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At last the sea-ice was reached, but by that time the light was so far spent that everything had to be rushed. Instead of the 2,000 or 3,000 nesting birds that had been seen at this rookery in Discovery days, they could only count about a hundred.
No room could be given up for streets, or for the usual arrangements of a camp, and most kinds of exercise were wholly precluded. The men crowded together like pigs nesting in the woods on cold nights. The ground, despite all our efforts, became indescribably filthy, and this condition grew rapidly worse as the season advanced and the sun's rays gained fervency.
For aviaries, I like them not, except they be of that largeness as they may be turfed, and have living plants and bushes set in them; that the birds may have more scope, and natural nesting, and that no foulness appear in the floor of the aviary.
In midsummer, when the purple is on the broom, a strange pageant moves on the dim horizon, a shifting mirage of sea and shore, forest, lake, and islands lying high, with ships and castles and spires of distant churches the witchery of the heath that speaks in the tales and superstitions of its simple people. High in the blue soars the lark, singing its song of home and hope to its nesting mate.
Robber!" at some harmless little owl than are these blue and white rascals. You may seek in vain to discover the first sign of nesting among the birds. Scarcely has winter set in in earnest, you will think, when the tiger-eyed one of the woods the great horned owl will have drifted up to some old hawk's nest, and laid her white spheres fairly in the snow.
If a lazy sparrow intends appropriating the nest which a comrade is building, or even steals from it a few sprays of straw, the group interferes against the lazy comrade; and it is evident that without such interference being the rule, no nesting associations of birds could exist. Separate groups of penguins have separate resting-places and separate fishing abodes, and do not fight for them.
"The landscapes Van Twiller painted in the dark, or when he had his blinders on, can't be worth very much," insisted Gilbert. "You remember the Admiral thought it was partridges nesting in the underbrush at twilight, and then we found Joanna had cleaned the dining room and hung the thing upside down.
And now, in the delicate manoeuvre of bringing to and making fast, my companions, myself and all else were utterly forgotten, as with voice and hand he issued order on order until, gently as a nesting bird, the destroyer came to her berth and was made fast.
There are five other colonies of these socialistic, disputative birds on this Island; but they happen to be in out-of-the-way spots, where continuous detailed observation of their habits and customs would be impossible. Hence, when I saw the noisy throng gather together discussing the imperious business of nesting, I watched with eager and hopeful anticipation.
You can look out from it on one side over the flamingo colony of the Bahamas, and on the other straight into the heart of the Cuthbert Rookery in Florida. Just opposite is the green and silver coral islet of Cay Verde, with the Man-of-War Birds nesting among the flat leaves of the sea-grape.
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