seeing the action of a bird clearly, especially if there are two or more together, and it is then, often, very annoying to be left with no more than an impression, which may or may not be correct. It is more satisfactory, almost, to see nothing than not to be sure, but both impression and doubt should be stated, for both are facts, and should not be suppressed. But on no other occasion have I seen a hooded crow behave in this way, though I have watched them often. Once, but only once, I saw one indulging in an antic which was sufficiently striking, but of quite a different character. This bird would spring suddenly from the ground, mount up almost perpendicularly to a moderate height, and then descend again on the same spot or close to it, making a sudden lurch and half tumble in alighting. It did this some dozen times, but not always in so marked a manner, for sometimes the mount or tower was not straight up from this spring—as a mountain sheer from the sea—but arose out of what seemed an ordinary flight over the ground. As it descended for the last time another crow flew up to and alighted beside it in a manner which seemed to express an entry into its feelings. This was in East Anglia, on the last day but one of February, and I look upon it as a premature breaking out of the nuptial activities before the birds had taken wing to their more northerly breeding-places. As to these aerial antics of the ravens, I doubt if they were strictly nuptial, on account of their performance of them whilst skirmishing with gulls, or with the hooded crow.

These two ravens were most devoted guardians of their young, and they pursued a plan with me—for I was the only intruder on their island—which was well calculated to blind me with regard to their whereabouts, and would certainly have succeeded in doing so, had not the nest been so openly situated, and such a conspicuous object. They took up their station daily—and in this they never once varied—at a point on the cliffs considerably beyond the place where they had built their nest, and which commanded a wide outlook. As I came each morning along the coast, which rose gradually, I became visible to them whilst about as far from their nest on the one side as they were on the other, and the instant my head appeared over the brow of the hill they rose together with the croaking clamour I have mentioned, and circled about round their own promontory. This strategy could hardly have been improved upon had it been carefully thought out by a man, for in the first place my attention was at once directed to the birds themselves, and then if the likelihood merely of there being a nest had occurred to me, that part of the cliffs from which they rose, and about which they wheeled, would have seemed the most likely place in which to search for it. No doubt, had the nest been well concealed, the birds would have done better not to have shown themselves, but conspicuous as it was, they could hardly have adopted a better plan of getting me away from just that part of the coast where it was situated.

I have spoken in the last chapter of the extreme boldness of the smaller of the two skuas, and how, whether in sport or piracy, he chases birds much larger than himself. It was, therefore, something of a surprise to me when I observed one morning this bold buccaneer being himself pursued by another bird. This was one of a pair of curlews, birds that are as the spirit of the sad solitudes in which they dwell. It is, indeed, more as a part of the scene—that treeless, mist-enshrouded waste beneath grey northern skies, which they emphasise and add expression to—than in themselves that one gets to consider them. Just thickening with a shape the dank, moist atmosphere, seeming to have been strained and wrung out from the mist and rain and drizzle, they are, at most, but a moulded, vital part of these. They move like shadows on the mists, when they cry, desolation has found its utterance. And yet, for all this, their general appearance, with their long legs and neck, and immensely long sickle-shaped bill, is very much that of an ibis—insomuch, that seeing them in this bleak northern land, has sometimes almost a bizarre effect. This should seem quite irreconcilable with the other, and yet, though it certainly ought to be, somehow it is not, so that, at one and the same time, this opposite bird brings a picture, by looking like an ibis, of Egypt and the South, and is likewise the very incarnation of grey skies, of mist and morass. So strangely can contradictions be reconciled in the mind, or rather so well and impartially can we grasp two aspects of a thing when neither concerns us personally.

