T H E B L A C K G U I L L E M O T.
URIA GRYLLE, LATH.
P L A T E C C X I X . ADULT IN SUMMER, ADULT IN WINTER, AND YOUNG.
IT was a frightful thing to see my good Captain, HENRY EMERY,
swinging on a long rope upon the face of a rocky and crumbling eminence,
at a height of several hundred feet from the water, in search of
the eggs of the Black Guillemot, with four or five sailors holding the
rope above, and walking along the edge of the precipice. I stood watching
the motions of the adventurous sailor. When the friction of the rope
by which he was suspended loosened a block, which with awful crash came
tumbling down from above him, he, with a promptness and dexterity that
appeared to me quite marvellous, would, by a sudden jerk, throw himself
aside to the right or left, and escape the danger. Now he would run
his arm into a fissure, which, if he found it too deep, he would probe
with a boat-hook. Whenever he chanced to touch a bird, it would come
out whirring like a shot in his face; while others came flying from afar
toward their beloved retreats with so much impetuosity as almost to alarm
the bold rocksman. After much toil and trouble he procured only a few
eggs, it not being then the height of the breeding season. You may imagine,
good Reader, how relieved I felt when I saw Mr EMERY drawn up,
and once more standing on the bold eminence waving his hat as a signal
of success. This happened in one of the Magdeleine Islands, in the Gulf
of St Lawrence.
During severe winters, I have seen the Black Guillemot playing over
the waters as far south as the shores of Maryland. Such excursions,
however, are of rare occurrence, and it is seldom that any of these birds
are to be seen until you reach the Bay of Boston. About the different
entrances of the Bay of Fundy, this species is a constant resident, and
many individuals breed in fissures, at a moderate height above the water,
on the rocky shores of the Island of Grand Manan, and others in the
same latitude. Proceeding farther toward the north-east, we found them
on Jesticoe Island, and wherever else we happened to touch on our way
to Labrador, in which country there is a regular nursery of these birds.
Unlike the Foolish and Thick-billed Guillemots, or the Razor-billed
Auk, they do not confine themselves to any particular spot, but take up
their abode for the season in any place that presents suitable conveniences.
Wherever there are fissures in the rocks, or great piles of blocks
with holes in their interstices, there you may expect to find the Black
G uillemot.
Whether European writers have spoken of this species at random, or
after due observation, I cannot say. All I know is, that every one of them
whose writings I have consulted, says that the Black Guillemot lays only
one egg. As I have no reason whatever to doubt their assertion, I
might be tempted to suppose that our species differs from theirs, were I
not perfectly aware that birds in different places will construct different
nests, and lay more or fewer eggs. Our species always deposits three,
unless it may have been disturbed ; and this fact I have assured myself
of by having caught the birds in more than twenty instances sitting
on that number. Nay, on several occasions, at Labrador, some of my
party and myself saw several Black Guillemots sitting on eggs in the
same fissure of a rock, where every bird had three eggs under it, a
fact which I communicated to my friend THOMAS NDTTALL. What
was most surprising to me was, that even the fishermen there thought
that this bird laid only a single egg; and when I asked them how
they knew, they simply and good-naturedly answered that they had
heard so. Thus, Reader, I might have been satisfied with the sayings
of others, and repeated that the bird in question lays one egg;
but instead of taking this easy way of settling the matter, I found it necessary
to convince myself of the fact by my own observation. I had
therefore to receive many knocks and bruises in scrambling over rugged
crags and desolate headlands; whereas, with less incredulity, I might very
easily have announced to you from my easy chair in Edinburgh, that the
Black Guillemots of America lay only a single egg. No true student of
nature ought ever to be satisfied without personal observation when it
can be obtained. It is the " American Woodsman" that tells you so,
anxious as he is that you should enjoy the pleasure of studying and admiring
the beautiful works of Nature.
To satisfy yourself as to the correctness of the statements which he
here lays before you, go to the desolate shores of Labrador. There, in
the vernal month of June, place yourself on some granite rock, against
the base of which the waves dash in impotent rage; and ere long you
will sec the gay Guillemot coming from afar by the side of its mate.