A Gathering of Birds

by Donald Culross Peattie

  It is curious to observe with what different degrees of architectonic skill Providence has endowed birds of the same genus, and so nearly correspondent in their general mode of life! for while the swallow and the house-martin discover the greatest address in raising and securely fixing crusts or shells of loam as cunabula for their young, the bank-martin terebrates a round and regular hole in the sand or earth, which is serpentine, horizontal, and about two feet deep. At the inner end of this burrow does this bird deposit, in a good degree of safety, her rude nest, consisting of fine grasses and feathers, usually goose-feathers, very inartificially laid together.

  Perseverance will accomplish anything, though at first one would be disinclined to believe that this weak bird, with her soft and tender bill and claws, should ever be able to bore the stubborn sand-bank without entirely disabling herself; yet with these feeble instruments have I seen a pair of them make great despatch, and could remark how much they had scooped that day by the fresh sand which ran down the bank, and was of a different colour from that which lay loose and bleached in the sun.

  One thing is remarkable—that, after some years, the old holes are forsaken and new ones bored; perhaps because the old habitations grow foul and fetid from long use, or because they may so abound with fleas as to become untenantable. This species of swallow, moreover, is strangely annoyed with fleas; and we have seen fleas, bed-fleas (pulex irritans),* swarming at the mouths of these holes, like bees on the stools of their hives.

  The following circumstance should by no means be omitted—that these birds do not make use of their caverns by way of hybernacula, as might be expected; since banks so perforated have been dug out with care in the winter, when nothing was found but empty nests.

  The sand-martin arrives much about the same time with the swallow, and lays, as she does, from four to six white eggs. But as this species is cryptogame, carrying on the business of nidification, incubation, and the support of its young in the dark, it would not be so easy to ascertain the time of breeding, were it not for the coming forth of the broods, which appear much about the time, or rather somewhat earlier than those of the swallow. The nestlings are supported in common like those of their congeners, with gnats and other small insects; and sometimes they are fed with libellulæ (dragon-flies) almost as long as themselves. In the last week in June we have seen a row of these sitting on a rail near a great pool as perchers, and so young and helpless, as easily to be taken by hand; but whether the dams ever feed them on the wing, as swallows and house-martins do, we have never yet been able to determine; nor do we know whether they pursue and attack birds of prey.

  These hirundines are no songsters, but rather mute, making only a little harsh noise when a person approaches their nests. They seem not to be of a sociable turn, never with us congregating with their congeners in the autumn. Undoubtedly they breed a second time, like the house-martin and swallow, and withdraw about Michaelmas.

  These birds have a peculiar manner of flying; flitting about with odd jerks, and vacillations, not unlike the motions of a butterfly. Doubtless the flight of all hirundines is influenced by, and adapted to, the peculiar sort of insects which furnish their food. Hence it would be worth inquiry to examine what particular genus of insects affords the principal food of each respective species of swallow.

  Notwithstanding what has been advanced above, some few sand-martins, I see, haunt the skirts of London, frequenting the dirty pools in Saint George’s Fields, and about Whitechapel. The question is where these build, since there are no banks or bold shores in that neighbourhood; perhaps they nestle in the scaffold-holes of some old or new deserted building. They dip and wash as they fly sometimes, like the housemartin and swallow.

  Sand-martins differ from their congeners in the diminutiveness of their size, and in their colour, which is what is usually called a mouse-colour. Near Valencia, in Spain, they are taken, says Willughby, and sold in the markets for the table; and are called by the country people, probably from their desultory jerking manner of flight, Papilion de Montanga.

  I am,

  With all respect, &c. &c.

  * White is in error. The flea of the sand-martin is a special species. [Ed.]

  THE SWIFT

  To the Honorable Daines Barrington

  Selborne, Sept. 28th, 1774.

