VIII Annet and the Sea-Birds
The sea-birds are everywhere in Scilly. All the year round the gulls fill the air with their cries, and cormorants and shags skim the water and dive beneath its surface.
No “Scilly-scape,” if I may use the word, seems complete without a few gulls. We see them circling and wheeling high above us; dropping, suddenly, to rest upon the dancing waves; chasing each other in turn from the tops of the chimneys; sitting in rows on the ridges of the roofs; quarrelling for fish over St. Mary’s Pool; following the plough or harrow in greedy quest of worms; or standing stock-still on the rocks or sands, at equal distances from each other, and all primly facing the same way.
Herring-gulls, black-headed, and great and lesser black-backed are all plentiful.
The black-backed gulls are fierce and savage fellows. They will carry off young guillemots and kittiwakes in their powerful beaks when the parent-bird is out of the way, and kill and eat them; and they are ruthless robbers of eggs.
The great cormorant, or sea-crow (from the French of which latter name, “corbeau marin,” his ordinary name is taken) is not so common in Scilly as the smaller kind, the green or crested cormorant, or shag.
Shags may be seen in great numbers round the islands, swimming so low in the water that they look only like the tops of walking-sticks above the waves; and propelling their thin and keel-shaped bodies forward by using their wings as oars. Suddenly they disappear head first into the water, reappearing after what seems a very long time, in quite a different direction, and some distance away.
All cormorants are voracious (is not their very name a by-word for greed?), and they consume great quantities of fish, so they are no friend to the fisherman.
Shags are amongst the earliest breeders, and they are worth watching during their love-making, rubbing their snaky heads together and performing strange, ungainly antics. They make rough, untidy nests, with three or four eggs, on many of the uninhabited islands. If you go near them when they are sitting on their eggs, they will hiss at you like geese.
In spring tens of thousands of visitors arrive in flocks, for the breeding-season—puffins, Manx shearwaters, guillemots, razor-bills, terns, storm-petrels, and many non-resident gulls.
The island of Annet (i.e., Little Agnes) is the largest breeding-ground. It is a low-lying, sandy tract, serpentine in shape, rising towards the north to a height of sixty feet, and surrounded by dangerous rocks. It is covered with bracken and tufts of the sea-thrift, which latter is in full flower during the breeding-season, making a bright pink background for the white and black plumage of the birds.
Annet is known by the name of “Bird Island,” from the immense numbers that breed there. In the early summer the sea all round is black with puffins and razor-bills, their white breasts being hardly noticeable as they sit on the surface of the water; and the air above is dark with clouds of gulls, and full of their ceaseless cry. Puffins (also called sea-parrots) have bred on the islands from time immemorial. An old name for them was “Coulter-neb,” from the peculiar shape of their beaks, which were thought to resemble the coulter of a plough.
They were formerly much esteemed for food, chiefly pickled and salted, because by this means their rank and fishy flavour was disguised; and one imagines the three hundred puffins payable at Michaelmas for the rent of the islands in the time of Edward I. must have been destined for treating in this way rather than for eating fresh.
William of Worcester, writing in 1478, records the presence of “pophyns” on Rascow (i.e., Tresco); and Richard Carew (1602) says: “The Puffyn hatcheth in holes of the cliffe, whose young ones are thence ferreted out, being exceedingly fat, kept salted, and reputed for fish, as comming nearest thereto in their taste.”
Their flesh used to be allowed by the Church on Lenten days.
It is a most ludicrous-looking bird during the breeding season, for then its beak becomes enlarged to double its usual depth, quite out of proportion to the dimensions of its owner. And not only is the size of the beak remarkable, but it is gorgeously coloured with carmine, blue-grey, and yellow; so that for a bird which carries a sober yellow-brown beak all the winter it must be almost embarrassing to appear in such a garish guise! The legs are a bright orange-red, a ring of carmine encircles the eye, and altogether, with his black coat and white waistcoat, he presents a very striking appearance.
