If it seems obvious to say that the point of travel is to leave one’s familiar world for one that is different and new and hopefully enlightening in some way, is it farfetched to claim that hope for a peak or even religious experience lurks somewhere in most travelers’ dreams? I am not talking about hearing the voice of God on a mountaintop or discovering the meaning of life on a vision quest (though those would qualify and if that happened to you what was it like?) so much as something like seeing the Mona Lisa at the Louvre or contemplating the vast ruins at Angkor Wat or hearing a pack of wolves howling on a ridge as the full moon rises in Yellowstone, something extraordinary that triggers an unexpected and deep reaction of the heart and mind, and along with that the belief you’ve reached some new understanding about what is true and fine about the world or maybe even the universe. It might be some truth that in the end is yours alone but in these matters that’s enough.
The person planning that trip to Paris or Cambodia or Wyoming hopes it will happen, which brings with it the danger of having expectations, but the possibility is always there and it is always part of the plan. Such was the case on this trip with the seabird rookery that awaited us on Hornøya Island, nature at its spectacular best, the scope of which no National Geographic TV special could truly convey but which had to be experienced first hand, and who knows what reactions that would trigger? It was set up to be the grand finale of this trip and it was about to happen.
In some ways we’re longtime seabird-rookery buffs, have sat spellbound in blinds on Machias Seal Island in the Gulf of Maine while birds waddled about right in front of us and above our heads on the roof, also once survived a rather violent 30 mile trip on a boat that was too small in seas that were far too rough, just to cruise around the Farallons west of San Francisco. We’ve aspirations to get to Bonaventure Island in Gaspé, Quebec, but this trip gifted us with Hornøya up above the Arctic Circle, where we’d not view them from a distance or while stuck in a blind but would walk around in the middle of the fray, getting up close and personal with whatever was out there, while carefully watching where we stepped.
So what kind of seabird? It could be a gull or a gannet or even an albatross or any bird that, as the name describes, rarely or never comes to land except to breed, and then usually with many or many many of its own kind; thus far in our experience this tended to be an alcid. Alcids are northern birds and resemble penguins, which are southern birds, and besides not having geography in common, alcids fly and penguins can’t, and penguins tend to be bigger. Other than those things these birds are all “pursuit divers”, which means their wings function best underwater (alcids are inefficient fliers), and they’re all smooth and shiny and elegantly attired in various striking black and white patterns and oh yes, they all walk upright (!) just like us (!) Alcids don’t walk so much as they waddle awkwardly, and this characteristic is one of several that make them the cutest darn things, ever, and one of their members, the puffin, may be the cutest bird in the entire avian world, to the point of excess. The bizarrely colored and shaped bill is definitely a factor; another alcid, the razorbill, fails miserably in this category if you’re considering “cute”.
It is no secret that puffins are far and away the poster-child for this species, in fact many a poster in preschool classrooms around the world probably has a puffin in there, somewhere. Other alcids include several varieties of murres and guillemots and auklets and even more than those, many of which were not nesting on Hornøya Island and which will not be mentioned here. They are all smallish birds and it is of interest to note that the largest alcid, the great auk, had the unfortunate distinction of being the only one unable to fly, just like those penguins. Whereas penguins benefit from largely inhabiting a harsh environment most uninviting to humans, the great auk unfortunately lived in the far north where homo sapiens found ways to hunt and survive, and this dictated an early demise for the bird, clubbed and speared until they were no more by the mid 19th century. Sic transit gloria aves, or something like that.
Alcids are seen from a few spots offshore in Massachusetts throughout the year, usually in small numbers. There are always more birds in the winter and the “best” days happen during the most miserable “nor’easter” coastal storms imaginable. One usually sits in the car with the heat on and stares out the window to see what one can find flying far off between the wave tops. We tried this once and soon had our fill, only getting an occasional very brief obscured view and did I mention that alcids are pretty small? I have nothing but admiration for those who enjoy that sort of thing, same as with the hawk watch people who can stare at tiny dots in the distance (and identify them with great precision, so they claim) hours at a time, and did I mention that there are many birders much more dedicated and fanatical than ourselves?
Ah, but this time, the looks were going to be as good as it gets, and the weather evidently not the usual rain or drizzle with howling winds but sunny and pleasant, or so it appeared as we boarded the small open harbor ferry for the all-of-fifteen-minute ride across the harbor out to the island.
