The Bird Watcher in the Shetlands/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
METEMPSYCHOSIS
OH, if there is really a metempsychosis, has not the soul of Bardolph gone into an oyster-catcher, or at least has not his nose, which was his soul—Shakespeare, at any rate, has made it the most immortal part of him—gone into an oyster-catcher's bill? I believe it has, and it burns there, now, just as brightly, with nothing but the salt sea to drink. It is that bill, that wonderful bill, which makes the oyster-catcher a handsome bird. The ruby eye, the pale pink legs, and the gaily-chequered plumage, all help; but they are but adjuncts, and by themselves would work but small effect. This is well seen when the bird, having before been running actively about on the foreshore, becomes, all at once, oppressed with somnolence, stands still, turns its head over its shoulder, and thrusts its long, fierce, fiery tube amidst the plumage of the back. The transition from something showy to something plain, from brilliancy to mediocrity, is then quite remarkable; and equally so is it the other way when, for some imperative purpose, or in a wakeful moment, the red ray flashes out again. Every now and again come these swift conflagrations, and, between them, the bird stands like a little lighthouse, in the intervals between the flashes of the revolving light.
Oyster-catchers—or sea-pies, to give them their old name, which is a very much better one—seem somewhat sleepy birds, unless it be that in the Shetlands birds sleep more in the daytime and less at night than farther south. Sleep, I think, it may be called, taking the attitude and the complete quiescence into consideration. Yet the red eye is always open, seeming—for you see but one—to wake singly, keeping guard over the rest of the slumbering commonwealth to which it belongs. But there is another eye, and that, no doubt, is open too. A pair of these quaint birds will often rest thus, side by side, upon the rocks, and another, seeing them as he comes flying along the dividing-line of shore and sea, will wheel inwards, and, settling beside them, be a lotus-eater too.