CHAPTER IV.

_AUKS, GULLS, AND PLOVERS._

THE AUK TRIBE.

The GUILLEMOT is found all around Britain, and breeds wherever the sea is fringed by cliffs affording ledges for the reception of the eggs. It breeds in colonies often numbering many thousands, and lays but one egg, which is large and pear-shaped. Since the guillemot builds no nest, but lays its egg on the bare rock, this peculiar shape is advantageous, since it revolves on itself, when disturbed, instead of rolling off the ledge into the sea. At the same time thousands of eggs fall into the sea every year owing to the bird's leaving the egg, whilst incubating, in too great a hurry. At Lundy Island one of the sources of amusement for the gaping tourist was that of firing a shot to frighten the birds, with the result that, at each shot, showers of eggs were knocked off the ledges on to the rocks below. The colour of the egg varies infinitely, no two being quite alike. This, it has been suggested, is useful, as the mother is thereby enabled to identify her own egg, even when surrounded by hundreds of others. The young are covered with long down, and when big enough, but still unable to fly, are taken down by the mother to the sea, being carried, some say, on her back: others say the chick is seized by the wing and carried down.

The RAZOR-BILL is nearly, if not quite, as common on the coasts of Britain as the guillemot, from which it may be readily distinguished by its beak, which is much compressed from side to side--hence its name of Razor-bill--and deeply grooved. In habits it very closely resembles the guillemot, but in one respect at least it is a more interesting bird, inasmuch as it is related to and closely resembles the now extinct GREAT AUK, the giant of the tribe. The smallest British representative, it should be mentioned, is the LITTLE AUK, a species more nearly allied to the guillemot. It is only a winter visitant to Britain, breeding in huge colonies on the inhospitable shores of Greenland and Iceland.

So quaint a bird as the PUFFIN most certainly finds a place here. One of its most characteristic features is its enormous bill, which is rendered more conspicuous on account of its bright colour. It is bluish at the base, yellow at the tip, and striped with orange. A very remarkable feature of this bill is the fact that it is larger in summer than winter, portions of the sheath being shed in autumn.

Enormous numbers of puffins breed in Ireland; myriads breed on Lundy Island. The Farne Islands, the cliffs of Flamborough, and Scotland are also tenanted by thousands. Puffins breed in holes, which they dig for themselves when occasion requires, but when rabbit-burrows are to be had they prefer these, dispossessing the owners without the slightest compunction. Might, with the puffin, is right, as well as with many other animals.

Young puffins, like young auks and guillemots, are hatched covered with long down. The parents feed them on fish, which they deposit at the mouth of the burrow twenty at a time, and give them to the young bird one by one. When the female is sitting, her mate feeds her in a similar way.

Puffins lay only a single egg, which differs from that of its relatives the Auks and Guillemots in being white. The white colour enables the sitting-bird to see it in the dark burrow.

THE GULL TRIBE.

To get at the real inwardness of the Gull Tribe, so to speak, we must examine their anatomy very closely; then we shall be convinced that they are modified Plovers, and have nothing to do with the Petrels, to which they bear an undoubted resemblance.

TERNS.

Terns are gulls in miniature, on which account it is probable that many a visitor to the seashore passes them unwittingly. But let him watch next time for what look like flocks of tiny, long-winged, and unusually active gulls, now hovering gracefully in the air, and now suddenly plunging headlong like an arrow to the sea, with a force and dash that will surprise him, now that attention is drawn to them. These are terns. From their vivacity and forked tails, they have been aptly named Sea-swallows.

There are several species of tern. Like the Gulls, they have a distinctive dress for summer and winter, but the sexes are both dressed alike. The general livery, as with the Gulls, is pearly grey above and pure white below--in summer, in some species, relieved by a black head. One species, the ROSEATE TERN, has the breast suffused with a most exquisite rose-pink, which fades rapidly after death, however. Young terns, in their first plumage, differ conspicuously from their parents, having much brown intermixed with grey.

Terns lay about three eggs, which are deposited among the shingle on the beach; and so closely do the eggs, and later on the young, resemble the surrounding stones that it is almost impossible to find them. As a rule terns breed in colonies, often numbering many thousand birds.

There are exceptions to the rule just laid down as to nest-building. One species of the NODDY TERNS, for example, builds a nest of turf and dry grass, placed in bushes or in low trees. It seems to return to the same nest year after year, adding on each return new materials, till they form masses nearly 2 feet in height. Occasionally it appears to make a mud-nest, placed in the fork of a tree; whilst the superb little WHITE NODDY often deposits its egg on the leaf of a cocoanut-palm--truly a wonderful site, and still more wonderful when we reflect that it is chosen by one of the Gull Tribe.

About six species of tern commonly occur in the British Islands, and some five or six other species occasionally visit them.

SKIMMERS.

