Among the Birds in Northern Shires

Our next rocky haunt of sea-fowl lies far away to the northward, and is the widely and justly famous Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth. This is another favourite locality of ours; we have visited it repeatedly, and the stirring scenes of bird-life we have witnessed there each time are indelibly fixed upon the memory. It was at the Bass that we went through our apprenticeship to marine cliff-climbing, and where we first made the acquaintance of the Gannet at home. As most readers may know, the Bass is one of the few grand breeding-places of the Gannet in the British archipelago. There are several other rock-birds breeding in some plenty upon the Bass, but the Gannet stamps the rock with its individuality, and all other species are overpowered and comparatively lost amidst its numbers. Perhaps we might make an exception in the case of the Puffins. There is a large colony of these birds established in the walls of a ruined fortification facing the sea, and Puffins may be seen repeatedly coming and going in their usual hasty way. There are many more of these birds breeding here and there about the rock, but this, so far as we know, is the largest congregation. The Gannet is a thoroughly pelagic bird, and only comes to the land to breed, retiring once more to the sea as soon as its young can fly. During the late autumn and throughout the winter the Bass is practically deserted by birds. At the end of March or during the first half of April the Gannets begin to assemble at the time-honoured nesting-place. At first their stay is fleeting, but it gradually becomes longer and longer until nest-building commences, and from that time onwards the Bass is the grand head-quarters of many thousands of Gannets. It has been computed that at least twelve thousand adult birds frequent the Bass; probably this under-estimates the actual number, although we must remember that in 1831 Macgillivray gave twenty thousand. In any case, judging from the most reliable information obtainable, the Gannets seem to be on the decrease. Throughout the summer the Bass is literally vignetted in a throng of ever-moving Gannets; but even at this season many of the birds fly long distances out to sea to feed, coming home stuffed with fish, lots of which are disgorged at the nests. Numbers of the birds begin nest-building at the beginning of May, but, as is the case with Rooks, the operation is not commenced simultaneously by all, and a fortnight later, when many of the nests contain an egg, there are a good number of others in an uncompleted state. At this time many of the birds flying about will be remarked with pieces of turf or other material in their bills, which they will thus carry for a long period without attempting to alight and work it into the unfinished nests. The grand home of the Gannets here is situated upon the north, north-east, and west cliffs. Here on the grassy downs, near the edge of the cliffs, numbers of Gannets may be seen standing quietly, some fast asleep with their head buried in the dorsal plumage. We have caught Gannets when thus asleep, but care must be exercised to grip the bird firmly round the neck, or a stab from the formidable beak will reward the would-be captor’s rashness. The nests are made almost anywhere – at the top of the cliffs amidst the broken rocks and crags, lower down the cliffs where any ordinary climber can reach them, and, most numerously of all, on the ledges far below which are only accessible with the aid of a rope. To say the least, the nest is not a very attractive one; it is often trodden out of all semblance to such a structure, and frequently covered with droppings and slime, whilst around it are dead and decaying fish, many of them disgorged when partly digested. The hot sun soon completes the work of decomposition, and generates a fearsome stench which it requires all the fortitude of an enthusiastic ornithologist to tolerate. The nests are made of sea-weed, turf, straws, and scraps of moss, the soil from the turf being trampled into a mortar-like mass and binding the whole together. In a shallow cavity at the top of this cone-like structure a single egg is laid, originally white coated thickly with lime, but soon becoming stained into a rich brown from contact with the big webbed feet of the parent birds. Numbers of nests in some spots are crowded together, often so closely that the cliff is literally white with sitting birds. The noise is deafening. The Gannets in the air are quiet enough, gliding to and fro in a bewildering throng, but the birds on the cliffs and the grassy downs at the summit, those that are standing or sitting, keep up a never-ending chorus of harsh cries. As we wander to and fro inspecting the dwellings in this curious city of birds the indignant owners bark defiance with sparkling eyes, and only tumble off their solitary egg when prompted by feelings for their own personal safety. They are quarrelsome birds too, possibly because so very overcrowded, and fights and sparrings are continually taking place. Every now and then two birds will each seize the other in its powerful bill and go tumbling over the cliffs together, not to separate until they have perhaps fallen a hundred feet or so, when they will part, and soon lose their identity among the drifting crowd that circles about the face of the cliff in never-ending activity. All the time of our stay birds are coming and going, dropping lightly on to the land or soaring upwards into the air; whilst the sea below is well sprinkled with birds, and some distance down the Firth many others may be seen busily engaged in fishing. The scene becomes still more animated when the young are hatched. At first these are ugly, ungainly-looking objects, blind, and covered with dark-gray skin. This, however, is soon clothed with dense down of dazzling whiteness, which in its turn is succeeded by a speckled plumage – brown spotted with white. The young birds pass through several stages of plumage before they acquire the white livery characteristic of their parents; neither do they breed until they are four or five years old. A few of these party-coloured immature birds may be detected amongst the crowd of adults at the Bass; but, as a rule, these young ones do not congregate much at the breeding-places until ready to propagate their species. In many respects the Gannet is a very remarkable bird. The nostrils are closed, being practically obliterated, the tongue is small and aborted, whilst nearly the entire surface of the body is covered with a net-work of subcutaneous air-cells, communicating with the lungs, and thus emptied or inflated as the bird may desire. We have already dwelt at some length upon the Gannet’s ways of life, and it will at once be seen from the above facts how admirably the bird is fitted not only for an aerial existence, but for withstanding the great pressure of the water during its repeated plunges into the sea from high altitudes.

