The Audubon Reader (64 page)

They brought a
Pomarine Jager, female, a full-grown young
Raven and some
Finches. Coolidge’s party had some
Lesser Redpolls, several
Swamp Sparrows, three small Black-cap Green Flycatchers, Black-cap Warblers, old and young, the last fully grown, a
Fringilla lincolnii
and a
Pine Grosbeak. They saw many
Gulls of various species and also an
iceberg of immense size. There is at Port Eau a large fishing establishment belonging to fishermen who come annually from the Island of Jersey and have a large store with
general supplies. Ere I go to rest let me tell thee that it is now blowing a young hurricane and the prospect for tomorrow is a bad one. A few moments ago the report of a cannon came to our ears from the sea, and it is supposed that it was from the
Gulnare
. I wish she was at our side and snugly moored as we are.

July 31
. Another horrid hurricane, accompanied with heavy rain. I could not go on with my drawing either in the cabin or the hold, though everything was done that could be thought of to assist me in the attempt; not a thing to relate, as not one of us could go on shore.

August 1.
Bras d’Or [Village], Coast of Labrador
. I have drawn my
Pomarine Jager, but under difficulties; the weather has quite changed; instead of a hurricane from the east we have had one all day from the southwest, but no rain. At noon we were visited by an iceberg which has been drifting within three miles of us and is now grounded at the entrance of the bay; it looks like a large man-of-war dressed in light green muslin instead of canvas, and when the sun strikes it, it glitters with intense brilliancy. When these transient monuments of the sea happen to tumble or roll over, the fall is tremendous and the sound produced resembles that of loud, distant thunder; these
icebergs are common here all summer, being wafted south with every gale that blows; as the winds are usually easterly, the coast of Newfoundland is more free from them than that of Labrador. I have determined to make a last thorough search of the mountain tops, plains and ponds, and if no success ensues to raise anchor and sail towards the United States once more; and blessed will the day be when I land on those dear shores where all I long for in the world exists and lives, I hope. We have been on shore for an hour for exercise, but the wind blew so fiercely we are glad to return.

August 2
. Noon. The thermometer has risen to 58°, but it has rained hard all day; about dinnertime a very handsome schooner from Boston the size of ours, called the
Wizard
, commanded by
Captain Wilcomb of Ipswich, arrived, only nine days from Boston; but to our sorrow and disappointment, not a letter or paper did she bring, but we learned with pleasure that our great cities are all healthy [i.e., free of cholera], and for this intelligence I thank God. The
Wizard
brought two young Italian clerks as supercargo, who
are going to purchase fish; they visited us and complained bitterly of the cold and the general appearance of the country. The retrograde migration of many birds has already commenced, more especially that of the lesser species both of land and water birds.

August 3
. I was suddenly awakened last night about one o’clock by the shock which our vessel received from the
Wizard
, which had broken her stern chain in the gale, which at that time was raging most furiously. Our captain was up in a moment, the vessels were parted and tranquility was restored, but to John’s sorrow and my vexation, our beautiful and most comfortable gig had been struck by the
Wizard
and her bows stove in; at daylight it rained hard and the gale continued. Lincoln went on shore and shot some birds but nothing of importance. This afternoon we all went ashore through a high and frightful sea which drenched us to the skin, and went to the tablelands; there we found the true
Esquimaux Curlew so carelessly described in Bonaparte’s
Synopsis
. This species here takes the place of the Migratory [Passenger] Pigeon; it has now arrived; I have seen many hundreds this afternoon and shot seven. They fly in compact bodies with beautiful evolutions, overlooking a great extent of country ere they make choice of a spot on which to alight; this is done wherever a certain berry, called here “
Curlew berry,” proves to be abundant. Here they balance themselves, call, whistle and of common accord come to the ground, as the top of the country here must be called. They devour every berry and if pursued squat in the manner of Partridges. A single shot starts the whole flock; off they fly, ramble overhead for a great distance ere they again alight. This rambling is caused by the scarcity of berries. This is the same bird of which three specimens were sent to me by
William Oakes of Ipswich, Mass. The
iceberg has been broken into thousands of pieces by the gale.

