547 



ORNITHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS AND 

 REFLECTIONS IN SHETLAND. 



EDMUND SELOLS. 



{Continued from page j-'o). 



In ' The Saturday Review,' of August, ist, 1903, I wrote 

 as follows, the subject of my article being not Kittiwakes, but 

 Terns : — ' One of the most marked and curious of these effects 

 is a sudden lull or hush which sinks, as it were, without any 

 imaginable reason, on the Bank,* and the air above it, that 

 have just before been a deafening babel of shrieking and 

 discordant sounds. Sometimes this hush is so marked that 

 there seems almost to be actual silence, for a few seconds, then 

 the voices gradually rise again, and there is soon the same 

 hubbub as before. Then, in another two or three minutes, 

 there is another marked subsidence, after which the noisy fit 

 may last so long and seem so permanent that one begins to 

 think one must have been mistaken in imagining that there 

 was ever any surcease of it. But, all at once, as though a 

 word had been spoken or a finger lifted, in warning, there falls, 

 again, upon the whole clamorous community, that odd, awed 

 hush, like a sudden dropping of the wind. It is as though 

 some unseen presence — unseen to you, at least — had passed 

 amiidst the birds, making them wonder, if not fear, for a 

 moment, in which moment they forgot to scream. I have 

 noticed the same thing with Rooks, when waiting in their 

 roosting-woods for the night to fall, and with Starlings both 

 in the evenings and mornings. Here, on the Bank, it is mostly 

 towards the close of the day that the thing impi-esses itself 

 upon one. When I say that there is no imaginable reason for 

 it, I mean, of course, in comformity with what is known and 

 admitted, and that I can imagine none. With the Starlings 

 I used to suppose, as in duty bound, that an Owl or a Hawk 

 w'as at the bottom of it, and I have, in fact, seen the former 

 bird produce something of the same effect, as it passed silently 

 along, above the dark and crowded thicket. But, instead of 

 a hush, what a most prodigious — w^hat a clamour-out -clam- 

 ouring clamour would have arisen, and what active and violent 

 hostility would have been displayed, had a Hawk or Owl, or 

 even, I verily believe, had an Eagle come amongst this multitude 

 of Terns. t Clearly, this class of reason is here excluded, as it 

 is, almost equally, wdth the Rooks. The coming on of night, 

 again, might produce — as indeed it does — a gradual — though 



* The Chesil Bank. 



t This surmise has since been justified by what 1 saw in Iceland of the 

 mobbing of Eagles by only some half-dozen Gulls or so. A pair of Merlins 

 will also pursue and pester them remorselessly. 



1918 Nov. 1. 