Words can only do so much to capture the experience, for which the pictures are far more suggestive of what it was like. Let’s just say that as we approached the island, the shrieks of countless seabirds flying and floating about when they were not perched wing-to-wing on every rock and in every crevasse and on every little bit of greenery was, if not exactly deafening, wicked loud as we might say in Boston. After walking around and getting accustomed to it the thought struck me that it might make a nice meditation or relaxation-recording, like those whale songs and waves-crashing-on-a-beach sounds that people use to help them zone out, though of course it might not have broad appeal and you’d definitely want to play it at low volume unless you wished for authenticity over comfort.
The specific mix of birds included a majority that were common murres (aka common guillemot to the Euro crowd) with a few less of the thick-billed variety (aka Brünnich’s guillemot, to continue the confusion) and even sparser numbers of Atlantic puffins and razorbills. There were also substantial numbers of shags, a kind of compact cormorant, that are not alcids and are all black, making them reminiscent of a priest or an undertaker and not cute at all. Of course, the puffins seemed to generate the biggest thrill for most in our group, such is the uncanny emotional hold this species seems to have on birders and non-birders alike. Of course, such is the case if cuteness and visual delightedness are your only criteria, or maybe if you’re just a big kid at heart. At this point I’d like to direct you to the photos of common murre/guillemots, specifically the ones that show birds marked with what look like eyeglasses that strike me as either professorial or even stylish, like an Italian film director might wear. These are denoted as the “bridled variety” in the field guide, and it presents a look I find far more appealing than the clownish extroverted puffin, but then it’s all a matter of taste, isn’t it? If I taught kindergarten you can bet there’d be posters of those birds up there with the puffins, or maybe there would be no puffins at all, at least until parents complained.
Besides the spectacle of the many breeders, the island offered a semi-challenging trail among the rocks that then led up the hill to a lighthouse and a spectacular view of everything around. It was while up there – taking in all that was happening on this island in this moment, with its resounding testimony to all that is rich and grand and prolific and downright fecund at times in the natural world (if only for this brief moment of summer before the long and bitterly cold winter of the Arctic returns all too soon) – that I looked across to that other island, Vardø, with its strange and somewhat derelict town and the radomes and antennae atop everything, a place you reach through a wormhole-tunnel. And the starkness of the contrast between these two islands was breathtaking, at least in the moment. Here’s one world that has endured for millennia, with homo sapiens a part of it but only as a very recent (and sometimes downright rude) guest to the party, and then right there lay that other, with its in-your-face symbols of Cold War nation-state conflict, a kind of human behavior that has been our stock-in-trade since we got organized and became what we have long proudly called “civilization”. And how in one way or another we might just bring it all tumbling down sooner or later, dragging a lot of other species along with us. Of course we’ve been doing that bit-by-bit already for quite some time now, among them the great auk and I am sure you could name a few others and the process is unending.
To put it another way: you are a worldly and learned person, and surely you’ve heard the line “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players”, and of course you know those words are from the comedy As You Like It by the great William Shakespeare himself. Far be it for someone of the humble likes of me to feebly attempt to improve upon the legendary wisdom of the Bard of Avon, but standing there on Hornøya Island, I was struck by the visible presence of not one but two grand stages that grace this world: there was the stage whose presence was all around me, one whose players included the human variety but one upon which our species was vastly outnumbered by the nesting flying screeching breeding creatures that dominated the place, and who represented one aspect of what some call Terra and others Mother Earth and others Gaia and your culture might refer to it in another way but you know what I mean. And there on that other island was all the typical evidence of the human stage of men and women and their passions and follies which gave a well known British playwright so much rich material 400 years ago. One is secondary to the other and one will prevail over the other in the long run more than likely – or so I see it and such is the general order of the universe – and I will not tell you which is which, or if any “final outcome” if there eventually is one will be tragic or comic. You can decide that for yourself.
If this sounds all too gloomy, let me assure you that sadness and anger were part of it, but it was hardly just that. None of these thoughts were new ones. Call it more of a realization and getting clearer on a perspective, and it was more humbling and simply thoughtful than this all sounds. And it happened in the moment there atop Hornøya Island, and there hadn’t been a hint of anything like this in the itinerary. “Religious” might describe it, but then again maybe not. At any rate, the whole day was satisfying in a way for which words cannot do justice. And the trip was not quite over but damn! it had been quite a trip so far; just look at the pictures. Puffins!