The SKIMMERS are tern-like birds, with a very wide geographical distribution, occurring in India, Africa, and North and South America, and remarkable for the very extraordinary form of the beak. The upper jaw is much shorter than the lower, and both are compressed to the thinness of a knife-blade. This beak is associated with, and is probably an adaptation to, an equally remarkable method of feeding, which has been admirably described by Darwin, who watched them feeding in a lake near Maldonado.

"They kept their bills," he says, "wide open, and the lower mandible half buried in the water. Thus skimming the surface, they ploughed it in their course; ... and it formed a most curious spectacle to behold a flock, each bird leaving its narrow wake on the mirror-like surface. In their flight ... they dexterously manage with their projecting lower mandible to plough up small fish, which are secured by the upper and shorter half of their scissor-like bills."

THE GULLS.

Gulls are larger and heavier birds than terns, with longer legs, and shorter, thicker beaks. Furthermore, with one exception, the tail is never forked. Like the terns, gulls generally breed in colonies, and these are often of large size. Young gulls, when newly hatched, are quite active. Later, when their feathers have grown, they are found to wear a dress quite different from that of the parents. Sometimes the adult plumage is gained at the end of the first year of existence, sometimes not until after the third year. Gulls feed on everything that comes in their way, from fish caught swimming at the surface of the sea to worms picked up at the plough-tail.

One of the commonest and best known of all the gulls is perhaps the species known as the BLACK-HEADED GULL, which has become so common in the heart of busy London, where hundreds may be seen, during the winter months, flying up and down the river, or wheeling about over the lakes in the parks. The black-headed gull receives its popular name on account of the fact that, like some terns and some other gulls, in the spring, the feathers of the head suddenly acquire a sooty-black colour: all trace of this is lost in the winter, save for two patches, one behind each ear.

The eggs of this bird are collected in thousands each spring, and sold in London and other markets as plovers' eggs. As many as 20,000 have been taken in a season from the extensive gullery at Scoulton Mere, in Norfolk.

Three or four eggs are laid in a nest of rushes, which is always placed on the ground in marshy and often inaccessible spots.

The largest of the Gull Tribe is the GREAT BLACK-BACKED GULL, which is, furthermore, a common British bird; indeed, it is frequently seen flying, together with the last-mentioned species, on the Thames, doing its best to get a full share of the tit-bits thrown by interested spectators from the various London bridges. Unlike the black-headed gull, it has no seasonal change of plumage, but is clad all the year round in the purest white, set off by a mantle of bluish black. The young of this bird has a quite distinct plumage of greyish brown, and hence has been described as a distinct species--the GREY GULL. This dress is gradually changed for the adult plumage, but the process takes about three years.

The KITTIWAKE is another of the common British gulls, breeding in thousands in favourable localities on the coasts. Its eggs are deposited on the narrowest and most inaccessible ledges of precipitous cliffs. This species sometimes falls a victim to the fashion of wearing feathers. "At Clovelly," writes Mr. Howard Saunders, "there was a regular staff for preparing plumes; and fishing-smacks, with extra boats and crews, used to commence their work of destruction at Lundy Island by daybreak on the 1st of August.... In many cases the wings were torn off the wounded birds before they were dead, the mangled victims being tossed back into the water." And he has seen, he continues, "hundreds of young birds dead or dying of starvation in the nests, through the want of their parents' care.... It is well within the mark to say that at least 9,000 of these inoffensive birds were destroyed during the fortnight."

Of the SKUA-GULLS there are several species. Their coloration differs from that of the gulls just described in being confined to shades of brown. One of their most remarkable traits is that of piracy. They await their cousins the Gulls coming shoreward from the sea with newly swallowed fish, and then, giving chase, compel the gull, in order to lighten itself and escape, to disgorge its hard-won meal. So swift of flight is the skua that the ejected morsel is caught before it reaches the water.

THE PLOVER TRIBE.

BIRDS of very various size, shape, and coloration are included in this group--that is to say, birds which vary much superficially, but, it must be understood, all undoubtedly closely related. In England they are to be met with almost everywhere. The seashore, the lonely moorland, the desolate marshes, the river's brink, or the woods--all these shelter some one or other of the Plover Tribe. Like the Gulls, many adopt a distinctive dress for the courting-season, which, however, is sometimes worn by the males only, and not by both sexes alike, as in the Gulls. One of the most striking and familiar instances of this change is seen in the GREY PLOVER. In winter the plumage of the upper-parts of this bird is dusky grey, that of the under-parts pure white; but in the spring the former is exchanged for a beautifully variegated mantle of black and white, and the latter becomes uniformly jet-black, save the under tail-coverts, which remain white.

In the DUNLIN, again, we have a similar change, the upper-parts being in winter grey, the under-parts white: in the spring the former become black, with an admixture of rust-colour, and the latter black in so far as the breast is concerned, but the abdomen remains white.