The puffin is entirely an oceanic bird, only coming to land to breed. It lays its solitary egg at the end of a long burrow dug in the sand or peat. The isle of Annet is simply honeycombed with these burrows, so that it is impossible to walk even a few steps without finding the ground give way beneath one’s feet, and sinking, sometimes knee-deep, into the soft soil. The springy tufts of sea-pink which cover the island offer more resistance and a firmer foothold than the sandy earth.
By the end of April the birds are busy digging a new hole with their sharp nails, or overhauling that of the previous year. In making the hole they throw themselves upon their backs, and with their bills and claws burrow inwards, until they have made a hole perhaps eight to ten feet long, and sometimes with several windings and turnings.
A week or ten days after the hole is ready a single round white egg is laid. Both birds assist in digging the burrow, and also in hatching, which takes about a month. Sometimes a forsaken rabbit-hole will save the pair the labour of digging out a habitation for themselves; and occasionally, where a spot between three stones has been carefully chosen for excavation, one may see a lintel and door-jambs of granite forming the entrance into the burrow! Puffins and Manx shearwaters will sometimes share the same hole; or they will have a common entrance with passages branching out in several directions, as in some of our “desirable residential flats.”
They feed their young on the fry of certain fish, and are particularly fond of the lance, or sand-eel. The parent bird may be seen returning to the burrow, with numbers of small fish hanging from its bill. How it could retain its hold of, say, the first nine caught while capturing the tenth used to be a subject for wondering conjecture: but an examination of the inside of the beak has shown an arrangement of barbed hooks projecting backwards, on which each fish is speared as it is caught. The discovery of this wonderful provision of Nature is due to Mr. C. J. King of St. Mary’s.
Visitors are only allowed to stay an hour at a time on Annet during the breeding season, out of consideration for the birds; and the Governor strictly forbids the shooting of the birds or the taking of their eggs. If, in defiance of this or out of curiosity, you thrust your hand into one of the burrows, you will very likely get a piece bitten out of it, and it will serve you right!
The shearwater becomes very eloquent when disturbed in its hole, and pours forth guttural melodies, the sounds of which are imitated in the nicknames of “Cockathodan” and “Crew,” bestowed upon it by Scillonians. Goldsmith compares the disagreeable sound they make when taken to “the efforts of a dumb person attempting to speak.” This bird is largely nocturnal in its habits, resting or sleeping on the water during a part of the day, and fishing chiefly at night.
The guillemot breeds on several of the rocky islands, Gorregan and Mincarlo among the number. It lays its large and beautiful egg on narrow ledges of the bare rock, without any sort of protection, so that it soon gets dirty and can sometimes hardly be distinguished from a lump of clay. But for the long and pointed shape of the egg, which causes it to roll round in a circle when disturbed, it would probably never remain on the ledge long enough to be hatched; for if it were round, like puffins’ eggs, at the slightest touch it would roll over into the sea beneath. The colour of the egg varies very greatly; it is dark blue, a lighter or greenish blue, white, or even claret colour, but always covered with black spots and markings.
The graceful terns, or sea-swallows, visit Scilly in great numbers in the spring, as also do the razor-bills (otherwise known as the common or black auk). The latter may be seen sitting in rows on the rocks in company with puffins and shags. The ledges of rock rising one above another, and the birds sitting on them, have been compared to the shelves and pots of a chemist’s shop. Like the puffin and the storm-petrel, razor-bills rarely leave the sea except for breeding.
The storm-petrel is a visitor in Scilly, and may be seen there “walking on the water” in the strange way peculiar to it; and on account of this habit it is supposed to derive its name from that of the Apostle Peter.
The scarlet-legged oyster-catcher, or “sea-pie,” makes Annet its breeding-ground; as also do many of the terns. The oyster-catcher’s eggs are laid on the loose shingle, and from their close resemblance to the rounded pebbles of the seashore they are not easily noticed, even if you search carefully for them.
Any one who has not before had the opportunity of seeing a breeding-ground of the sea-birds will find a visit to Annet in the early summer quite a revelation, for no imagination could picture these myriads of birds, darkening the air with their wings, as they wheel and hover, screaming, over their temporary home.