With nature and a camera

Chapter III. The birds and fowlers of St Kilda (continued)

Fulmars *

Martin's Fulmar

I believe that Fulmar Petrels are popularly supposed to squirt oil at their enemies from their tubular nostrils, but this is certainly not the rule. We saw it ejected from the throat somewhat in the form of a vigorous expectoration, and according to our observation it is not propelled to nearly the distance stated in some ornithological works. It is surprising to find that one authority who visited the rocks and studied the species say he never saw the bird squirt oil at its enemies. We saw this done several times at dogs when they approached the more accessible nooks and ledges on which birds were brooding. Again the same observer records that "the Fulmar breeds on the face of the highest precipices, and only on such as are furnished with small grassy shelves." We repeatedly found eggs on shelves and in corners where there was not a single blade of grass alive or dead; the nest, if such it could by any stretch of courtesy be called, simply consisting of a slight hollow lined with pebbles and rock chippings, and in some cases of a shallow declivity in the bare peat without a lining of any kind whatsoever.

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Fulmar petrel on nest

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It may be, of course, that the bird has changed its breeding habits as well as its breeding quarters; for I think there is every reason for believing that it formerly nested in the Hebrides, as an old chronicler records that "A gentleman of the name of Campbell being fowling among the rocks of Mull, and having mounted a ladder to take some birds out of their holes, was so surprised by one of them squirting a quantity of oil in his face that he quitted his hold and fell down and perished." Although the name of the bird is not mentioned specifically, I think that the use of the ladder almost proves that it was a Fulmar's nest which the unfortunate fowler was raiding.

Within the nineteenth century the bird has established itself as a breeding species in the Faroes to the detriment of the Gannet, and only as far back as 1878 it founded a breeding colony in the Shetlands. Seton quotes two opinions of the bird, which placed side by side appear to be ridiculously contradictory. The St Kildan proudly says of it, "Can the world exhibit a more valuable commodity? The Fulmar furnishes oil for the lamp, down for the bed, the most salubrious food, and the most efficacious ointment for healing wounds. Deprive us of the Fulmar, and St Kilda is no more." And the Faroese: "Nasty, stinking beast! Why, even his egg keeps its stench for years; his flesh no man can eat; and if you sleep on a bed in which even a handful of feathers have been put by mistake, you will leave it long before morning."

Kenneth Macaulay, who visited the island more than a century and a quarter ago, says, in writing of the Fulmar, that "to plunder his nest, or to offer indignity to it, is a high crime and misdemeanour." The sacred regard for the bird implied in this quotation does not seem to have been maintained, for it is now remorselessly snared upon its nest during the breeding season on all the islands except St Kilda and the Doon.

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The facsimile above of an engraving of the bird in Martin's book, when compared with our photograph, illustrates the progress of human effort towards truth and accuracy during the last two hundred years.

One authority states that "each Fulmar contains about half a pint of oil," but my observations and dissections did not corroborate this estimate. The oil gives off such a strong odour that everything in St Kilda smells of it. I fetched two fowling-rods away with me as curiosities, but when I got them home discovered that they could not be tolerated anywhere in the house. They were, therefore, relegated to an exposed corner in the garden, and remained there bleaching from June to November, at the end of which time the smell appeared to have quite gone, and I took them indoors. In a few days, however, it returned again with something akin to its former strength.