There are also many Kittiwakes nesting about the cliffs of the Bass, and a few Herring Gulls. The former birds breed most abundantly upon the precipitous cliffs, low down many of them, and in very inaccessible spots. We have, however, taken many eggs of this Gull from nests nearer the top of the cliffs, and in places which we had little difficulty in reaching without the aid of a rope. The nest of this Gull is a substantial one, made largely of turf, which is trampled into a solid mass by the owners. Sea-weed and dry grass, as well as the dead stalks of plants, are also used. The eggs are usually two or three in number, green, or olive, or brown, of various shades, marked with darker brown and gray. Then amongst the cliffs great numbers of Guillemots and smaller numbers of Razorbills deposit their eggs in suitable spots; whilst the Jackdaw and the Rock Dove frequent them. The Daws are great robbers of eggs, and as soon as the Auks or Kittiwakes chance to leave them unprotected the foraging birds beat along the cliffs and pounce upon them, carrying them off transfixed on their bill. The Herring Gulls prefer the grassy downs in the hollow on the north side of the Bass, making their somewhat slight nests amongst the herbage. Their eggs closely resemble those of the Lesser Black-backed Gull – the brown varieties – but do not present anything like the same diversity, although they are as a rule perceptibly larger. We are glad to be able to state that the Peregrine Falcon breeds upon the rock, and on more than one occasion, after an exciting climb, aided by a rope, we have succeeded in reaching and minutely examining the nest of this interesting bird. It preys upon the Puffins, Rock Doves, and Guillemots that make the Bass their summer home, and we earnestly hope that it may long continue to frequent this noble pile of rock.

From the Bass it is a long jaunt to St. Kilda, but we will do the distance on Icarian wings, and contrive to reach the famous islands during the very height of the breeding season of the birds. We have appropriately left this romantic place to the last, for it is here, we say without hesitation, that littoral rock scenery throughout the northern shires culminates in grandeur, and that rock bird-life attains to its highest degree of impressiveness. Sixteen years ago the group of islands (collectively known as St. Kilda) were comparatively unknown to British ornithologists. Of their existence, of course, most bird-lovers knew, but only in a hazy sort of a way, whilst the wonders of their bird-life were even more traditional to most of us. Nowadays St. Kilda has become ornithologically “fashionable”; it is considered quite the correct thing to “do” the archipelago, and the place has become popularized – we had almost written a much stronger, if perhaps not quite so genteel a word. Sixteen years ago we visited the islands and published an account of their bird-life – the first, we believe, that had been written for nearly twenty years. We have in various works still further emphasized the richness of the place from an ornithological point of view. This, we profoundly regret to say, has resulted in a wild rush of collectors to the islands, with the inevitable result that the natives have been corrupted, and the Wren peculiar to the place has become threatened with absolute extermination! Better perhaps had we remained silent, at least until sufficient steps had been taken to secure the safety of perhaps the most interesting bird on the islands, if the most diminutive. Collectors have taught the St. Kildan that there is more wealth in the long-despised Wren than in the much-vaunted and highly protected Fulmar, but the source of it will prove a transient one indeed if something be not quickly done for its preservation.

