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Volume CXXXIII, Number 6 |
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Birds of Greenland studied by crew
KATHRYN OSTROFSKY
COLUMNIST
As the Nautilus approached its expected destination-the settlement of Sukertoppen-the long smooth leaves of Laminaria seaweed, strewn about by the recent storm, peppered the now placid sea surface.
The crewmen of the schooner were excited at the prospect of finally landing, but alas, they could not locate their destination-they had not landed anywhere near the small town of Sukertoppen. They decided to take advantage of the favorable weather to land wherever they could, so they dropped anchor in a suitable harbor.
They named their landing point "Nautilus Harbor." Although they did not expect it to be entered that way on the official charts, the writer of the Williams Quarterly account joked that cartographers should "be thankful for names for the multitudes of harbors and islands on the coast-the latter so numerous, that on a common chart it seems only necessary to draw the coast line and fill a wide space of the water side with an unlimited number of black dots."
Dropping anchor finally, the crew stepped ashore to begin eight days of scientific research in the arctic climate of Greenland. Although the men saw plenty of their "old enemies," the mosquitoes, who they deemed "more active and blood-thirsty if possible than the swarms of Labrador," they came upon no native Greenlanders. Tools, signs of old camps, and remains of the dead indicated that Esquimeaux (the people who today are called Inuit) once frequented the site, but none were there for the party to meet.
Although they thought this unfortunate at the time, later they were grateful for the solitude: "For having no natives to trouble us or take up our attention, nothing was thought of but work."
Their method centered around collecting as many specimens as possible, without regard to the ecosystem disruption that this would cause. "Nests and eggs were brought in by the pailful." Every interesting stone was "hammered." The men shot or captured and poisoned as many birds as they could. Birds, dead and alive, lay everywhere waiting to be poisoned or skinned, "regardless of clothes and olfactory nerves" of the crew. The men mingled fun with their hard work by racing gulls, watching as "two awkward Burgomasters adorned with paper collars" waddled across the deck of the Nautilus.
A naturalist of today might be appalled at some of the techniques the men employed for this work, characterizing the acts as embodying the cavalier attitude of these men toward preservation and protection of the ecosystems they studied. However, note that they lived in a time and place that had seen only abundance of natural resources and not yet the fragility of the natural world in the hands of men.
Instead of passing quick judgment on the intentions of these young scientists, look at the changes in attitude toward the environment from the time of this expedition and the bison hunters in the American West, to the beginning of preservation in the era of Theodore Roosevelt, to today's popular perception of an irreparable dichotomy between the interests of environment and industry and the beginning of innovations to bring the two together.
The author of the 1860 Williams Quarterly article likened the large flock of terns them to men in an eerie metaphor anticipating the bloodshed soon to come back home in the U.S.
Settling on small islands and isolated rocks, the terns filled the air "like swarms of flies as they flitted to and fro," protecting and caring for their young. The small shore birds not only form communities for breeding purposes, but "they make common cause against any enemy. So swift are their motions, so sharp their bills and vicious their tempers," that they are largely successful. If one of their population is attacked, the whole flock attacks the intruder.
When these little winged creatures fly in so dense a flock, the men noticed, "it is easy to shoot as many as you please, for no sooner does the deadly shot bring one fluttering to the ground than flocks of others poise themselves above him-not heeding the warning, but rushing into the same danger through fatal curiosity."
A possible insight into this academic's views on Bloody Kansas, he thinks the birds' behavior are "no bad illustration of the recklessness and folly of men rushing to places where others are daily falling."
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