When they stand or walk slowly and sedately these curlews hold their long, slender necks very erect, and it is this, with the beak, that gives them their ibis-like character. When they run they lower the neck, and the quicker they go the lower do they hold it. In taking flight they sometimes make a few quick running steps with raised body, as though launching themselves on the air; but at other times they will rise from where they stand without this preliminary. In flight they may be called conspicuous, at any rate by contrast with the wonderful manner in which they disappear simply—"softly and silently vanish away"—when on the ground. This is by reason of their colouring, which on all the upper surface of the body and the outside of the wings is of a soft, mottled brown, which blends wonderfully with, or, rather, seems to become absorbed into the general surroundings of moor and peat-bog, so that they never catch the eye, and are simply gone the instant this is taken off them. But the plumage of the under surface of the body and of the inside of the wings is much lighter, and this becomes visible as the bird rises (as with the redshank), and alternates with the other as it flies around. It is thus—round and round in a wide circle—that a pair of them will keep flying when disturbed in their breeding-haunts. But though each bird is equally disturbed and anxious, and though their mournful cries answer each other like two sad complaining souls, yet they keep apart, and, on settling, do not run to each other. From the drear slope of a hill a wail goes up, and from another hill, or the cheerless hollow between, the sad sound is answered. Or one will fly wailing whilst the other wails and sits, or the two will follow each other along the ground, but without coming very near. Thus, in a kind of sad, solitary communion, they wail and lament, and so exactly is each the counterpart of the other, one might think that the prophet Jeremiah had been turned into a bird, which had subsequently flown asunder.

In flight the wings are for the most part constantly quivered, with a quick and somewhat tremulous motion, but sometimes the bird will glide with them outstretched, and not moving, just over the ground, before it alights, or make a steep-down descent holding them set in this manner, and so settle. There is also a trick or mannerism of flight which is graceful, and may be of a nuptial character. Rising to a certain height on quivering wings, they sink down, holding them extended and motionless. After but a short descent, they rise again in the same quivering way, and so continue for a greater or lesser space of time.

The note which they utter is, first, a melancholy "too-ee, too-ee, too-ee," then a much louder and sharper "wi-wi, wi-wi, wi-wi" (i as in "with"), and there are various other ones, one of which—if memory did not trick me—is just, or very, like a note which is but seldom heard of the great plover, "Tu-whi, whi, whi, whi, whi." This bird is itself a curlew, so that the resemblance can be understood. Its affinities with the oyster-catcher are (unless it is the other way about) less close; yet some part of the piping of the latter bird reminded me strongly of the "clamour," as it is called, of the former one. Sometimes, but more rarely, the mournful "too-ee, too-ee, too-ee" of the curlew is followed by a note as mournful, but louder and more abrupt. This sounded to my ear something like "chur-wer—whi-wee," but, of course, all such renderings are arbitrary, and more or less fanciful.

One of the strangest sounds that came to me on that lonely island was the courting-note of the male eider-duck. This varies a good deal, not in the sound, which is always the same, but in the duration and division of it. Sometimes it is one long-drawn, soft "oh" or "oo," more generally, perhaps, this is syllabled into "oh-hoo" or "ah-oo," and often there is a much longer as well as very distinct and powerful "hoo-oooooo." The sound seems always to be on the point of catching, yet just to miss, the human intonation, sometimes suggesting a soft (though often loud) mocking laugh, at others a slightly ironical or surprised ejaculation. But this human element only just trembles upon it and is gone. Rousing for a moment the sense of man's proximity with its attendant associations, these vanish almost in the forming, and are replaced by a feeling of unutterable loneliness and wildness. For what recalls, yet is far other, enforces the sense of the absence of that which it recalls. Yet this feeling changed too, or, rather, with it there came another as of the unseen world, also, I think, comprehensible, since what is almost, yet not quite, human must needs suggest fays, elves, elementals, and all their company. I loved the sound. If not quite music, it was most softly harmonious, and always, from first to last, brought into my mind with strange insistency, those lines in the Tempest:

"Sitting on a bank,

Weeping again the King my father's wreck,

This music crept by me upon the waters,

Allaying both their fury and my passion

With its sweet air."

Then, of course, I was on Prospero's island, though, heaven knows, this bleak northern one was little like it. Thus can some poor bird that we murder, by an association merely, or called-up image, as well as by actual song,

"Dissolve us into ecstasies,

And bring all heaven before our eyes."