In many of that section of the Plover Tribe distinguished as "Wading-birds," the changes which take place in the spring in the plumage of the upper-parts resemble those already instanced, but the under-parts turn to a rich chestnut instead of black. This occurs in the forms known as the GODWITS, KNOTS, and SANDERLINGS, for example.

In all the instances so far quoted, both male and female are coloured alike, but, as already hinted, occasionally the change of plumage affects the male only. This is the case with the RUFF. The importance of this exception is still further increased by the fact that the change in coloration is accompanied by the development of a large frill around the neck, surmounted by two large tufts called "ears," and fleshy, brightly coloured warts around the beak. The coloured picture of the male in its spring dress, which will be found on another page, gives an admirable idea of the typical ruff, but it must necessarily fail to give any indication of one very remarkable fact concerning this frill and the two "ears," and for this reason--no two individuals ever have these peculiar feathers of the same coloration and pattern. The range of colour is certainly not great--the changes being rung, so to speak, on black, white, chestnut, bay, and ash-colour. Diversification is gained by contrasting the "ears" with the frill, and adding bars or streaks to the light coloration, and purple, green, and violet reflections to the dark. These ornaments are donned in a surprisingly short space of time, and are discarded as quickly, for they are scarcely completed by the month of May, and are thrown off again at the end of June. During the time that this resplendent livery is worn the males engage in mimic battles--which may occasionally develop into real ones--arranged apparently for the edification of the females, which, it seems, select as partners, at least for that season, those which please or excite most. This power of pleasing must certainly be considerable, for the ruff is a polygamous species.

Formerly the ruff was a common bird in England, but the drainage of the fens and persecution have practically brought about its extermination.

At least two groups of plovers have succeeded in reversing the usual order of things in the matter of sexual plumage. These are the PHALAROPES--which are British birds--and the PAINTED SNIPE, in both of which the female is more brightly coloured and somewhat larger in size than the male. As is the case where this reversal occurs, the duties of incubation fall mainly or entirely upon the smaller and duller male. It is interesting to note, furthermore, that only in the phalaropes is there a seasonal change of plumage: in the painted snipe the same livery is worn all the year round.

Many of the plovers have no seasonal change of plumage, but both male and female wear all the year round, some a more or less markedly bright-coloured livery, as the DOTTEREL and TURNSTONES, others a more sober vestment, as the CURLEWS and SNIPE, for example.

The SNIPE and WOODCOCK may be cited as especially instructive forms in this connection, showing, in regard to the beak, for instance, undoubted proof of this structural modification, the result of adaptation to the peculiar method of seeking their food. This beak constitutes an organ of touch of great sensitiveness, and is used as a probe, to thrust down into the soft soil in the search for hidden worms.

Of the three species of snipe which occur in Britain, probably the one known as the COMMON SNIPE is most familiar; but it will, perhaps, be new to some to learn that this bird ranks as a musical performer, on account of a very extraordinary "bleating" or "drumming" noise which it gives forth, especially during the spring of the year--the season of courtship. We cannot describe this noise better, perhaps, than as an unusually high-pitched "hum," produced, it is generally held, by wind driven between the outer tail-feathers by the rapid vibration of the wings as the bird descends, or rather pitches, at a fearful pace, earthwards. These feathers have the shafts peculiarly thickened; and it is interesting to note that the characteristic sound may be artificially produced if they be fastened to a stick and rapidly whirled through the air.

The snipe and woodcock are not the only members of the Plover Tribe whose beaks have undergone marked structural modifications; indeed, many instances could be cited, but two or three must suffice. In the AVOCET the beak turns upwards like an awl, and the bird is in consequence known in some places as the COBBLER'S-AWL DUCK. In one particular, however, the beak differs from an awl, tapering as it does to an exceedingly fine point. When the bird feeds, it walks along in shallow water with the curved tip of the beak resting on the surface and the head moving swiftly from side to side, the jaws meanwhile being opened and closed with exceeding rapidity, and seizing instantly upon such small crustacea and other organisms as come in their way.

Although all the Plovers might be described as long-legged birds, the STILTS are quite exceptionally so, and afford evidence of modification in another direction. Relatively to the size of the body, the stilts have the longest legs of all living birds. They seek their prey by wading in shallow water, like the Avocets, to which they are closely related. One species--the BLACK-WINGED STILT--occasionally appears in Britain.

Some other members of the Plover Tribe--the JACANA of Brazil, and the WATER-PHEASANT of India, Ceylon, and China, for example--have enormously long toes, as well as claws of great length.

These birds are furthermore remarkable for the possession of formidable weapons of offence, borne on the wrist-joint of the wing, in the shape of long, sharp, and powerful spurs. Similar weapons are carried by certain plovers--the EGYPTIAN SPUR-WINGED PLOVER, for instance.

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