A Gathering of Birds Read online

  Some birds only make shallow holes on the surface in open country, with no shelter above them at all. But I think these homes belong to inexperienced penguins and are not returned to: for the occupants clearly suffer a great deal from the sun, during the heat of a summer’s day.

  I have seen holes in rocks one above the other, just like flats; holes only half dug under protecting bushes; one nest that was so framed in a well-grown bush that no digging had been necessary at all; and a burrow which had the decided attraction of possessing a back entrance as well as a front door.

  In fact, every method of construction that the ingenious mind of the penguin can devise is put to good use.

  When once a nest has been completed, the next thing to be considered is the furniture. This is all made locally, and therefore the variety is not very great. But self-respecting birds naturally want some kind of flooring for their nests, and consequently any sort of stick is brought into use. As I have said, there is very little vegetation on the island—but I have also said that the penguin has an ingenious mind. If he can, he takes twigs or roots from the bushes. If he lives in a district where there are no bushes, he finds that seaweed can serve as a very good substitute. And as a last resort there are the dried, straw-like grasses which sprout thinly on the island during the wetter months.

  It can be imagined what an effect this desire for furniture is having on the scanty vegetation of the island. Bushes are slowly being torn to pieces, and many of them are withering because their roots, if not always torn off, have been pulled free of earth and left exposed to the sun. Building operations, too, often bare the roots and cause bushes to die.

  I once saw a penguin cast a longing eye at a partially exposed piece of root which clearly was exactly the thing he wanted. He went up to it, took hold of it with his beak, and pulled. But the root was firmly planted and there was no result. Yet he wasn’t going to be beaten, so he pulled and twisted in a real effort to break it. So persistent was he that he came back again to that bush, working from every direction, though it was not until he had struggled with it for the greater part of three days that he succeeded in wrenching it away; and at the moment when that happened, he was pulling so hard that the sudden release toppled him right over on to his back. But he immediately got up, none the worse, and went off, carrying the root in his beak to show it to his wife, and looking quite the proudest and happiest little penguin that I have ever seen.

  Similarly, I have seen penguins with long, trailing bits of seaweed, struggling up the slope from the sea—a matter, as often as not, of half a mile or more—the seaweed becoming entangled in their legs and nearly tripping them up.

  Just a few penguins on the island—about a dozen in all—think that neither sticks nor straws nor seaweed are even to be compared, in this matter of furniture, with stones. This is very curious, for though stones are not the natural nest-covering of these Blackfooted Penguins, they are used almost exclusively in the nests of the penguins who inhabit the much more southerly regions. Stones are scarce on some parts of the Island of Penguins, but these particular birds will take any amount of trouble to secure them. I found one nest, for example, which was furnished with small stones about the size of a hen’s egg and furnished so thoroughly that there must have been quite half a barrow-load in the one nest; and every one of these stones must have been carried for a distance of half a mile, although entirely suitable sticks lay close at hand on every side.

  Now and again one bird will take a fancy to something which doesn’t at all appeal to the others. One day I saw a penguin leave a nest to seek for furniture, apparently with quite definite instructions from his wife as to the kind of thing he was to get. He collected a number of sticks, carrying each back to the nest and then setting out for more. Suddenly he saw on the ground a beautiful smooth stone. There was something about it which clearly appealed to him, for he walked round it two or three times, viewing it from every angle; he reminded me rather forcibly of the young husband who sees in a shop window something which he longs to buy for his wife, though he knows he cannot afford it. In the case of the penguin the price was certainly a high one—the carrying of the stone for a hundred yards. But at last he made up his mind. He picked up the stone in his beak after some initial difficulty, and started off. Twice he had to stop and rest, setting the stone carefully down on the ground. But he stuck to his task and at last he came waddling proudly up to the nest and dropped the stone just in front of his wife.

  She gave it one look—but that was enough. “Didn’t I tell you,” she seemed to say, “that we were going to furnish this nest with sticks?” And the wretched husband, with all his joy and pride suddenly turned to gall, picked up the stone and carried it away again.

  I was curious to see how far he would take it; whether he would take it whence it came or whether he would drop it disgustedly at the first opportunity. As a matter of fact, he took it twenty yards—just far enough for him to be able to leave it where his wife was not likely to notice it again and remind him of that painful incident. But he didn’t go on with his work. All his enthusiasm about the new home and its furnishing was gone and—like the punished child who went into the garden “to eat worms"—he picked up a straw of grass and carried it, not homewards, but down to the sea.