It was some little time before I could be quite sure to what bird this strange note belonged. It seemed too poetical for a duck, though, indeed, an eider-duck is the poetry of the family. Also, it was difficult to locate, seeming to bear but little relation to the place or distance at which it was uttered. But I soon found that whenever there were eider-ducks I heard the note, whereas I never did when they were nowhere about. At last—quite close in a little bay, as though they had come there to show me—I "tore out the heart of their mystery." It was a lovely sight. Even the female eider-duck, sober brown though she be, has a most pleasing appearance, but the male bird is beauteous indeed. In the pure white and deep, rich black of his plumage he looks, at first, as though clothed all in velvet and snow. There are, however, the green feathers on the back of the head and neck, which do not look like feathers at all, but rather a delicate wash of colour, or as though some thin, glazed material—some finest-made green silk handkerchief—had been tied round his head with a view to health by the female members of his family. And although at first, with the exception of this green tint, all that is not the richest velvet black looks purest white, the eye through the glasses, growing more and more delighted, notices soon a still more delicate wash of green about the upper parts of the neck, and of delicate, very delicate, buff on the full rounded breast just where it meets the water. These glorified males—there were a dozen of them, perhaps, to some six or seven females—swam closely about the latter, but more in attendance upon than as actually pursuing them; for the females seemed themselves almost as active agents in the sport of being wooed as were their lovers in wooing them. The actions were as follows:—The male bird first dipped down his head till his beak just touched the water, then raised it again in a constrained and tense manner—the curious rigid action so frequent in the nuptial antics of birds—at the same time uttering that strange, haunting note. The air became filled with it, every moment one or other of the birds—sometimes several together—with upturned bill would softly laugh or exclaim, and whilst the males did this, the females, turning excitedly, and with little eager demonstrations from one to another of them, kept lowering and extending forwards the head and neck in the direction of each in turn.

As there were a good many females in this "reunion," the numbers of the males about any one of them at one time was not great. Some of them were attended by only one cavalier or left quite lonely for a time—but all kept shifting and changing. The birds kept always swimming on, and were now all together, now scattered over a considerable surface of water. Sometimes two males would court one hen, who would then often demonstrate between them in the way I have described. Often, however, the male birds are in excess of the females, and sometimes there will be only one female to a number of males, who then press so closely about her that they may almost be said to mob her, though in a very polite manner. There are then frequent combats between the males, one making every now and again a sudden dash through the water at another, and seizing or endeavouring to seize him by the head or scruff of the neck. The two then struggle together till they both sink or dive under the water. Shortly afterwards they emerge separately, and the combat is over for the time. During, if not as a part of, these nuptial proceedings, the birds of both sexes will occasionally rise in the water and give their wings a brisk flapping. They may also occasionally dive as a mere relaxation, or to give vent to their feelings, at least so it appeared to me.

The female eider-duck—as far as I could observe—does not utter the curious note, but only a deep quacking one, with which she calls to her the male birds. It appeared to me that she would sometimes show a preference for one male over another, and also (though of this I cannot be so sure), a power of dismissing birds from her. But if she really possesses such a power, she cannot very well assert it when closely pressed upon by a crowd of admirers. I noticed, too, and thought it curious, that a female would often approach a male bird with her head and neck laid flat along the water as though in a very "coming-on disposition," and that the male bird declined her advances. This, taken in conjunction with the actions of the females when courted by the males, appears to me to raise a doubt as to the universal application of the law that throughout nature the male, in courtship, is eager and the female coy. Here, to all appearance, courtship was proceeding, and the birds had not yet mated. The female eider-ducks, however—at any rate some of them—appeared to be anything but coy. As time went on and the birds became paired this curious note of the males became less and less frequent, and at last ceased, a proof, I think, that the note itself is of a nuptial character, and also that the birds at the time they kept uttering it were seeking their mates.

I regret that I was not able to observe the further breeding or nesting habits of these interesting birds. A few of the females may have laid before I left the island, but the greater number were still on the water. One day I put one up from the heather, upon which I lay down and waited. Soon a pair of them—both females—flew round me and alighted together not far off. Both then lay or crouched in the heather at a few yards from each other. Later, whilst watching from the coast, I saw two female eiders walking side by side at a slight distance apart. At intervals they would pause, stand or sit for a little, and again jog on together. These birds must, I think, have been selecting a place in which to lay their eggs, and if so, it would seem that they like to do this in pairs. I also saw a male eider-duck sitting for a considerable time amidst the heather right away from the sea. It is, of course, impossible to mistake the sexes after the males have assumed their adult plumage, and, moreover, this bird subsequently flew down into the little bay just beneath me. I say this because it is authoritatively stated that the male eider-duck never goes near the nest. It is probable that a week or so later this bird could not have sat where he was without being near to a nest at any rate; and, moreover, what should take the male bird from the sea, or its immediate coast, at all, if it were not some impulse appropriate to the season? This and a statement made to me by a native in regard to this point, which went still further against authority, makes me wish that I had been able to see a little more. As it is, I have only a right to ask with regard to this one male eider-duck, "Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galere?"