It would be difficult to find, or even to imagine, more grandly beautiful rock scenery than St. Kilda presents. There is not, for instance, in all the British Islands, a precipice approaching in magnificence to that of Connacher, which is formed literally by the side of an island twelve hundred feet high falling sheer into the Atlantic; and when we add that this awful wall of rock is crowded with birds, almost from foot to summit, we complete a description which has no parallel in Britain. This is but one item in the grand sum total of the crags of St. Kilda. It would be as hard to conceive a more majestic outline of sea-crags than is formed by the towering jagged summits that cut the sky-line and form the long narrow sister island of Doon, forming the southern horn of a most picturesque, if somewhat treacherous bay, of which a spur of St. Kilda itself completes the watery enclosure. The cliffs that buttress the western isle of Soay, though not so high, are in their way as picturesque; whilst both islands literally swarm with birds, some of them the most local in the British avifauna. Then lying away to the north, four miles from St. Kilda, in lonely isolation, towers the lofty island rock mass of Borreay, with its two attendant satellites, Stacks Lii and Armin, all sacred to the Gannets that in tens of thousands crowd upon them during the summer months. This island itself rises nearly sheer in parts a thousand feet or so from the ocean. Undoubtedly the grand secret of the charm that has attracted sea-birds in such numbers to these rocky islets is their utter isolation and loneliness, combined with the vast food supply furnished by the surrounding sea. These islands are far without the ocean highways of vessels; they are rarely approached by man; whilst the small number of people – quite an ideal commonwealth in its way – that live there are sensible enough to treat the birds fairly, and not literally to kill the Geese that lay the golden eggs. They farm the birds as an agriculturist would his land, or a stock-keeper his sheep and cows; they allow them a close time, or perhaps the place is so extensive that these few fowlers are unable to exhaust the store, and the supply is kept up by natural increase. Be this as it may the birds live and thrive, and this notwithstanding the fact that the Sea Birds Protection Acts do not apply to any of the islands, possibly, as some readers might say, because it would be utterly impossible to enforce them, not even by removing every living soul from the place.

We need not linger here at any length upon species that we have already dealt with elsewhere. Such birds as Guillemots, Razorbills, Puffins, and Gannets are here in vast abundance, but our space is required for the description of a few birds that we meet with nowhere else in the British archipelago in such numbers. The island of Doon, for instance, so thickly swarms with Puffins that when we land upon it these birds glide down to the sea in such countless hordes that the very face of the hillsides seems slipping away beneath us. As for the Guillemots, we knew an old St. Kildan, so the story ran in the village, who came across such numbers of their eggs upon the cliffs that he was compelled to take off his breeches and turn them into a bag to hold them! But there are more interesting birds to us, perhaps, breeding on Doon, and these are the Fork-tailed Petrels. They have their nests in burrows upon the grassy summit of the island. Those we discovered were on the western end, nearest to St. Kilda, and made in the rich soft soil, the burrows some two to five feet in length. At the end of this burrow the Petrel makes a scanty nest of dry grass, moss, and roots, upon which it lays a single egg, white in colour, faintly marked with dust-like specks of brown and gray. Sometimes a nest is dispensed with altogether. We caught some of the Petrels upon their nests, which, when released, flew about in a dazed sort of way as if unaccustomed to the light. These Petrels are chiefly crepuscular or nocturnal in their habits, and during the daytime not a bird will be seen. The St. Kildans pay little or no attention to such small birds, and possibly the Fork-tailed Petrels had remained here undisturbed for ages, for we are not aware that Bullock obtained any eggs from this colony when he discovered the species in the British Islands upwards of eighty years ago. Bullock, we might mention, came very near the honour of discovering this bird absolutely, for he was only anticipated by a year by Vieillot.

