April 1903APRIL 1903.
APRIL 1903.
Warm, sunny weather in the earlier part of the month raised our hopes of a change of diet, and, coupled with the early appearance of the paidlefish spawn, our expectations of an early fishing ran high. On the 8th, the capture of three small cods in “Johnny Gray” track increased our hopes, and again on the 9th, eight were taken, but since then we’ve had no other. Cold, blowy weather, with heavy seas, has rendered all attempts in this direction futile; however, theattraction—as evidenced by the stomachs of thosecaptured—still increases, and numbers of bloated paidle “hens,” with their lower jaws protruding like a prize bull-dog, are seen cruising sluggishly among the tangles in quest of a suitable nesting place. The nests this season are unusually small; sometimes they contain as much ova as would fill a quart pot. Each ovum is a sixteenth of an inch in diameter, and were all permitted to come tomaturity—instead of becoming food for other fishes as mostdo—would soon fill the sea of themselves. “All nature is at one with rapine and war,” and necessarily so, otherwise we would soon be crowded out of existence.
Our winter residents, the eiders and longtails, have gradually disappeared. On the 4th, a representative pair of each alone remained, but these have now thought better of it and gone the way of their more sensible comrades. A few gulls, herring, and kittiwakes hover about, and guillemots and gannets are now common.
The gannets, I am informed by the keepers on the Bass Rock, commenced laying there on the 11th. The solitary egg these birds deposit is heavily coated with lime, which, when scrubbed off, exposes a pale blue surface. This coating is probably the origin of the fallacy that these birds ensure the safety of their eggs by cementing them to the bare rock. On the contrary, each nest is composed of quite a barrow-load of material of the most miscellaneous description. One of these nests noted on the Bass this season was seen to have the end of a soft-soap barrel for a foundation, armfuls of withered grass, dried tangles, bits of rope, string, cotton waste, and other flotsam and jetsam picked up about the Rock. Amongst the lining of the nest, pheasant and partridge feathers were seen, which were certainly not garnered on the Bass. The harvesting of the withered grass was accomplished between dark and daylight, and, therefore, unnoticed by the keepers, but the area of their operations, as seen next day, suggested the presence of a lawn mower. Thousands of these birds are slaughtered annually by the St Kildians as an article of diet, and the wonder is, considering the solitary egg deposited and that three years elapse before the adult stage is reached, that they continue so numerous.
Dr Wallace, in his “Natural Selection,” speaking of birds in general, tells us that, if permitted to live, in the ordinary course of production “in fifteen years each pair of birds would have increased to more than two thousand millions. Whereas we have no reason to believe that the number of the birds of any country increases at all in fifteen or in one hundred and fifty years. On the average, all above one become food for hawks and kites, wild cats or weasels, or perish of cold and hunger as winter comes on.”
Myriads of white whelks are now scattered over the Rock surface, and already patches of mussels and acorn barnacles have been cleared by their voracity. Their ova, which is to be met with in almost every nook and cranny, is left to take care of itself. A patch of this ova is situated in a position which a paidle-hen subsequently fancied for a nursery, and, scorning all rights of possession, plastered her ova indiscriminately over that of the whelks, with the result that they are now under the special care of the guardian “cock.”
A stranded cuttlefish was an object of much interest one evening this month. What a queer-looking object it appeared, with its eight long tentacles squirming in all directions, its body a slobbery mass of animated mucilage. Although only a foot in diameter it required some force to detach it from the rock, as each of the tentacles is furnished with rows of suckers on its under side. By extending the tentacles in front, the animal was able to move along the Rock surface, not in a jerky fashion, as might be expected, but with a continuous gliding motion, clearly showing that each sucker acted independently of its neighbour. If taken hold of, one or other of the tentacles is immediately twisted round the hand with a tenacity that seems surprising considering the size of the animal, and one can then realise to some extent the stories occasionally heard of its giant relatives of the tropics. Irritated, it appears to have the properties of the chameleon, flushing through all the gradations of colour in quick succession, and latterly discharging a jet of fluid of inky blackness. This resource, however, was utterly useless in the present circumstances, but, on placing the animal in a shallow pool of water, its use was at once apparent, for on being touched it immediately rendered itself invisible by the inky fluid discharged. Frequent irritation, however, exhausted its stock of ink, and latterly only clear water was expelled. This expulsion, when effected on the Rock, was accompanied by an audible murmur. The narrow slits of eyes closely resemble those of a dog-fish, and the head, with the anterior tentacle elevated in the air, grotesquely reminds one of an elephant in the act of trumpeting.