It is difficult to tire of watching these birds, ducks, yet so wonderfully marine. The freedom of the sea is upon them, far more than Aphrodite they might have sprung from its foam—it is of the male with his snowy breast that one thinks this. One cannot see them and think of a pond or a river—yet, always, they are so palpably ducks. It is delicious to see them heave with the swell of the wave against some low sloping rock—lapping it like the water itself—and then remain upon it, standing or sitting—living jetsam that the sea has cast up. They ride like corks on the water, they are the arch of each wave and the dimple of every ripple.

Eider-ducks feed by diving to the bottom of the sea off the rocks where it is shallow, and getting there what is palatable. Probably this is, in most cases, eaten under water, but whilst, as a rule, emerging empty-mouthed, they occasionally bring up something in their bill, and dispose of it floating on the surface. In one case this was, I think, a crab; in another, some kind of shell-fish. Their dive is a sudden dip down, and in the act of it they open the wings, which they use under water, as can be plainly seen for a little way below the surface. This opening of the wings in the moment of diving is, I believe, a sure sign that they are used as fins or flippers under water, and that the feet play little or no part.

Birds, amongst others, that dive in this way are—to begin with—the black guillemot.

"Looking down from the cliffs into the quiet pools and inlets, one can see these little birds—the dabchicks of the ocean—swimming under water and using their wings as paddles, perfectly well. Instantly on diving they become of a glaucous green colour, and are then no longer like things of this world, but fanciful merely, suggesting sprites, goblins, little subaqueous bottle imps, for their shape is like a fat-bodied bottle or flat flask. Great green bubbles they look like, and so too but—larger and still greener—do the eider-ducks." In their small size and rounded shape, in their deariness, their pretty little ways and actions, in everything, almost, these little black guillemots are the marine counterpart of the dabchick or little grebe. It is pretty to see them, a dozen or so together. They pursue each other under the water—in anger, I think, but it has the appearance of sport; it is a joyous anger. They seem all in a state of collective excitement, and out of this one will make a sudden dart at another, who dives, and the pursuit is then alternately under or on the water, and sometimes just skimming along it on the wing, exactly as dabchicks do. Yet the black guillemot is a fair flier, having to ascend the precipices, and the dabchick too, for the matter of that, can if he chooses rise into the air and fly seriously. There are three modes of delivering the attack in fighting. In the first two the one bird either just darts on the other when quite near, in which case there may be a slight scuffle before either or both disappear, or flies at him over the water from a greater or lesser distance and often very nearly gets hold of him, but never quite. Invariably the other is down in time, if it be only the justest of justs. The third plan, which is the most rusé, is for the attacking bird to dive whilst yet some way off, and, coming up beneath his "objective," to spear up at him with his bill. And so nicely does he judge his distance that he always does come up exactly where the swimming bird was,—not is, for this one is as invariably gone. Yet this plan must sometimes be successful, though I did not see a case in which it was. At least, I judge so by the precipitation with which the bird on the water when he saw the other one dive—as he always did, and divined his intention—flew up and off to some distance. In just the same way have I seen the great crested grebe rise up and fly far over the glassy waters of the sun-bathed lake—but still more precipitately, and, indeed, in disorder, for he rose not alone from the surface but also from the well-aimed spear-point of his successfully-lunging antagonist. Whether the little dabchicks also, as well as the crested grebes, attack each other in this manner, I cannot from observations say, but from the relationship it would seem probable.

Habet! Great-Crested Grebe Attacked by Another Under Water.

Razorbills also dive briskly, opening the wings and with a kick up, as it were, of the legs and tail. If one sits on a height and they come sufficiently near inshore to look down on them at an acute angle, one can follow their course under the water, often for a considerable time. One remarks then that the wings are moved both together—flapped or beaten—so that the bird really flies through the water. In flight, however, they are spread straight out without a bend in them, whereas here they are all the while flexed at the joint, being raised from and brought downwards again towards the sides in the same position in which they repose against them when closed. These birds—and, no doubt, the other divers—dive not only to catch fish, but also for the sake of speed. I have seen them when travelling steadily along the shore duck down and swim or fly like this, in a straight line and but just below the surface of the water, always pursuing the same direction, and seeming to have no difficulty in guiding themselves. The speed was very much greater than when they merely paddled on the surface. Thus we may see, perhaps, how such birds as the great auk and the penguins came to lose the power of flight. They could fly in two ways, either through the air or the water. The first—as long as they retained it at all, probably—was much the quicker; but the other was quick enough for their purposes, and the effort required to rise from the water was thus dispensed with. These razorbills dived in order to get more quickly to some point for which they were making. They might have got there still sooner by flying, but the time saved was evidently not worth that effort to them. But the power of flight might be long retained by a bird—though useless to it in other respects—owing to its habit of laying its eggs on otherwise inaccessible ledges of the rock.

