Guillemot

“ Their appearance forcibly reminds the spectator of a human crowd on some fête day in a populous city; but the bird-crowd does not move or sway: each guillemot keeps its place, for it is standing over its own egg, which must be kept warm at any cost. In spite of this fixity they are all very alert and lively, turning their beaks about this way and that, and, when alarmed, all bobbing and bowing their heads as if to salute the intruder. Although silent birds when on the sea, the guillemots become loquacious at their breeding-grounds. ”

“ They are longer than the close feathers in front, and begin to be flecked with grey. It is just into this zone of deeper plumage that the young guillemot insinuates itself when wishing to go "seepy-by." Also, when the old bird flaps its wings I seem to notice a little depression or alcove just underneath them—the chick's cradle, boudoir, or dormitory, as I am inclined to think—like a sleeping-bunk in the wall of a Highland cottage. ”

“ The pretty little black guillemot—the dabchick of ocean—may often be seen sitting in a niche of the cliffs, and calling to another—its mate presumably—either above or below it. The cry is, for the most part, a weak, twittering sound, but occasionally rises into a very feeble little wail or scream. All the while the bird is uttering it he keeps raising and again depressing his head and opening his beak so as to show conspicuously the inside of his mouth, which is of a very pretty rose or blush-red hue, almost as vivid as that of the feet. ”

“ Just as a professional boxer of any size can lay out any mere hulking hooligan, so this bird carried about him the stamp of the professional fighter that could lay out anything there in that scene that he chose—almost.
The guillemot flew as never in all her life had she flown before, and every known artifice of dodging she had heard of she tried, and—it all failed. ”

“ Indeed, when we think of what all children can pretend, and what many grown-up people believe, we should not expect too much of birds. The guillemot, we will say, upon seeing a young bird which, by calling up memories, takes the place of its own, becomes, in imagination, its parent—so that the sympathy it shows for it is not wider than that between parent and child. ”

“ The black guillemot, on the other hand, is found everywhere, though never collected in large flocks, along the shores of Spitzbergen, and Novaya Zemlya, even as far north as Parry Island in 80° 40' N.L., where in 1861 I saw several of their nests. These are placed near the summits of steep cliffs along the shore. The black guillemots often swim out together in pairs in the fjords. Their flesh has about the same taste as Brünnich's guillemot, but is tougher and of inferior quality; the eggs, on the other hand, are excellent. ”

“ Instantly then the father, having done his business, flies off, the mother sinks down, and the chick, retiring with the taste of the fish still in his mouth, there is peace on the ledge again. The eye of the guillemot is very bright, and seems to beam with intelligence. No bird, I believe, ever looked more intelligent, albeit embarrassed, than the one just gone as he stood with the fish in his bill waiting for the chick to wake up. ”

“ If the guillemot is less poetic, he is still more interesting as a close study—or ar least one can study him more closely. Coming to my ledge again this afternoon, I find both the little chicks reposing beneath the parental wing, as described in the last chapter. It is a misty and mist-rainy day, which may incline them all the more to take shelter, if, indeed, they are open to such influences. ”

“ They have swum quite like the guillemots in this respect. Birds are sometimes very rude.
The eyed guillemot has now been absent for two hours, and all this time the chick has sat or stood with the other parent by him, but not under his wing, nor have I seen any further attempt on his part to get « 174 » there. This certainly looks like a partition of office as between the two parents, but it is hardly worth while saying so, for everything one says or thinks one hour or day is contradicted the next. There is little or no uniformity in the actions of birds. ”

“ The guillemot is one of our commonest cliff-birds, and is found in greatest abundance at Flamborough Head. The eggs are systematically gathered by men who are let down the rocks in ropes. They traverse the narrowest ledges, placing the eggs which they gather daily in baskets fastened round their shoulders. The guillemot makes no nest, lays but one egg, and incubation lasts about a month. The birds sit upright, and when suddenly alarmed, as by the firing of a gun, the eggs fall in showers into the sea. ”

“ In this chase of fish it sometimes comes to grief by getting entangled in the drift-nets. The Guillemot is a remarkably silent bird. I have repeatedly been amongst thousands of these birds, both at sea and on the rock stacks where they breed, and the only sound I have ever heard them utter is a low, grunting noise. ”

“ Black Guillemot (Uria grylle) .—This beautiful bird is common, and has many nesting-places in Gairloch, on rocky islands in the sea, and sometimes on rocks on the mainland overhanging the sea. In winter the plumage of the black guillemot changes to a speckled grey colour. Mr Harvie Brown says that he has in his collection male specimens in speckled plumage taken off the eggs in the Badcall islands. Neither Mr O. H. Mackenzie nor I have noticed the speckled plumage in breeding birds. The young have the plumage yet more speckled than the mature winter dress. ”

“ The guillemot has a dusky brown or mouse-coloured upper plumage, and a straight, sharp beak, very different to the massive weapon of the razorbill.
Early in spring the guillemots begin to gather from the neighbouring seas at their old breeding-stations on the summits and sides of cliffs that face the ocean. Of all birds that breed in communities, they are the most social, or, at all events, crowd closest together. Where they breed on the side of the cliff, as at Flamborough, they may be seen standing in close rows and groups on every ledge or jutting rock large enough to afford them a footing. ”

“ One summer day when he was out in his boat fishing for pollack at his favourite ground a mile or two beyond the Godrevy Lighthouse he noticed three guillemots near him, one old bird with its half-grown young one, and a second young bird which accompanied the others but kept at a little distance from them. This young guillemot had doubtless been lost or left by its parents. There was no other bird in sight except a great black-backed gull, flying idly about, now making a wide circle and occasionally dropping on to the water to examine some small floating object, then flying off again. ”

