To Enjoy The
Sensation I Went Out And Sat Down, And Listened Alone To The
Liquid Rippling, Warbling Sound Of
The swift-flowing
streamlet - that sweet low music of running water to which the
reed-warbler had listened thousands of
Years ago, striving to
imitate it, until his running rippling song was perfect.
A fresh surprise and pleasure awaited me when I explored the
coast east of the village; it was bold and precipitous in
places, and from the summit of the cliff a very fine view of
the coast-line on either hand could be obtained. Best of all,
the face of the cliff itself was the breeding-place of some
hundreds of herring-gulls. The eggs at the period of my visit
were not yet hatched, but highly incubated, and at that stage
both parents are almost constantly at home, as if in a state
of anxious suspense. I had seen a good many colonies of this
gull before at various breeding stations on the coast - south,
west, and east - but never in conditions so singularly favourable
as at this spot. From the vale where the Branscombe pours its
clear waters through rough masses of shingle into the sea the
ground to the east rises steeply to a height of nearly five
hundred feet; the cliff is thus not nearly so high as many
another, but it has features of peculiar interest. Here, in
some former time, there has been a landslip, a large portion
of the cliff at its highest part falling below and forming a
sloping mass a chalky soil mingled with huge fragments of rock,
which lies like a buttress against the vertical precipice and
seems to lend it support. The fall must have occurred a very
long time back, as the vegetation that overspreads the rude
slope - hawthorn, furze, and ivy - has an ancient look. Here
are huge masses of rock standing isolated, that resemble in
their forms ruined castles, towers, and churches, some of them
completely overgrown with ivy. On this rough slope, under the
shelter of the cliff, with the sea at its feet, the villagers
have formed their cultivated patches. The patches, wildly
irregular in form, some on such steeply sloping ground as to
suggest the idea that they must have been cultivated on all
fours, are divided from each other by ridges and by masses of
rock, deep fissures in the earth, strips of bramble and thorn
and furze bushes. Altogether the effect was very singular
the huge rough mass of jumbled rock and soil, the ruin wrought
by Nature in one of her Cromwellian moods, and, scattered
irregularly about its surface, the plots or patches of
cultivated smoothness - potato rows, green parallel lines
ruled on a grey ground, and big, blue-green, equidistant
cabbage-globes - each plot with its fringe of spike-like onion
leaves, crinkled parsley, and other garden herbs. Here the
villagers came by a narrow, steep, and difficult path they had
made, to dig in their plots; while, overhead, the gulls,
careless of their presence, pass and repass wholly occupied
with their own affairs.
I spent hours of rare happiness at this spot in watching the
birds. I could not have seen and heard them to such advantage
if their breeding-place had been shared with other species.
Here the herring-gulls had the rock to themselves, and looked
their best in their foam-white and pearl-grey plumage and
yellow legs and beaks. While I watched them they watched me;
not gathered in groups, but singly or in pairs, scattered up
and down all over the face of the precipice above me, perched
on ledges and on jutting pieces of rock. Standing motionless
thus, beautiful in form and colour, they looked like
sculptured figures of gulls, set up on the projections against
the rough dark wall of rock, just as sculptured figures of
angels and saintly men and women are placed in niches on a
cathedral front. At first they appeared quite indifferent to
my presence, although in some instances near enough for their
yellow irides to be visible. While unalarmed they were very
silent, standing in that clear sunshine that gave their
whiteness something of a crystalline appearance; or flying to
and fro along the face of the cliff, purely for the delight of
bathing in the warm lucent air. Gradually a change came over
them. One by one those that were on the wing dropped on to
some projection, until they had all settled down, and, letting
my eyes range up and down over the huge wall of rock, it was
plain to see that all the birds were watching me. They had
made the discovery that I was a stranger. In my rough old
travel-stained clothes and tweed hat I might have passed for a
Branscombe villager, but I did no hoeing and digging in one of
the cultivated patches; and when I deliberately sat down on a
rock to watch them, they noticed it and became suspicious; and
as time went on and I still remained immovable, with my eyes
fixed on them, the suspicion and anxiety increased and turned
to fear; and those that were sitting on their nests got up and
came close to the edge of the rock, to gaze with the others
and join in the loud chorus of alarm. It was a wonderful
sound. Not like the tempest of noise that may be heard at the
breeding-season at Lundy Island, and at many other stations
where birds of several species mix their various voices - the
yammeris and the yowlis, and skrykking, screeking, skrymming
scowlis, and meickle moyes and shoutes, of old Dunbar's
wonderful onomatopoetic lines. Here there was only one
species, with a clear resonant cry, and as every bird uttered
that one cry, and no other, a totally different effect was
produced. The herring-gull and lesser black-backed gull
resemble each other in language as they do in general
appearance; both have very powerful and clear voices unlike
the guttural black-headed and common gull.
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