When three or four razorbills are swimming together, it is common for one of them to dive first, and for the rest to follow in quick succession, sometimes so quick that the order in which they go down, and the succession itself, can only just be followed. They must keep together under the water as well as above it, since they will often emerge so, after some time, and at a considerable distance.

The guillemot dives more or less like the razorbill, but I have not been successful in tracing him under the water.

There remains the puffin. "I have been able to follow the puffin downwards in its dive, and at once noticed that the legs, instead of being used, were trailed behind, as in flight, so that the bird's motion was a genuine flight through water, unassisted by the webbed feet. With the razorbill, I was not able to make this out so clearly, for the legs are black, and the eye cannot detect them under the water, as it can the bright vermilion ones of the puffin (one wonders, by the way, if the latter play any part under water such as the white tail of the rabbit is supposed to do on land), though I could see that just in diving they were brought together and raised, so as to extend backwards in the same way. Penguins also trail the legs like this in diving, only giving an occasional paddle with them, whilst the wings are in constant motion."

It would seem, therefore, that those diving birds which swim with their wings under the water only use their feet in a minor degree, and that they go down with a quick, sudden duck, or bob, and in the act of opening their wings. On the other hand, cormorants, shags, and mergansers, birds which do not use their wings in this way, dive in a quite different manner. Instead of the sudden, little, splashy duck, as described, they make a smooth, gliding leap forwards and upwards, rising a little from the water, with the neck stretched out, and wings pressed close to the sides, to enter it again, beak foremost, like a curved arrow, thus describing the segment of a circle. Their shape, as they perform this movement, is that of a bent bow, and there is the same suggestion in it of pent strength and elasticity.

The shag is the greatest exponent of this school of diving, excelling even the cormorant—at least I fancy so—by virtue of his smaller size. He leaps entirely clear of the water, including even, for a moment, his legs and feet. This seems really a surprising feat, for, as I say, the wings are tightly closed, so that, by the force merely of the powerful webbed feet, he is able to throw himself bodily out of the sea. It must be by a single stroke, I think, for the motion is sudden and then continuous. The bird may, of course, have been in ordinary activity just previously, so that some slight degree of impetus may be supposed to have been already gained, but this is unnecessary, and the leap is often from quiescence. The merganser dives like the shag or cormorant—though the curved leap is a little less vigorous—and swims, like them, without using the wings. His food being fish, instead of getting deeper and deeper down till he disappears, like the eider-duck, he usually swims horizontally, sometimes only just beneath the surface, and, as he comes right into the shallow inlets, where the water almost laps the shore, he can often be watched thus gliding in rapid pursuit. Though I saw all his turns and efforts, I never could see either the fish or the capture of it—supposing that this took place. If it did, the fish must each time have been swallowed, or at least pouched, beneath the surface, as the bird never emerged with one in his bill. There are, of course, several different species of merganser and goosander. I cannot be quite sure of the identity of the bird which has given rise to these observations—I think it was the red-throated merganser—but, no doubt, the ways and habits of all the species are either identical or nearly so.

It is interesting to find the little dabchick of our ponds and streams diving sometimes in the manner of the shag and cormorant, though, of course, tempered with his own little soft individuality. I have this note of him, taken in the frost and snow of a cold December day whilst he sported in his little creek just a few feet in front of me. "He gives a little leap up in the water, making a graceful curve, a pretty little curl, as he plunges. One sees the curve of his back—which is something—as he spring-glides down. The action is that of the cormorant, but, rendered by himself, made dabchicky. Of course he is in the water all the time; he does not shoot right out of it. There is far less power and energy. It is a star-twinkle to a lightning-flash, a floss ringlet to a bended bow." And again: "He is diving now very prettily, with a graceful little curled arch in the air before going down."