  Dear Sir,—Swifts, like sand-martins, carry on the business of nidification quite in the dark, in crannies of castles, and towers, and steeples, and upon the tops of the walls of churches under the roof; and therefore cannot be so narrowly watched as those species that build more openly; but, from what I could ever observe, they begin nesting about the middle of May; and I have remarked, from eggs taken, that they have sat hard by the ninth of June. In general they haunt tall buildings, churches, and steeples, and breed only in such; yet in this village some pairs frequent the lowest and meanest cottages, and educate their young under those thatched roofs. We remember but one instance where they breed out of buildings, and that is in the sides of a deep chalk-pit near the town of Odiham, in this county, where we have seen many pairs entering the crevices, and skimming and squeaking round the precipices.

  As I have regarded these amusive birds with no small attention, if I should advance something new and peculiar with respect to them, and different from all other birds, I might perhaps be credited, especially as my assertion is the result of many years’ exact observation. The fact that I would advance is, that swifts tread, or copulate, on the wing; and I would wish any nice observer, that is startled at this supposition, to use his own eyes, and I think he will soon be convinced. In another class of animals, viz., the insect, nothing is so common as to see the different species of many genera in conjunction as they fly. The swift is almost continually on the wing; and as it never settles on the ground, on trees, or roofs, would seldom find opportunity for amorous rites, was it not enabled to indulge them in the air. If any person would watch these birds of a fine morning in May, as they are sailing round at a great height from the ground, he would see, every now and then, one drop on the back of another, and both of them sink down together for many fathoms with a loud piercing shriek. This I take to be the juncture when the business of generation is carrying on.

  As the swift eats, drinks, collects materials for its nest, and, as it seems, propagates on the wing, it appears to live more in the air than any other bird, and to perform all functions there save those of sleeping and incubation.

  It is a most alert bird, rising very early, and retiring to roost very late; and is on the wing in the height of summer at least sixteen hours. In the longest days it does not withdraw to rest till a quarter before nine in the evening, being the latest of all day-birds. Just before they retire whole groups of them assemble high in the air, and squeak, and shoot about with wonderful rapidity. But this bird is never so much alive as in sultry thundery weather, when it expresses great alacrity, and calls forth all its powers. In hot mornings, several, getting together in little parties, dash round the steeples and churches, squeaking as they go in a very clamorous manner; these, by nice observers, are supposed to be males serenading their sitting hens; and not without reason, since they seldom squeak till they come close to the walls or eaves, and since those within utter at the same time a little inward note of complacency.

  Sometimes they pursue and strike at hawks that come in their way; but not with that vehemence and fury that swallows express on the same occasion. They are out all day long in wet days, feeding about, and disregarding still rain: from whence two things may be gathered; first, that many insects abide high in the air, even in rain; and next, that the feathers of these birds must be well preened to resist so much wet. Windy, and particularly windy weather with heavy showers, they dislike; and on such days withdraw, and are scarce ever seen.

  There is a circumstance respecting the colour of swifts, which seems not to be unworthy of our attention. When they arrive in the spring, they are all over of a glossy, dark soot colour, except their chins, which are white
; but, by being all day long in the sun and air, they become quite weather-beaten and bleached before they depart, and yet they return glossy again in the spring. Now, if they pursue the sun into lower latitudes, as some suppose, in order to enjoy a perpetual summer, why do they not return bleached? Do they not rather perhaps retire to rest for a season, and at that juncture moult and change their feathers, since all other birds are known to moult soon after the season of breeding?

  Swifts are no songsters, and have only one harsh screaming note; yet there are ears to which it is not displeasing, from an agreeable association of ideas, since that note never occurs but in the most lovely summer weather.

  They never can settle on the ground but through accident; and when down, can hardly rise, on account of the shortness of their legs and the length of their wings; neither can they walk, but only crawl; but they have a strong grasp with their feet, by which they cling to walls. Their bodies being flat they can enter a very narrow crevice; and where they cannot pass on their bellies they will turn up edgewise.

  In London a party of swifts frequents the Tower, playing and feeding over the river just below the bridge; others haunt some of the churches of the Borough, next the fields, but do not venture, like the house-martin, into the close crowded part of the town.