  FAMILY MATTERS

  EVEN when, as with the penguins, the husband and wife are so house-proud and so fearful of burglars that they cannot both leave home at once, there is, nevertheless, such delight in the house itself, and in life generally, that that hardly seems to matter. And even the short separations seem to add to happiness, because they must end some time and then there is the joy of being re-united. Mr. Penguin, for instance, goes down to the sea in search of his dinner, leaving his wife drowsily meditating on the perfect bliss of married life. Mr. Penguin is just as contented with, at the moment, the added joy of going into the sea and of catching succulent fish. He comes back, clambers on to the rock, and starts waddling up the slope, finding progress just a little bit difficult because he really is rather excessively, and almost uncomfortably, full of food. But though he goes slowly, he nevertheless goes steadily, eager to see his wife. And there she is, with her head at the edge of the nesting hole, watching for him! He tries to break into a run, nearly falls over in his eagerness, stops for a moment to think how beautiful she is, and then, coming nearer, he leans down to put his head affectionately against hers. Then he goes into the hole beside her, caresses her, and embraces her with his flippers. How good it is to be home again, feeling so comfortably well fed, and to have such an adorable wife awaiting him!

  Of course I do not know, any more than anybody else does, to what extent penguins manage to convey ideas to each other, but if you watch Mr. and Mrs. Penguin together it seems perfectly certain that they do manage it somehow. At any rate, they do a great deal of love-making, becoming vastly sentimental in the process. A penguin’s expression at these times is easily recognisable. The feathers round his throat seem to puff out and he lowers his head into them, so that his general attitude is rather in the shape of a question mark. His eyes, too, become a little more distinct, he sets his head slightly on one side, and every shade of his expression is that of a love-sick coon.

  I have no doubt that he is very genuinely in love. He is certainly not an opportunist. He does not confine his lovemaking to the time of wooing, but continues it right through his married life, kissing and embracing his wife merely to show his constant joy in her. Almost every separation ends in an embrace, and often you will see Mr. and Mrs. Penguin in the middle of doing nothing in particular suddenly get up and start making love to one another.

  The egg comes as a rule within the second week after the wedding, although it may be a little later than that or even earlier. Mrs. Penguin, of course, though she may be a little surprised, is not in the least disconcerted and she knows exactly what to do with the egg, gently lowering her body on to it, so that it will be warm under her feathers. But these things require practice; the egg
does not easily get into the right position and she has constantly to move it with her beak. Meanwhile, Mr. Penguin has a great deal to say. He appears to chatter constantly, doubtless extolling his own cleverness and drawing the attention of all listeners to the fact that he has had quite a lot to do with the egg. Certainly he gives advice to his wife about the proper method of sitting and the best way of getting the egg into the right position. He waggles his head as he chatters, and Mrs. Penguin, not to be outdone, waggles hers.

  But Mr. Penguin, though he may talk rather a lot and may overdo his very natural pride, is quite a model in fatherhood. He takes his turn in the hatching of the egg, sitting on it as long and as frequently as his wife does, and as time goes on he as well as his wife acquires the distinctive mark of penguin parenthood—a kind of crease down the centre of the lower half of the body, in which the eggs lie among the feathers. Each parent sits for about twelve hours, at the end of which there is a little ceremony.

  Whoever has been off-guard comes back to the nestinghole after a visit to the feeding grounds, hurrying for the last ten or fifteen yards in eagerness to see that all is well. He (or it may be she) puts his head down over the edge of the hole with a peculiar shivering movement which I take to be a sign of pride and joy, and then both father and mother make a noise which may or may not tell the story of all that has happened during the day. Sometimes that part of the ceremony is repeated several times, then the sitting penguin leaves the eggs, and on the lip of the nesting-hole both penguins stand to make a further demonstration of affection which frequently ends in a rapturous kiss. But the egg must not be deserted, so the new arrival goes down into the nest and seats himself (or it may be herself); while the relieved sentry having waited for a few minutes to see that all is well, waddles off towards the sea.

  Two or three days after the arrival of the first egg, there comes another; there may be a third or even a fourth, but that is rather unusual.

  It is an extremely anxious time for the parents, for the chances of hatching cannot exceed sixty in a hundred, the other forty eggs being taken by the gulls and the ibis.

  And then, at last, comes the outward and visible sign of the miracle which neither Mr. Penguin nor Mrs. Penguin nor you nor I can ever fully understand. A new living being appears on the earth. One minute there is an egg, smooth and inactive, only the vehicle by which that being is to come into existence; in another a crack has begun across the thick shell, and a living thing is stirring within.

  Soon the crack widens and perhaps a little hole is broken in the shell—the first earthly activity of the new-comer. And at last the shell falls apart and there appears a creature which no one would know for a penguin—dark-coloured, rather skinny and extremely ugly. It is rather more like a bird than penguins are when they are fully grown—but it also bears a striking resemblance to a teddy bear.

  Its brother or sister follows it into the world from one to three days later, and in a remarkably short space of time the two little birds develop and begin to show their energy.

  The back portion of the nesting-hole becomes the nursery, because it is farthest from danger, and still either the father or the mother has to mount guard in the doorway, for the dangers are by no means over yet. The ibis and the gull are always active among the nesting-holes, for they take not only eggs, but also young chicks, gobbling them up as a single meal.