I say that the dabchick sometimes dives like this, for he has many ways of doing so, and it is not very often that he will repeat the same thing twice in succession. Sometimes he dips so smoothly and still-ly down that one seems hardly to miss him from where he was; there is just a swirl on the stream—which seems, now, to represent him—and that all but silent sound, so cool and pleasant, as of water sucked down into water. Or, swimming smoothly down the current, he stops suddenly, brings the neck stiffly and straightly forward, with eye fixed intently, severely on the water—piercing down into it as though making a point—and then down he goes with a click, almost a snap, flirting the water-drops up into the air with his tiny little mite of a tail. I have seen it stated, I think, that the dabchick has no tail, or that he has no tail to speak of. I shall speak of it, for I have seen it enter largely into his deportment. When, as I say, he dives like this, suddenly, it may be flirted up with such vigour that, mite as it is, it will send a little shower of sparkling drops to 20 feet away or more. It may be said that it is not so much the tail as the whole body that does this. I say that the tail has its share, and a good share, too—more, perhaps, than is quite fair. At any rate, I have seen the prettiest little drop of all whisked right off the tip of it, and the sun shining more upon that one than any of the others—and that, I think, is having a tail to speak of. But when swimming along quite quietly, the dabchick's tail, instead of being cocked or flirted up like the moor-hen's, is drawn smoothly down on the water so as not to project and thus interfere with its owner's appearance, which is that of a little, smooth, brown, oiled powder-puff, "smooth as oil, soft as young down." The dabchick, therefore, has a tail, and knows how to regulate it.

Between these two extremes of the dabchick's manner of diving, and independently of the little curled leap à la cormorant, there are infinite gradations, as well as all sorts of mannerisms and individualities. But in all these I do not distinctly remember to have seen him throw out his wings in the act of going down.

I should be pretty sure, therefore, that he swims only and does not fly (if this expression is permissible) under water, if I did not seem to remember having once seen him do so, as I lay with my head just over the river's bank and he passed underneath me. But it was years ago; I have no note, and my memory may very likely have deceived me. Possibly both in regard to this, as well as the way in which he dives, the dabchick may be in a transition state. His multifariousness in this latter respect seems to render this likely. The shag, if I mistake not, never dives in any other way than that which I have described, unless he is really alarmed, when he disappears instantaneously and in a dishevelled manner.

The moor-hen, also, may follow no fixed plan in his diving, for I have certainly seen him using his feet only under water, and I believe I have also seen him using his wings. Though this, too, was many years ago I ought not to be mistaken, as the incident made such a deep impression on me at the time. I was standing on the bank of a little creek, or streamlet, running out of a reedy moor-hen-haunted river. The creek itself, however, was clear where I stood, and all at once a strange object passed right in front of me, swimming beneath the surface. It was a moor-hen, but the wings used in the way I have been discussing—a thing to me quite unexpected—seemed to give it an entirely unbirdlike appearance, and surprised me into thinking for the moment that it was some kind of turtle. The legs, I believe, were also used, alternately in a kind of long, gliding stride, and may just have touched the mud at the bottom. This, however—and I believe the moor-hen often walks in this way along the bottom rather than swims—would seem to make its use of the wings at the same time all the more unlikely. I have but my memory, which, as evidence after so many years, is of little value. In all such matters what is wanted is a note taken down at the time. As to the actual dive down of the moor-hen, whenever I have seen it it has always been a sudden duck, sometimes in a rather splashy and disordered manner, but whether the wings were ever thrown partly open I am not able to say. I have noted cases, however, where they certainly were not, and this again makes it more likely that the moor-hen in diving does not use the wings at all. I do not know that I have ever seen the moor-hen dive, unless it was in alarm from having seen me; and with regard to this a question arises which, I think, is of interest—to what extent, namely, does diving enter into the moor-hen's ordinary habits, how often does it do so of its own free will? Possibly it may differ as to this in different localities. Jefferies, for instance, writes as though it were always diving. Yet I have watched moor-hens latterly, at all seasons, and for several hours at a time, without having once seen them do so; so that from seeing them thus au naturel, and without any suspicion of my proximity, I might have come to the conclusion that they were not diving birds at all. As it is, I am inclined to think that they rarely dive except to avoid danger, and only then when surprised and as a last resource. For instance, if a moor-hen sees one from the smallest distance it flies to the nearest belt of reeds, but if one appears quite suddenly on the bank just above it—as sometimes happens—it will then often dive. Even here, however, according to my own experience, it is more likely to trust to its wings; so that, as it seems to me, the habit under any circumstances is only an occasional one, and may, therefore, be in process either of formation or cessation. If we look at the moor-hen's foot, which shows no special adaptation to swimming, but a very marked one for walking over a network of water-herbage, the former of these two suppositions seems the more probable. The bird from a shore and weed-walker has become aquatic, and is probably becoming more so. If the habit of diving is only becoming established, it is possible that some localities might be more conducive to its quick increase than others, and it would be interesting, I think, if observers in different parts of the country would make and record observations on this point.

