Children Stories - The Mother Murre

Informational Site Network

Privacy

Featured Stories

The Little Robber Girl
The Boy Who Cried Wolf

The Mother Murre

from Good Stories For Great Holidays - BIRD DAY

BY DALLAS LORE SHARP

One of the most striking cases of mother-love which has ever come under
my observation, I saw in the summer of 1912 on the bird rookeries of the
Three-Arch Rocks Reservation off the coast of Oregon.

We were making our slow way toward the top of the outer rock. Through
rookery after rookery of birds, we climbed until we reached the edge of
the summit. Scrambling over this edge, we found ourselves in the midst
of a great colony of nesting murres--hundreds of them--covering this
steep rocky part of the top.

As our heads appeared above the rim, many of the colony took wing and
whirred over us out to sea, but most of them sat close, each bird upon
its egg or over its chick, loath to leave, and so expose to us the
hidden treasure.

The top of the rock was somewhat cone-shaped, and in order to reach the
peak and the colonies on the west side we had to make our way through
this rookery of the murres. The first step among them, and the whole
colony was gone, with a rush of wings and feet that sent several of the
top-shaped eggs rolling, and several of the young birds toppling over
the cliff to the pounding waves and ledges far below.

We stopped, but the colony, almost to a bird, had bolted, leaving scores
of eggs, and scores of downy young squealing and running together for
shelter, like so many beetles under a lifted board.

But the birds had not every one bolted, for here sat two of the colony
among the broken rocks. These two had not been frightened off. That both
of them were greatly alarmed, any one could see from their open beaks,
their rolling eyes, their tense bodies on tiptoe for flight. Yet here
they sat, their wings out like props, or more like gripping hands, as if
they were trying to hold themselves down to the rocks against their wild
desire to fly.

And so they were, in truth, for under their extended wings I saw little
black feet moving. Those two mother murres were not going to forsake
their babies! No, not even for these approaching monsters, such as they
had never before seen, clambering over their rocks.

What was different about these two? They had their young ones to
protect. Yes, but so had every bird in the great colony its young one,
or its egg, to protect, yet all the others had gone. Did these two
have more mother-love than the others? And hence, more courage, more
intelligence?

We took another step toward them, and one of the two birds sprang into
the air, knocking her baby over and over with the stroke of her wing,
and coming within an inch of hurling it across the rim to be battered
on the ledges below. The other bird raised her wings to follow, then
clapped them back over her baby. Fear is the most contagious thing in
the world; and that flap of fear by the other bird thrilled her, too,
but as she had withstood the stampede of the colony, so she caught
herself again and held on.

She was now alone on the bare top of the rock, with ten thousand
circling birds screaming to her in the air above, and with two men
creeping up to her with a big black camera that clicked ominously. She
let the multitude scream, and with threatening beak watched the two men
come on. A motherless baby, spying her, ran down the rock squealing
for his life. She spread a wing, put her bill behind him and shoved him
quickly in out of sight with her own baby. The man with the camera saw
the act, for I heard his machine click, and I heard him say something
under his breath that you would hardly expect a mere man and a
game-warden to say. But most men have a good deal of the mother in them;
and the old bird had acted with such decision, such courage, such swift,
compelling instinct, that any man, short of the wildest savage, would
have felt his heart quicken at the sight.

"Just how compelling might that mother-instinct be?" I wondered. "Just
how much would that mother-love stand?" I had dropped to my knees, and
on all fours had crept up within about three feet of the bird. She still
had chance for flight. Would she allow me to crawl any nearer? Slowly,
very slowly, I stretched forward on my hands, like a measuring-worm,
until my body lay flat on the rocks, and my fingers were within three
INCHES of her. But her wings were twitching, a wild light danced in her
eyes, and her head turned toward the sea.

For a whole minute I did not stir. I was watching--and the wings again
began to tighten about the babies, the wild light in the eyes died down,
the long, sharp beak turned once more toward me.

Then slowly, very slowly, I raised my hand, touched her feathers with
the tip of one finger--with two fingers--with my whole hand, while the
loud camera click-clacked, click-clacked hardly four feet away!

It was a thrilling moment. I was not killing anything. I had no
long-range rifle in my hands, coming up against the wind toward an
unsuspecting creature hundreds of yards away. This was no wounded
leopard charging me; no mother-bear defending with her giant might a
captured cub. It was only a mother-bird, the size of a wild duck,
with swift wings at her command, hiding under those wings her own and
another's young, and her own boundless fear!

For the second time in my life I had taken captive with my bare hands a
free wild bird. No, I had not taken her captive. She had made herself a
captive; she had taken herself in the strong net of her mother-love.

And now her terror seemed quite gone. At the first touch of my hand I
think she felt the love restraining it, and without fear or fret she let
me reach under her and pull out the babies. But she reached after them
with her bill to tuck them back out of sight, and when I did not let
them go, she sidled toward me, quacking softly, a language that I
perfectly understood, and was quick to respond to. I gave them back,
fuzzy and black and white. She got them under her, stood up over them,
pushed her wings down hard around them, her stout tail down hard behind
them, and together with them pushed in an abandoned egg that was
close at hand. Her own baby, some one else's baby, and some one else's
forsaken egg! She could cover no more; she had not feathers enough. But
she had heart enough; and into her mother's heart she had already tucked
every motherless egg and nestling of the thousands of frightened birds,
screaming and wheeling in the air high over her head.

Next: The Palace Of The Eagles
Previous: The Pride Of The Regiment

Report
Privacy

SHARE

BOOKMARK

Viewed: 681

Featured Stories

Categories

The Mother Murre