St. Kilda is indeed the grand head-quarters of our British Petrels. All the indigenous species breed there, and in greater numbers than they do anywhere else. The Stormy Petrel is common enough, and doubtless breeds on every island in the group. Its habits are almost precisely the same as those of the Fork-tailed Petrel, and its egg is similar in colour, only much smaller in size, as the bird is itself. But the grand colony of Manx Shearwaters is perhaps of more general interest; the bird breeds in many other parts of our islands, although nowhere in such numbers as it does here. Soay is its grand head-quarters, but great numbers breed in suitable localities on every other island in the group. This Petrel is also nocturnal in its habits, lying close concealed in its burrow during the day, coming out at dusk to search for food over the surrounding sea. St. Kildans say that the Manx Shearwater is one of their first bird visitors in spring, and amongst the last to leave in autumn. Probably the real fact of the case is that the bird haunts the islands throughout the year. Towards the end of May this Shearwater commences to lay. It provides a scanty nest of dry grass at the end of the burrow it has excavated, and here it lays a single white egg. Like the Owls and the Nightjars, this bird becomes active at nightfall. The Shearwaters then leave their burrows in thousands, and the grassy island becomes a scene of activity, birds coming and going in the gloom, and their cries filling the air. The “Scrapire”, as the St. Kildans call this bird, is a favourite article of food with them, and large quantities are caught at night, when parties of men visit the birds' haunts and knock the poor Shearwaters down with sticks or drag them from their holes.

But the most important bird of all in the entire group of islands is the far-famed Fulmar. Its numbers here would be very difficult to estimate even approximately, but some faint idea may be derived from the fact that the St. Kildans are reputed to take, during one special week in August which custom has long reserved for the purpose, no less than twenty thousand young birds! To these we must add the numbers of old birds that are snared on their nests during the hatching season; whilst we must also bear in mind that comparatively a small proportion of birds are caught at all. Darwin had certainly strong grounds for asserting that the Fulmar is the most numerous bird in the world. Without being held in any way to support an assertion which is so difficult of proof, we may certainly state that no other sea-bird breeds in such vast numbers anywhere in the British archipelago. The Fulmar commences to breed in May, the eggs being laid from the middle of that month onwards to early June. Unlike the Shearwaters and the more typical Petrels, this bird rarely makes a burrow big enough to hide itself, but is content to scratch out a hollow in the soil, or even to deposit its egg on ledges of the cliffs. In some parts of the cliffs the nests are so close to each other that from a distance the birds seem crowded together into great white masses. Beyond a small portion of dry grass the Fulmar makes no nest, although some we found on Doon were hollows lined with small bits of rock. The single egg is white, rough in texture, and with a strong pungent smell. Of all the varied scenes of bird-life that it has been our good fortune to witness, not one has been quite so impressive as that we witnessed from a shoulder of Connacher, when, after a stiff climb from the village, we suddenly came upon the assembly of Fulmars at their nests. The first thing that impressed us was the silence of it all. We had hitherto been so used to a noisy din as an inseparable accompaniment to a gathering of sea-fowl that the silence of these Fulmars seemed almost weirdly strange. We can only compare this scene to a dense snow-storm in which each flake was a separate bird. In an apparently never-ending throng the big white birds drifted by, those nearest to the cliffs passing in one direction, those farther out at sea going directly opposite. There seemed thus to be two streams of birds passing and repassing each other, whilst as far as the eye could reach the air was filled with gliding fluttering birds – some of them so indifferent to our presence that they approached almost within arm’s-length. No birds were flying over the land, all were above the water or floating on its surface far down below. We stood looking at the wonderful scene for quite an hour literally spellbound; and even now, after the lapse of many years, we can see the whole thing again as we write these lines, graven as it is indelibly upon the memory. There was a strange indescribable fascination about the whole scene which held us to the spot, and many times during our fortnights sojourn upon these islands we wended our way alone to the summit of the cliffs to sit there and watch the comings and the goings of these wonderful birds. Even more impressive still does all again become when viewed from the sea below. Then the masses of birds, as they appear to fall away from the rock face, literally darken the air and overpower us with their numbers.

The St. Kildans are expert fowlers, snaring the Fulmars as they sit upon their nests, with long rods to which a horse-hair noose is attached. The birds that breed here are the source of the St. Kildans' wealth; thousands of them are killed and salted for food; thousands of eggs are taken for a similar purpose. When caught, the Petrels are made to vomit a quantity of oil into the dried gullet of a Gannet that the fowler carries attached to him; and this oil, together with the feathers from these birds, Gannets and others, are also a further source of income.