“ Why should they feed them on the ledges for a fortnight or three weeks, for I think they are as long as that there, during all which time they are getting larger and heavier? Though the young guillemot keeps so quiet on the ledge, yet it has the full use of its limbs, and seems quite as forward and capable as are young chickens and ducklings. It would, no doubt, be at home in the water at once, if only it were put there. Does it, then, wait until it can get there itself, or does the parent bird take it? ”

“ The black guillemot is much less abundant than the last species. On the south and east coasts it is extremely rare; its principal breeding-stations are on the west coast of Scotland; and it also breeds on the north and west coasts of Ireland. It differs greatly from the common guillemot in size, being scarcely more than half as large as that species; also in colouring, the whole plumage, except a broad white patch on the wing, being glossy black, the legs and feet bright red. It breeds in the same situations as the common guillemot, but is not so gregarious ”

“ Kilda I used to see parties of this species every evening, fishing under the cliffs; but, on the other hand, I have often met with them searching for food many miles from land. The Black Guillemot is nothing near so gregarious as the Common Guillemot, nor does it appear to wander so far from its breeding places to feed. It is partially nocturnal in its habits in summer, feeding well into the dusk, and during winter seldom comes upon the land, sleeping out at sea. Although capable of flying swiftly, it always prefers to escape danger by diving ”

“ THE ARCTIC PUFFIN. THE BLACK GUILLEMOT.
Swedish, Lunnefogel. (Mormon Arcticus, L.)
THE BLACK GUILLEMOT.
Swedish, Tejst. (Uria Grylle, L.)
The sea fowl mentioned above are never met with inland. [pg 114] They never settle on a grassy sward or on a level sandy beach. The steep fowl-fell sides, the sea, ground-ice, pieces of drift-ice and small stones rising above the water, form their habitat. They swim with great skill both on, and under the water. The black guillemots and rotges fly swiftly and well; Brünnich's guillemots, on the contrary, heavily and ill. ”

“ The Razorbill may be further distinguished by the white streak of plumage which runs from the base of the upper mandible to the eye. In the Ringed Guillemot, a form of the Common Guillemot, the white streak extends backwards behind the eye. Both birds are very similar in their actions out here at sea, swimming and diving with great celerity. Here and there small parties of one species or the other may be seen flying swiftly along just above the waves on their way to or from the headland where they are now breeding. ”

“ Early in spring Guillemots throng together from all parts of the open sea, and repair to some lofty cliff, where, on a narrow ledge of rock, which in their folly they deem inaccessible, they lay each a single egg. As the bird holds the egg between her legs, she could not well cover more than one; and though a concave nest is very needful to keep eggs together when there are several, no such contrivance is necessary when there is one only; so the Foolish Guillemot builds no nest, but lays a solitary egg on the bare rock. ”

“ The little black guillemot, for instance, beats the water briskly and rapidly with his wings, but whereas the cormorant beats it into foam so that it looks like the wake of a steamer, he raises only a little silvery sprinkling of spray, for he but just flips the surface of it with the tips of his quill feathers. ”

“ Not, perhaps, so familiar to the sea-side wanderer as the Gull, whose ærial habits bring it more frequently into notice, the Guillemot, nevertheless, is a seldom absent feature of marine bird life. It is gregarious and social at all times, but joins into greatest companies during the season of reproduction. ”

“ On second thoughts it does not, since sparrows will attack martins though holding grass, etc., for nest-building, in their beaks—as I have seen.
In swimming under water the black guillemot uses its wings only—the rose-red legs trail behind it, a fading fire as it goes down. The body becomes one great glaucous-green bubble, which has, still more, a luminous appearance. The effect may almost be called beautiful, but it is still more odd and bottle-imp-like. Most diving sea-birds exhibit this appearance under water, but not all in the same degree. ”

“ Such as remain are no larger than the chicks I saw in the spring, and as most of the parents were then still « 96 » incubating, besides that the young guillemot is known to leave the ledge whilst quite small, there is no room for doubt on this point.
No; the young are gone. Why, then, do the parents stay? They will rear no second brood, so that it seems as though they love the ledges better than the little fluffy things that they were feeding upon them, up to the moment of their departure. ”

“ Whether Guillemot is a French manufactured word or not, the first part of it at all events is undoubtedly cognate with, if not derived from, the Welsh Gwilym. It does not seem reasonable to suppose that the French called the Guillemot a "gull-gull," which would be the meaning of a Celtic-Teutonic compound of gwelan+mouette or goeland+mouette. I think that Nuthatch really does mean Nut-cracker (in the sense of Nut breaker) . Hack (hak) means to cut, chop, or mangle. You cannot properly be said to hack a thing unless you cut into it, indent it, break it, or break a part off it. ”

“ 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 little chick, now, pushing, as it seems, against his mother, stretches his legs straight out behind him on the rock, and lies like this for a few seconds, as we sometimes see a cat or a dog do. Then he comes out, preens himself, and voids his excrement, and I cannot but record—for indeed it was very funny—that this hits exactly in the eye, and over the face generally, another guillemot standing about two feet from him on the edge of the ledge. The poor bird thus distinguished stands with a comical look, and for some while shakes its head very vigorously. ”

“ The ringed or bridled guillemot also breeds on the cliffs, and a number of other types of northern sea-birds are periodically noticed along these inaccessible Bempton Cliffs. The guillemot makes no nest, merely laying a single egg on a ledge. If it is taken away by those who plunder the cliffs at the risk of their lives, the bird lays another egg, and if that disappears, perhaps even a third. ”