  Swifts feed on coleoptera, or small beetles with hard cases over their wings, as well as on the softer insects; but it does not appear how they can procure gravel to grind their food, as swallows do, since they never settle on the ground. Young ones, overrun with hippoboscæ, are sometimes found, under their nests, fallen to the ground, the number of vermin rendering their abode insupportable any longer. They frequent in this village several abject cottages; yet a succession still haunts the same unlikely roofs—a good proof this that the same birds return to the same spots. As they must stoop very low to get up under these humble eaves, cats lie in wait, and sometimes catch them on the wing.

  On the 5th of July, 1775, I again untiled part of a roof over the nest of a swift. The dam sat in the nest; but so strongly was she affected by a natural for her brood, which she supposed to be in danger, that, regardless of her own safety, she would not stir, but lay sullenly by them, permitting herself to be taken in hand. The squab young we brought down and placed on the grass-plot, where they tumbled about, and were as helpless as a new-born child. While we contemplated their naked bodies, their unwieldy disproportioned abdomina, and their heads, too heavy for their necks to support, we could not but wonder when we reflected that these shiftless beings in a little more than a fortnight would be able to dash through the air almost with the inconceivable swiftness of a meteor; and perhaps in their emigration, must traverse vast continents and oceans as distant as the equator. So soon does Nature advance small birds to their or state of perfection; while the progressive growth of men and large quadrupeds is slow and tedious.

  I am, &c.

  IV

  CHERRY KEARTON

  ONE of the pioneers of Nature photography has been Mr. Cherry Kearton, especially in the field of motion pictures. Many celebrated film sequences by Mr. Kearton have been shown in England and America, and his work of photographing wild animals has, as he says, carried him right “across the world.” And not only across, but up and down, for he has made a great specialty of African Nature pictures, from the lion country of the Equator all the way to the oceanic islands off the Cape, where breed the black-footed penguins.

  Mr. Kearton was born in 1871 in Thwaite Swaledale, Yorkshire, son of a yeoman farmer. Under the influence of his brother Richard, the celebrated explorer, writer, and photographer, Kearton early began his career with the lens, illustrating all of Richard Kearton’s early books.

  About 1911 Mr. Kearton accompanied Buffalo Jones as his motion picture photographer to East Africa. Buffalo Jones and a few cowboys lassoed rhino, giraffe, lion and other animals. Shortly after this, Mr. Kearton again carried his lens to East Africa, in company with James Barnes, an American explorer, returning by a journey across the Belgian Congo in the following year. In 1914 as captain of the Fifth Royal Fusiliers, Kearton returned to East Africa in the World War campaigns against the German colonies, and saw three years of service. He was reported killed but, happily for photography, survived. More natural history expeditions in Africa followed after the war, and in 1926 he was summoned to Windsor Castle to show his pictures at royal command. His Nature photography has taken him to the Far West of the United States and he is well known to the scientists of New York, who speak of his winning personality and outstanding ability.

  Mr. Kearton lives at present at “The Jungle,” Kenley, Surrey, where his diversions are rifle shooting, boxing, and billiards. His wife has accompanied him on many of his most daring trips and assisted in his work. He states that even when photographing African elephants, rhinoceros, crocodiles, lions and buffalo, he never goes armed. He considers that if he is quite unarmed he will be triply cautious and therefore actually in less danger, and that from the point of view of natural history more is learned if one is forced to rely entirely upon a camera record and cannot take the short-cut of securing specimens by killing them.

  There was certainly no need of a gun on his island of penguins, for there are no birds less belligerent than the domestically inclined, peace-loving, and flightless Sphenisciformes. The island, off the coast of South Africa, is the breeding ground not only of the black-footed or Cape penguin (Spheniscus demersus) but is visited by sea gulls, terns and gannets, and is the permanent residence of cormorants, oyster-catchers, gulls, ibis, and sand-plovers.