The chariness of the moor-hen in diving is the more interesting because the coot, which belongs to the same family, has the same general habits, and has evidently become aquatic by the same gradual process, dives frequently, and is accustomed to feed upon weeds which it pulls up from the bottom of the water. Here is an instance, in which it will also be seen that the coot's manner of diving is very much more formed than the moor-hen's, which may be said to be archaic. "It dives down and reappears, shortly, with some dank weediness in its bill, which it proceeds to peck about and swallow on the surface. Then it dives again, comes up with some more, which it likewise eats, and does this several times in succession. After five or six dives it comes up with quite a large quantity, with which it swims a little way to some footing of flag and reed, and on this frail brown raft it stands whilst picking to pieces and eating 'the fat weed' which it has there deposited. Having finished, or selected from it, it swims to the same place again and continues thus to dive and feed, each time coming up with some weeds in its beak, which I see it eat quite plainly. It is charming to see this, and also the way in which the bird dives, which is elaborate, studied, and yet full of ease. Rising, first, from the water in a light, buoyant manner as if about to ascend, balloon-like, into the air, it changes its mind in the instant and plunges beneath the surface, having, as it goes down, a very globular and air-bally appearance. It is like the sometime dive of the dabchick, but with more deportment and less specific gravity. The dabchick is an oiled powder-puff, the coot a balloon, the dabchick a small fluff-ball, the coot an air-ball."

From this it would seem as though the coot belonged to the cormorant school of diving, disagreeing in this with the moor-hen, to whom it is so closely allied, whilst agreeing with the dabchick, as well as the great crested grebe and other birds—the cormorant itself—with whom it has no close affinities. But this cannot be said without considerable qualification, for, though the description I have given is from the life and seen over and over again, yet at other times the dive down of this bird is so totally different that no one who had seen only the one could think it capable of the other. In the winter, coots swim about in flocks, and then one may see first one little spray of water thrown up as a bird disappears, and then another. That is all; there is the spray and there is no bird, whereas just before there was one. Indeed, I think it is a quicker dive than any that I have seen a sea-bird make, only equalled, perhaps (or even, perhaps, not quite equalled), by that of a really alarmed dabchick. As for the process of it, it is undiscoverable, the eye catches only the spray-jet, which is pretty and always just the same. But there is no disorder, no higgledy-piggledyness. It is something which you can't see, but which you feel is the act of a master. Here again, then, the coot in diving is quite the moor-hen's superior. The dive of the latter bird is, as we have said, archaic. It is unpolished, and greatly wants form and style. Now, the coot is fin-footed—that is to say, the skin of the toes is extended so as to form on the interspace of each joint a thin lobe-shaped membrane. In this formation, which likewise distinguishes the grebes, we may, perhaps, see the gradual steps by which the feet of some more purely aquatic birds have become webbed. As the lobes became larger they would have met and overlapped, and from this to an actual fusion does not seem an impassable gulf. This, however, is only a supposition. It seems more likely that the web has been, in most cases, gained by the extension of the slight membrane between the toes, at their junction with one another. Possibly the lobes on the toes of the coot were gained before he became a swimmer, and served the purpose of supporting him on mud or floating vegetation, or, as perhaps is more probable, they may have been developed in accordance with the double requirement. At any rate, if we suppose this structural modification to have been effected after the bird became in some degree truly aquatic, then, though this does not prove that the period at which it became so was longer ago than in the case of the moor-hen, which has remained structurally unaffected, yet it, perhaps, renders it likely, and we can, by supposing so, understand why the one bird should dive habitually and the other only occasionally.