  The two parents take equal shares—one going to the fishing grounds while the other both acts as a guard and serves the meals (if I may so express it) made from the food last collected. The chicks at this age have to be fed every twenty minutes. The parent’s digestive machinery turns into oil the food that she, or he, has collected, and this oil is brought back into the beak. Then, the children’s dinner having thus been prepared, the young chicks insert their own small beaks into the parent’s larger beak and so draw the nourishment which they badly need.

  As they grow, the space between feeding times is lengthened, until meals take place only every hour; and eventually the menu is improved, the children being now strong enough to take—still from their mother or father—small fish from which they can extract the oil for themselves.

  During the time in which the young penguins “grow up,” they gradually change colour, losing the appearance of dark-brown teddy bears and becoming each day more like their parents. White feathers first appear on their chests at the end of four or five weeks: then slowly the whiteness spreads while the dark feathers come on the back of the birds until at last they have all the black-and-white beauty of full-grown penguins.

  Quite early in life they begin to show the curiosity about their surroundings which is one of the chief traits of penguin character. As soon as they are strong enough to reach up and peer over the top they do so. But that kind of thing, of course, is not allowed with children at such an early age. How can they, unable to walk far, and even less able to defend themselves, go out to face the dangers of the world, the beaks of the ibis and the gull? So mother or father, whichever happens to be on duty at the moment, turns and gives the young adventurers a sharp peck, to remind them that they aren’t to go out into the garden without parental permission.

  But the time comes eventually when Mr. Penguin decides that it is time the children learnt to look after themselves, and Mrs. Penguin, nervously, no doubt, and knowing that it is going to cause her a great deal of anxiety, agrees. Then out come the youngsters, very much pleased about it all, walking to the edge of the nesting-hole, standing on its rim and taking their first look at the outside world. They stretch their flippers, thinking doubtless that they would go farther if mother were not watching.

  Still, even that comes in time, and off the little penguins go to explore, wandering among the holes of their neighbours, interested in everything. Sometimes, curiously enough, they seem to imagine that their flippers are wings and that with a little practice they could fly—like the gull and the ibis, and even the cormorants. At any rate, I have often seen young birds deliberately flapping their wings as if they were quite certain that that was the way to do it. This attempt is so frequent that it cannot, I think, be only the easing of muscles. Perhaps it is all a legacy of former ages, an instinct remembered through centuries from the days, if there were such days, when the penguins really did fly.

  Once the children have reached that important age when they are allowed to wander more or less unrestricted, they have a great deal of fun on the island. They are extremely imitative, like all children, and anything that mother and father do they want to do likewise.

  They also make friends with the other children in the neighbourhood, squabbling with them and making up parties to go exploring among the rocks. Climbing is one of the things that they have got to learn, and they soon start practising among the smaller boulders, learning to grip edges of rock with their beaks.

  At last the day comes when the most important lesson of all has to be learnt, and it is usually mother’s job to teach it: the art, that is, of swimming.

  It is odd, of course, that young penguins, being birds of the sea, should so often at first be afraid of the water. Perhaps the answer lies in history: it may well be that the earliest penguins had wings instead of flippers, so that there is an instinct of sea-hatred as well as one of sea-love. But however that may be, the fact remains that this first introduction to the water is quite often a very troublesome business. The young penguins are led or driven to the nearest rippling waves, then some start back, ready to run to their mother’s sides rather than wet their feet.

  But as with children, it is all a matter of perseverance. A wave comes farther in than usual, the feet that were imagined to be safe are overtaken—and the terrible-looking water is discovered to be not so terrible after all.

  I don’t think there are actual lessons in swimming; but there is certainly instruction, or at least an example, in diving. The mother will lower her head, put out her flippers, and disappear beneath the water—and then she will pop up a moment later and turn to see that her ch
ildren have followed suit.

  When at last the lesson has been learnt, and the young penguins are about three months old, a day comes when childhood is considered definitely at an end. So the family swims from the island, away out to sea, to the region of the fishing grounds: and there their parents leave them, with a little anguish, perhaps, but with thoughts already beginning to be set on the next annual adventure of a penguin’s life.

  V

  GUSTAV ECKSTEIN

  WHEN in 1936 I received for review Gustav Eckstein’s Canary, from which this selection is made, I recall that I wholly disbelieved he could interest me in his subject. What we most love in birds, the wilderness and fugitive delight of them, must ever be lacking in these cheery little domesticated immigrants. And like many another who has known a canary merely as a childhood pet, or has too often yet too heedlessly heard its loud caged song, I had decided that canaries were banal.

  Then I began to read this book of Dr. Eckstein’s. Minute and literal, noted in a sort of stylistic shorthand—which, since it is the English of his personal correspondence, must be the natural style of the man—these observations piled up into an exciting discovery of canaries. They populated the pages with distinct and vivid individualities, and it became impossible to resist Dr. Eckstein’s own ardor for them. This is not the ardor of a sentimental pet-keeper, nor yet the impersonal enthusiasm of a strictly theoretical scientist, for Dr. Eckstein neither started to keep canaries for pets nor did he introduce them into his laboratory as specimens. They seem simply to have “happened” to him. To his own surprise, one would say, for he writes to me thus: