Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/224

214 by their clear voices. They are the police of the mountain, the guardians of the safety of the bird-republic; for as soon as they perceive anything that betokens danger, say an approaching boat, they cry out in chorus and give an alarm that instantly sets the whole population in motion. The gulls immediately send forth scouts which go toward the boat, soaring, screeching around it, swooping down upon it with the speed of an arrow, and often touching the boatman with the tips of their pinions. The mass of the army follows the scouts. They come by thousands and thousands, in so thick masses as to obscure the sun. The explorer is forced to come to the shore veiled in this living, fluttering, screeching, rushing cloud. The ducks, if they are not actually sitting, fly, the snipes hastily seek the sea, and the wagtails follow in noisy flight, but the host of gulls stands firm, screams and bustles and whirls and plunges, as if it could prevent the advance by noise and sham fighting. One may walk the shore and see nothing but birds and nests, and hear nothing but the discordant din of voices, accompanied by the thunderous rushing of thousands of wings lashing the air.

A more quiet picture is afforded by the hill where the auks brood. They resemble the eider-duck in shape, except that their bills are sharp and not flat, like those of the latter. There are three species of them, which are distinguished from one another by the length of the bill and its curvature. All three species live and brood in the same places. I was told of a mountain where a million of them had built their nests. I am sure of one thing—that no man has ever seen a million birds, even though he has traveled over half the earth. Doubting the accounts, I visited the described mountain. On a bright summer day my companion and myself took a boat and rowed toward it, over the smooth, transparent water, between beautiful islands, followed by the screeching of the startled gulls. High above us on a towering ridge we saw the watchful ospreys; by our side, on right and left, along the shore-cliffs, the sitting eider-ducks. Finally we came to the populous part of the mountain, which is from three hundred and twenty to three hundred and thirty feet high, and saw really immense numbers of birds sitting on the ridges. The higher parts of the cone were covered with a brown spoonwort, and as we approached the shore the birds drew back thither, and suddenly disappeared from view as if by concerted agreement. When we had reached the shore and landed, and were wondering what had become of the hosts of birds, we found the ground burrowed all over with holes that looked like common rabbit-holes. We soon learned that they were the entrances to the nest-chambers of the auks. The holes are large enough to permit the birds to pass through, and then widen on the inside so as to give room for the nest and the two birds. As we climbed toward the height, the tenants first carefully and anxiously peered at us, then slipped out and threw themselves screaming into the sea, which was soon covered, as far as the