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                                  THE
                     BIRD WATCHER IN THE SHETLANDS
               WITH SOME NOTES ON SEALS--AND DIGRESSIONS


                         _All rights reserved_

                 [Illustration: _A Seal's Dormitory._]




                                  THE
                             BIRD WATCHER
                           IN THE SHETLANDS
                     WITH SOME NOTES ON SEALS--AND
                              DIGRESSIONS

                                  BY
                             EDMUND SELOUS

                   [Illustration: Shadows we are and
                         Like shadows depart]

                         WITH 10 ILLUSTRATIONS
                                  BY
                                J. SMIT

                       LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO.
                     NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
                                 1905




PREFACE


In the spring of 1900 I paid my first visit to the Shetlands, and most
of what I then saw is embodied in my work _Bird Watching_. Two years
afterwards I went there again, arriving somewhat later, and it is the
notes made by me during this second stay which fill the greater number
of these pages. They are my journal, written from day to day, amidst
the birds with whom I lived without another companion, nor did I look
upon them as more than the rough material out of which I might, some
day, make a book. When it came to making one, however, it struck me more
and more forcibly that I was taking elaborate pains to stereotype and
artificialise what was, at any rate, as it stood, an unforced utterance
and natural growth. I found, in fact, that I could make it worse, but not
better, so I resolved not to make it worse. Except for a few peckings,
therefore, and minor interpolations--mostly having to do with the working
out of ideas jotted down in the rough--I send it to press with this very
negative sort of recommendation, and with only the hope added that what
interested me so much will interest others also, even through the veil
of my writing. Besides birds, I was lucky enough this time to have
seals to watch, and I watched them hour after hour and day after day. I
believe I know them better now, than I do anybody, or than anybody does
me; but that is not to say much, for, as the true Russian proverb has it,
"Another man's soul is darkness." But I have them in my heart for ever,
and I would take them out of the Zoological Society's basins, and throw
them back into the sea, if I could.

I have no doubt that these pages contain some errors of observation or
inference which I am not yet aware of--but those who only glance at
them may sometimes be inclined to correct me, where, later, I correct
myself. It is best, I think, to let one's mistakes stand recorded
against one, for mistakes have their interest, and often emphasize some
truth. Honesty, too, would suffer in their suppression--and besides,
if one has got in some idea or reflection that pleases one, or a
piece of descriptive writing that does not seem amiss, how tiresome
to have to scratch it out, merely because it is founded on a wrong
apprehension!--the spire to come tumbling just for the want of a base!
For these reasons, therefore--especially the last, when it applies--I
have not suppressed my errors, even where I happen to know them. There
they stand, if only to encourage others who may be labouring in the same
field as myself--which makes one more high-minded motive.

For my digressions, etc.--for which I have been taken to task--I hope
this fresh crop of them will make it apparent that they are a part of
my method, or, rather, a part of myself. I have still a temperament I
find--and it gives me a good deal of trouble--but as soon as I have
become a nonentity, I will follow the advice given me, and write like
one. I would say more if I could, but I must not promise what it is not
in my power to perform.

                                                          EDMUND SELOUS




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                         PAGE

       I. My Island Again!                           1
      II. Spoiler and Spoiled                        9
     III. From Darkness to Light                    15
      IV. Duckings and Bobbings                     26
       V. A Vengeful Community                      31
      VI. Metempsychosis                            37
     VII. Bird Sympathy                             39
    VIII. Enchanted Caverns                         47
      IX. Ducks and Divers                          59
       X. From the Edge of a Precipice              68
      XI. Darwinian Eider-ducks                     74
     XII. On the Great Ness-side                    81
    XIII. Mother and Child                          88
     XIV. "Dream Children"                          95
      XV. New Developments                         104
     XVI. Flight and Fancy                         110
    XVII. Mouths with Meanings                     122
   XVIII. Learning to Soar                         133
     XIX. The Dance of Death                       138
      XX. "By _Any_ Other Name"!                   150
     XXI. "Not Always to the Strong"               156
    XXII. Children of the Mists                    160
   XXIII. Love on the Ledges                       172
    XXIV. Grouse Aspirations                       190
     XXV. Unorthodox Attitudes                     203
    XXVI. Pied Pipers                              218
   XXVII. A Bitter Disappointment                  225
  XXVIII. Tammy-Norie-land                         234
    XXIX. Thoughts in a Sentry-box                 249
     XXX. Intersexual Selection                    261
    XXXI. An All-day Sitting                       284
   XXXII. Three Murderers                          297
  XXXIII. Gulls and Gibbon                         314
   XXXIV. All about Seals                          327
    XXXV. The Devil's Advocate                     342
   XXXVI. Comparing Notes                          365




