Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 255, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 October 1910 — THE PUFFIN AT HOME [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE PUFFIN AT HOME

TIE puffin is the Chinaman of the bird world. He alone among his kind has that fold of skin at the inner angle of the eye that under the name of the third eyelid makes the Mongolian eye such- a distinctive feature of hiß human representative. This setting of the eye in an oblique chink gives the puffin that fixed, quizzical expression which has led most observers to call it a quaint-looking bird, but which to me irresistibly calls to mind the Chinaman’s bland-looking face that, like a mask, gives no sign of the working of the inner mind. It is a disappointment, after seeing your first puffin at close quarters at his home in puffin-town, to turn up his description in any bird-book and find, after all the meticulous description of his feathers and the order of the colors on his rainbow-tinted beak, that this distinctive feature of the screwedup eye is never mentioned. The illustrations In these books are as disappointing as the text, the eye being as much -like a rabbit’s as a puffin’s. Besides the Mongolian eye, he has the Mongolian secretiveness as well. Inoffensive and unobtrusive, he is silent as he stands upright, or moves about somewhat uncertainly on his dapper little red legs among the noisy crowd on the rocks. It is only from the depths of his burrow in the spongy red or from his chink among the lichen-covered rocks, that the sound of his language reaches your ear. In the privacy of his home he now and then utters strange sounds that when first heard resemble somewhat in their subdued intonation the distant lowing of cattle or shouting of men. But when you know him better you will fancy you can hear in his deep, mournful “Arrh!” a weary sigh indicative of his fate. For he is the patient coolie of the shore, with worse than Indentured labor for his fate. All the ruling classes look to him to provide them with an easy meal. Every time the proud peregrine’s offspring in the eyrie whimper for food a puffin somewhere has to pay 101 l by giving up the ghost; and yet, although this is almost an hourly occurrence on a summer’s day, the other puffins continue uncomplaining and unheeding. A model parent the puffin must be, for though it lays but-a single egg. It manages to maintain its numbers year after year, in spite of the heaviest taxation. There is no colony of the lesser black-backed gull, where puffins breed, that is not strewn with the corpses of this humble little bird. Were I a puffin, this is the fate I should most resent. The peregrine at least wastes nothing, leaves nothing but the beak and legs; but the coldblooded gull simply disembowels the poor bird and leaves the rest to rot. I have never seen the tragedy of its death, whether it is killed on land or as it swims on the sea or as it files through the air; but, were I a' hungry bird of prey, I think it would tempt me most as it skims through the air. For all the world it looks like a fat mackerel fitted with a pair of wings which hardly seem strong enough to carry Its plump little body to its destination. In fact, as it whirrs up from the sea to its burrow, as likely as not it will turn head over heels as it strikes the ground and then get up and make a wry face as it spits the dirt out of its mouth; or else it will dash headlong against a rock with a smack that you would think would kill it, and then look round as stupidly as a sheep that In Its blundering course fulfils its fate as mutton. Although each colony of lesser blackbacks shojro the bloody tribute of the unfortunate puffin, that of the greater blaQk-back shows no evidence of this kind. , In'"the whole community of a hundred nests of this ruler of the archipelago—for not even the fierce peregrine disputes his away—there was not a single puffin corpse to be seen.

Uhfortunately, for all the immaculate whiteness of his head and neck, he has the same tell-tale blood fleck ornamenting his lower Jaw as has his lesser relative; he has the same cold eye, and even a blacker back, a real sooty black; and if there are no traces of blood-guiltiness between the nests, mayhap it is because he goes one better than they and swallows his mutton whole. Indeed, fishermen say that he stands by the puffin’s burrow like a graven image, watching patiently, and then, when at last the victim comes out, he is suddenly caught by the back of the neck, has the life shaken out of him and is then gulped down holus-bolus. I do not wish to malign the lesser black-backed gull to the extent of suggesting by implication that it disembowels its victims while still alive. In fact, the only evidence I have is distinctly to the contrary. Mr. J. W. Parsons, late of the Fames lighthouse, and a most acute observer of bird-life, tells me that he once saw a lesser black-back kill a puffin. He did not see! it catch the bird, but it was killed by being shaken as a terrier shakes a rat. and then ducked under water until drowned. Then the gull flew with it on to a rock and, after disemboweling it, tried many times to swallow It whole, but could not get it down. On the land the puffin’s footing seems uncertain; in the air its flight is labored; therefore the place to see it at its best must be as it hunts its prey under water. Much do I envy observers like Edmund Selous who have watched it as It wings its way beneath the waves with its scarlet legs trailing behind. As you approach in a boat a little group of puffins sitting on the water, you get .an inkling of their Water magic. When you get too near to them for their peace of mind but qot near enough for you to see how it is done, first one and then another disappears. You see no dhte, Just a bird sitting motionless, and then a little swirl where was the bird. But if you want to see one of the fairy sights of birdland, go to puffin-town and, resting your back against a convenient rock, be content to sit still for an hour. In front of you is a shelving tract of bare brown earth nearly an acre in extent, riddled in all directions with burrows that so undermine the ground that, however carefully you walk across it, a clumsy foot is sure sooner or later to break into some puffin habitation. All the puffins that your advent disturbed are bobbing up and sit in hundreds in the bay below. Presently, if you are quiet, they begin to whinup from the sea in twos and threes and then scores and battalions. As likely as not the very first that pitch will alight within two or three yards of you. Others, as they circle round, I will draw up their feet, which had been extended as if for alighting, and bo pass out to sea once more. But before long puffin-town will be densely populated by its staid little inhabitants, all bearing that fixed puzzled expression that makes them look almost comical in their solemnity. Some stand still with Just an occasional flapping of their wings as if to dry them, others take aimless little runs on their dapper little red legs and then stand still, looking round, as if puzzled what the next move is to be. Others fair awkwardly as they alight and promptly drop down a hole in the ground. Just as the next-door neighbor maybe pops up from another hole and whirrs out to sea. In a little group of five twp have caught hold of one another’s beaks and are having a tussle, but whether in amity or not I cannot tell. Every now and then quite a quarter of the population will suddenly bend forward and in an Instant in a great cloud are whirring out to sea, while those left behind look puzzled at their sudden departure and Just as puzzled when in a few minutes all the wanderers return, each taking up its position again. Many observers have been puzzled to understand how the puffin manages to catch one flsh after another and pack each methodically across its jaws, but as Mr. King opens the beak of a dead puffin you have the answer from the puffin’s own mouth, for there on its palate are the rows of barbs sloping back, between which the flsh are filed. There is much more to be told about this interesting little bird, especially if all were known. But puzzled as the puffin looks, there is one thing known to that little mind behind the mask, but which puzzles us, and that is the Btlll unsolved mystery of where he spends his winter time. . FRANCIB HEATHERLEY.