August 4
. Still raining as steadily as ever; the morning was calm and on shore the
mosquitoes were shockingly bad, though the thermometer indicates only 49°. I have been drawing at the Esquimaux Curlew; I find them difficult birds to represent. The young men went on shore and brought me four more; every one of the lads observed today the great tendency these birds have in squatting to elude the eye, to turn the tail towards their pursuer and to lay the head flat. This habit is common to many of the
Sandpipers
and some of the Plovers. This species of Curlew, the smallest I ever saw, feeds on the berries it procures with a rapidity equaled only by that of the Passenger Pigeon; in an instant all the ripe berries on the plant are plucked and swallowed, and the whole country is cleared of these berries as our Western woods are of the mast. In their evolutions they resemble Pigeons also, sweeping over the ground, cutting backward and forward in the most interesting manner, and now and then poising in the air like a Hawk in sight of quarry. There is scarcely any difference in the appearance of the adult and the young. The
Shore Lark of this season has now made such progress in its growth that the first molting is so forward that the small wing coverts and secondaries are already come and have assumed the beautiful rosy tints of the adults in patches at these parts; a most interesting state of their plumage, probably never seen by any naturalist before.

It is quite surprising to see how quickly the growth is attained of every living thing in this country, either animal or vegetable. In six weeks I have seen the eggs laid, the birds hatched, their first molt half over, their association in flocks and preparations begun for their leaving the country. That the Creator should have commanded millions of delicate, diminutive, tender creatures to cross immense spaces of country to all appearance a thousand times more congenial to them than this, to cause them to people, as it were, this desolate land for a time, to enliven it by the songs of the sweet feathered musicians for two months at most, and by the same command induce them to abandon it almost suddenly, is as wonderful as it is beautiful. The fruits are now ripe, yet six weeks ago the whole country was a sheet of snow, the bays locked in ice, the air a constant storm. Now the grass is rich in growth, at every step flowers are met with, insects fill the air, the snow banks are melting; now and then an appearance as of summer does exist, but in thirty days all is over; the dark northern clouds will enwrap the mountain summits; the rivulets, the ponds, the rivers, the bays themselves will begin to freeze; heavy snowfalls will cover all these shores and nature will resume her sleeping state, nay, more than that, one of desolation and death. Wonderful! Wonderful! But this marvelous country must be left to an abler pen than mine to describe.

The
Rock
Sandpiper and
Least Sandpiper were both shot in numbers this day; the young are now as large as the old and we see little flocks everywhere. We heard the
Gulnare
was at
Bonne Espérance, twenty miles west of us; I wish she was here, I should much like to see her officers again.

August 5
. This has been a fine day, no hurricane. I have finished two
Labrador Curlews, but not the ground. A few Curlews were shot and a
Black-breasted Plover. John shot a
Shore Lark that had almost completed its molt; it appears to me that northern birds come to maturity sooner than southern ones, yet the reverse is the case in our own species. Sandpipers are constantly passing over our heads in small bodies bound westward, some of the same species which I observed in the Floridas in October. The
migration of birds is perhaps much more wonderful than that of fishes, almost all of which go feeling their way along the shores and return to the very same river, creek or even hole to deposit their spawn, as birds do to their former nest; but the latter do not
feel
their way, but launching high in air go at once, and correctly too, across vast tracts of country, yet at once stopping in portions heretofore their own, and of which they know by previous experiences the comforts and advantages. We have had several arrivals of vessels, some so heavily loaded with fish that the water runs over their decks; others, in ballast, have come to purchase fish.