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


  A Seal's Dormitory                _Photogravure Frontispiece_
  Bird Sympathy                               _Facing page_  42
  From the Rocks of Raasey Isle                      "       84
  On the Edge of the Precipice                       "       92
  Aerial Piracy                                      "      133
  A Seal's Plaything                                 "      216
  A Perilous Journey                                 "      288
  "One More Unfortunate"                             "      308
  "Nature Red in Tooth and Claw"                     "      316
  Polite but Insistent                               "      346




                           THE BIRD WATCHER

                           IN THE SHETLANDS

                     WITH SOME NOTES ON SEALS--AND

                              DIGRESSIONS




CHAPTER I

MY ISLAND AGAIN!


My island again!--and all the birds still there, looking just as they did
when I left it. More, too, have come. At night, but in a sort of murky
daylight, I walk over the breeding-ground of the terns, a long flat strip
of pebbly beach--or rather the heather a little way above it, for on
the beach itself they do not appear to have laid. Rising, all at once,
as is their wont, they make a second smaller canopy, above me, floating
midway beneath the all-overshadowing one of dreary low-lying cloud. Out
of it, ever and anon, some single bird shoots down, with a cry so sharp
and shrill that it seems to pierce the ear like a pointed instrument.
Occasionally an oyster-catcher darts in amongst them all, on quickly
quivering wings, its quavering high-pitched note of "teep, teep!--teep,
teep, teep!" threading, as it were, the general clamour, whilst like
a grey, complaining shadow, the curlew circles, beyond and solitary,
shunning even the outer margin of the crowd. How lonely is this island,
and yet how populous! The terns--a "shrieking sisterhood"--make, as I
say, a canopy above me, when I pace or skirt their territories; but what
is that to the great perpetual canopy of gulls that accompanies and
shrieks down at me, almost wherever I go? Were it beneath any roof but
that of heaven, how deafening, how ear-splitting would be the noise,
how utterly unendurable! But going forth into the immensity of sky and
air it sounds almost softly, harsh as it is, and even its highest, most
distressful notes, sink peacefully at last into the universal murmur of
the sea, making the treble to the bass of its lullaby.

Most of the cries seem to resolve themselves into the one note or
syllable "ow," out of which, through varied tone and inflection, a
language has been evolved. "Ow-_ow_, ow-_ow_, ow-_ow_!" sadly prolonged
and most disconsolately upturned upon the last, saddest syllable--a
despair, a dirge in "ow." Then a series of shrieking "ows," disjoined,
but each the echo of the last, so that when the last has sounded, the
memory hears but one. Then again a wail, intoned a little differently,
but as mournful as the other. And now a laugh--discordant, mirthless,
but a laugh, and with even a chuckle in it--"ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!" the
syllables huddling one another like the "_petit glou-glou_" of water out
of a bottle. All "ow" or variants of "ow," till the great black-backed
(the bulk are herring-gulls) swooping upon you, almost like the great
skua itself, breaks the spell with a "gugga, gugga, gugga!" or, right
over your head, says "er" with a stress and feeling that amounts almost
to solemnity.

How lonely and yet how populous! Does life, other than human life,
around one, in any way diminish the sense of solitude? I do not think
it does myself, except through human association, and for this, human
surroundings are more or less requisite. Thus woodland birds seem homely
and companionable in woods near which one has a home, and gulls upon the
roofs of houses take the place of pigeons or poultry in the feelings they
arouse. So, too, as long as a natural alacrity of the spirits prevails
over that dead, void feeling which prolonged solitude brings to the most
solitary, the wildest creatures in the wildest and loneliest places may
seem to cheer us with their presence. But the feeling is a false one,
dependent