  The island which Mr. and Mrs. Kearton visited is little more than a rock four square miles in area and surrounded by some of the stormiest seas of the South Atlantic, northwest from the Cape of Good Hope; humanly it is inhabited only by the attendants of the lighthouse. Here the Keartons spent many months, and came to know individual birds and their individualistic behavior as well as the types of behavior that are determined by age and sex and the race as a whole. As Mr. Kearton says:

  “I studied young penguins and old penguins in all conditions, in sickness and in health, in fair weather and foul. I met the proud and the meek, the bully, the mischief-maker, the comfortable old gentleman, the despised weakling and the social outcast.”

  The black-footed or jackass penguins, in Mr. Kearton’s view of them, are not increasing or are positively losing ground. Gulls and ibises take the eggs. At sea, the octopus and shark lie in wait for the swimming birds. Men take penguins in nets and use them as bait for crayfish. Yet Mr. Kearton calculates the penguin population at the height of the breeding season as five millions, which would put its numbers up with those of any capital in the world except London and New York. Such a vast congregation in so crowded a space necessarily means that complex social adjustments would be set up among penguins, just as they would among ants, men or bees. The society of the hive is well understood, since the honey bee has been a highly accessible object of study to man for ages. But the haunts of penguins are the opposite of accessible. The twenty living species of this ancient and unique order of birds are scattered over the islands of the antarctic seas, save for a few outposts where islands technically tropical are swept by cold currents. So, scientists who have wished to study them have been compelled to undertake special expeditions and to dwell amongst them under conditions of great difficulty. Yet probably no social bird has attracted so much attention as the penguin. For though instinct, and not intelligence, may be the guiding principle of penguin society, intelligence of a sort is not wanting and the analogies of penguin life and human life are sufficiently striking (however little they may be true homologies in the scientific sense) to have attracted the satiric wit of many writers, notably Anatole France and his L’lle des Pengouins.

  Mr. Kearton has also played with this fantasy, not however as intended to expose human foibles through penguins, but rather to make penguin behavior more comprehensible to us. This anthropomorphism is employed, I believe, entirely in a jocose spirit, and i
f it is so understood by the reader and not taken literally, it will be seen that, fundamentally, the author almost nowhere violates serious science but has, with a peculiarly light and charming gesture, done his bit to elucidate it.

  PENGUINS’ NESTS

  IT IS a low-lying island, roughly in the shape of a tortoise, two and a half miles long and a mile and a half wide. It is a flat rock, and nothing but a rock, rising out of the water, although the rock surface is partly covered with shallow earth and sand.

  Except for the few patches of bare rock, the whole surface of the island is pitted with holes a few feet or less apart—the nesting burrows of penguins. Every patch of earthy ground, every overhanging rock, every spot where tunnelling can be performed, is made use of.

  They lie down and scrape at the earth with their feet and flippers until a little is loose enough to be removed; then they shift forward and start to kick out with their feet. In this way they gradually dig in a sloping direction a sort of tunnel to a depth of one, two or three feet, so that at last they have what is in effect an open front garden and a roofed house beyond.

  This is hard work, of course. The two penguins that have mated take it in turns, one resting while the other toils, and they do most of the work in the morning, usually keeping at it for two or three hours at a stretch. Each day, at the end of the work, they go down to the sea, partly to fish and partly to wash. For the past three hours, earth has been flying to a height of two or three feet all round the burrow, and a good deal of it has fallen on the workers—you can. imagine what a state they are in, with earth and sand matted into their black and white feathers. But a bath soon works wonders, and the toilers quickly return to an appearance of respectability.

  Burrowing is by far the commonest method of constructing a home on the Island of Penguins, but shelter is the first concern in the design of these homes, and from that point of view nothing could possibly equal a nest under a rock; therefore I imagine that the penguins who have been lucky enough to provide themselves with a stone roof are envied by the rest. Here and there you will see, as on all rocky coasts, great slabs of rock which by long action of the sea have been hollowed out underneath, so that there is a long, shallow, open cave. In any such place as that, you may be certain to find several penguin families.