August 10
. I now sit down to post my poor book while a heavy gale is raging furiously around our vessel. My reason for not writing at night is that I have been drawing so constantly, often seventeen hours a day, that the weariness of my body at night has been unprecedented, by such work at least. At times I felt as if my physical powers would abandon me; my neck, my shoulders, and, more than all, my fingers, were almost useless through actual fatigue at drawing. Who would believe this? Yet nothing is more true. When at the return of dawn my spirits called me out of my berth, my body seemed to beg my mind to suffer it to rest a while longer; and as dark forced me to lay aside my brushes I immediately went to rest as if I had walked sixty-five miles that day, as I have done
a few times
in my stronger days. Yesternight when I rose from my little seat to contemplate my work and to judge of the effect of it compared with the nature which I had been attempting to
copy, it was the affair of a moment; and instead of waiting as I always like to do until that hazy darkness which is to me the best time to judge of the strength of light and shade, I went at once to rest as if delivered from the heaviest task I ever performed. The young men think my fatigue is added to by the fact that I often work in wet clothes, but I have done that all my life with no ill effects. No! no! it is that I am no longer young. But I thank God that I did accomplish my task; my drawings are finished to the best of my ability, the skins well prepared by John.

We have been to
Paroket Island to procure the young of the
Common Puffin. As we approached the breeding place the air was filled with these birds and the water around absolutely covered with them, while on the rocks were thousands, like sentinels on the watch. I took a stand, loaded and shot twenty-seven times and killed twenty-seven birds, singly and on the wing, without missing a shot; as friend Bachman would say, “Pretty fair, Old Jostle!” The young men laughed and said the birds were so thick no one could miss if he tried; however, none of them did so well. We had more than we wanted, but the young were all too small to draw with effect. Nearly every bird I killed had a fish in its beak, closely held by the head and the body dangling obliquely in the air. These fish were all of the kind called here
Lints
, a long, slender fish now in shoals of millions. How many must the multitude of Puffins inhabiting this island destroy daily? Whilst flying they all issue a rough croak, but none dropped the fish nor indeed did they let it go when brought to the earth. The
Black-backed Gulls have now almost all gone south with their young; indeed, very few Gulls of any sort are now to be seen. Whilst on the island we saw a
Hawk pounce on a Puffin and carry it off.
Curlews have increased in numbers, but during two fair days we had they could not be approached; indeed, they appear to be so intent on their passage south that whenever the weather permits they are seen to strike high in the air across the harbor.

The gale is so severe that our anchors have dragged forty or fifty yards, but by letting out still more chain we are now safe. It blows and rains so hard that it is impossible to stand in the bow of our vessel. But this is not all—who,
now
, will deny the existence of the
Labrador Falcon? Yes, my Lucy, one more new species is on
the list of
The Birds of America
, and may we have the comfort of seeing its beautiful figure multiplied by Havell’s engraver. This bird (both male and female) was shot by John whilst on an excursion with all our party, and on the 6th inst., when I sat till after twelve o’clock that night to outline one of them to save daylight the next day to color it as I have done hundreds of times before. John shot them on the wing, whilst they were in company with their two young ones. The birds, one would be tempted to believe, had never seen a man before, for these affectionate parents dashed towards the gunners with fierce velocity, and almost instantly died from the effects of two well-directed shots. All efforts to procure the young birds were ineffectual; they were full grown, and as well as could be seen, exactly resembled the dead ones. The whole group flew much like the Peregrine Falcon, which indeed resembles them much in form, but neither in size nor color. Sometimes they hover almost high in air like a small Sparrow Hawk when watching some object fit for prey on the ground, and now and then cry much like the latter, but louder in proportion with the difference of size in the two species. Several times they alighted on stakes in the sandbar at the entrance of Bras d’Or River and stood not as Hawks generally do, uprightly, but horizontally and much like a Jager or a Tern. Beneath their nest we found the remains of
Razor-billed Auks,
Foolish Guillemots and
Common Puffins, all of which are within their reach on an island here called
Paroket Island—also the remains of
Curlews and
Ptarmigans. The nest was so situated that it could not be reached, only seen into. Both birds were brought to me in excellent order. No more is known of this bird, I believe.