The great crested grebe exhibits the same feature of variety in his manner of diving as does his sprightly little relative the dabchick. Sometimes it is quite informal—he just spears the water before disappearing, sinking in it a little before he spears—but at others there is the cormorant leap upwards as well as forwards, before going down. Of course, no more than with the dabchick is there the same tremendous vigour, the wonderful supple virility which lives in the leap of this strong-souled sea robber. I say "of course," for anyone who has watched these birds—the most ornamental, perhaps, of any except swans that swim the water—must have remarked a quiet, easy, one may almost say languid, grace—something suggestive of high birth, of "Lady Clara Vere de Vere"-ness—in their every, or almost every, action. Masters of grace indeed they are, and consummate masters of diving. I do them wrong descanting upon them here so scantily, but space, my constant and persistent enemy, will have it so. I have not even sufficient to make them any further apology.

CHAPTER VII

Watching Shags and Guillemots

I have referred once or twice before to the cormorant (including under this title the shag), and once to the guillemot. In this chapter I shall treat of both these birds a little more at large, for in the first place they are salient amongst sea fowl, giving a distinctive character to the wild places that they haunt, and secondly, I have watched them closely and patiently. Both are interesting, and the cormorant especially has a winning and amiable character, which I shall the more enjoy bringing before the public because I think that up to the present scant justice has been done to it. Something, perhaps, of the wild and fierce attaches to the popular idea of this bird, due, no doubt, both to its appearance, which has in it something dark and evil-looking, and to the stern, wild scenery of rock and sea with which this is in consonance, and by which it is emphasised. Perhaps the mere name even, which has by no means a harmless sound, has something to do with it.

"As with its wings aslant

Sails the fierce cormorant

Seeking some rocky haunt,"

says Longfellow—lines which, to me at least, call up a graphic picture of the bird, though I do not know that the first contains anything which is specially characteristic of it; and Milton has recorded—as we may, perhaps, assume—the way in which its uncouth shape appealed to him by making it that which his grand angel-devil chooses, on one occasion, to assume. On another one, it may be remembered, Satan takes for his purposes the form of a toad, and on each, no doubt, the poet, who never appears to yield to the strong temptation (as one would imagine) of loving his great creation, has intended to convey a general idea of fitness and symbolical similarity as between the disguised being and the disguise taken.

It has been conjectured that the habit which the cormorant has of standing for a length of time with its wings spread out and loosely drooping, suggested to Milton its appropriateness, and certainly there is an o'er-brooding, possession-taking appearance in this attitude of the bird, in keeping with the ideas which may be supposed to reign in Satan's breast as he looks down from the high tree of life upon the garden of Eden and its two newly created inhabitants. Independently of this, however, the bird, as it stands in its ordinary posture, firmly poised, the body not quite upright but inclined somewhat forward, with the curved neck and strong hooked beak thrown into bold relief—the dark webbed feet grasping firmly on the rock—has in it something suggestive both of power and evil, which may well have struck Milton, as it must, I think, anyone who is appreciative and either not an ornithologist or who, if he is one, will suppress for the time being his special scientific knowledge and se laisser prendre aux choses, as did the less (falsely) critical portion of Moliere's audiences.

For, whatever the cormorant may look, he is in reality—except from the fish's point of view, which is, no doubt, a strong one—both a very innocent and, as I have said, a very amiable bird. He shines particularly in scenes of quiet domestic happiness—in the home circle both giving and receiving affection—and it is in this light that the following pictures will for the most part reveal him. I must premise that they all refer to that smaller and handsomer species of our two cormorants adorned with a crest, and whose plumage is all of a deep glossy, glancing green, called the shag. If I speak of him sometimes by his family name, it is because he has a clear right to it, and also because it has a more pleasing sound than the one which distinguishes him specifically. The habits of the two birds are almost the same, if not quite identical. They fish together in the sea, stand together on the rocks, and in the earlier stages of its plumage the more ornate one closely resembles the other in its permanent dress. One might think that they were not merely the co-descendants of a common and now extinct ancestor, but the modified form and its actual living progenitor. But I am aware of the arguments which could be used against such a conclusion.

I will now give my observations as taken down at the time, and should they be thought minute to the point of tediousness, I can only in extenuation plead the title of this book, whilst assuring the reader, that however it may lie between us two, the bird, at any rate, is in no way to blame.