The Comforting Call Of The Sentinel

Before she knew it, Marga the Gannet of Lundy Island was covered with a beautiful soft downy coat. By the time she was nine weeks old the down had vanished and her real feathers had begun to grow, first on her tail, then on wings and body. For a while she was slaty-black, then her head and neck and breast grew white, and bit-by-bit the white spread down over her wings. In the meantime Marga had plucked up enough courage in her weak and wobbly little legs to paddle about on her webbed feet for a short distance up and down the rock. Her first experience with the unsympathetic world came while she thus innocently waddled in the sunshine.

Suddenly and violently a pecking beak attacked her head and she met the angry face of another youngster, just a little older than she. Marga drew away squawking and got hurriedly back to her nest. The next time she went adventuring she met the same youngster, a young male bully, and this time she did not wait to be attacked but flew upon her enemy and took him by the nape of the neck and shook him till he howled for mercy. She set him down and would have walked on, but the little wretch whom she had chastised wedged himself between her and the wall of the cliff. For a split second it seemed he would succeed in pushing her off the cliff to her death. But Marga got back to safety just in time.

After that she went walking in the other direction where her aunt and uncle had their nest and let her paddle about their home and play with Jan, their own nestling. Jan was a male, too, but he did not tease her, and sometimes he came over to Marga's nest and they bit each other's little black beaks. That was the way Jan and Marga played, and as yet their parents considered them too young to be taught anything or to do anything but play. There were moments too, when the Awful Feeling hit the pit of Marga's stomach and sometimes made her so sick she vomited up a nice little lunch of anchovies.

She saw the old gannets, even her father and mother who were so strong and brave, doing the same thing when the Awful Feeling hit them. Oftenest the Awful Feeling, which was really the only name Marga knew for fear, hit the whole colony of birds at the same moment. Generally it came in this way: Marga would be blinking in the sun, happy and safe, listening to the soft, froglike sound of the sentinel bird who continually croaked out a comforting "grog-grog, grog-grog," that said "All's well, all's well."

By: davidbunch

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