Nature as food

Despite the quantities of beef, chicken and lamb consumed by this nation’s inhabitants I still detect some squeamishness around the subject of eating nature. Traditional quarry species, like rabbit and hare, don’t evoke much response but mention eating something else and the reaction can be rather different.

It’s an interesting subject and one that raises questions about how we view animals and define food. This was brought home to me the other weekend through a conversation I had with Donald S. Murray; the ‘S.’ is important because Donald was raised in the small community of Ness on the Isle of Lewis, a community with a long tradition of eating nature. Donald has written and spoken widely on the men of Lewis who, every year, take a harvest of fully-grown gannet chicks from Sulasgeir, a remote rock that lies far out into the Atlantic. The young gannets are known as ‘guga’ and 2,000 are harvested annually by a team of 10 men. They are butchered on the island, the feathers plucked, then the skins singed with fire to remove the stubble before being quartered, salted and pickled for the table.

Donald’s description of the meat, in terms of its texture, taste and smell, left me wondering how anyone could stomach it, but it did serve to underline how important this oily bounty was to the remote communities living on our western fringes. Such was its value that the men of these communities braved difficult seas and treacherous rocky outcrops to harvest the guga. That the hunt has continued has led some to question its validity, arguing that the tradition – for that is what it now is – has little place in a world of freezers, supermarkets and microwave meals. But I’d argue differently. Here is a community in touch with its food, a community actually involved in the harvesting and with some of its men folk risking their lives in the process. The gannet chicks may have had a short life but it has been a natural one; the guga hunters look after the colony, removing plastic rubbish collected by the birds, and maintain a sustainable harvest. The gannets are unquestionably ‘nature’ and the better for it. Maybe it is how we view domesticated stock that is the more unpalatable question?

A trip to see Gannets

It is the smell that you notice first as you approach the seabird colony at Bempton in North Humberside. Walking down through the traditionally managed meadows, there is little other sign of the impressive limestone cliffs that hold this stretch of coast high above the sea. These cliffs are home to many thousands of nesting seabirds, from Kittiwakes and auks through to the Gannets we have come to see. The cliff-top path follows the line of the coast and every so often it becomes a promontory, affording views of the cliff itself as it folds back into the mass of land. Such viewpoints provide a wonderful opportunity to observe the nesting seabirds, some just a few feet away, perched precariously on the narrow ledges. Others glide past at head height, wings rigid as they effortlessly slide in and across the prevailing wind before dropping down to the ledge on which their nest is placed.

Many of the early nesters have finished breeding and just a handful of nesting auks remain, the rest now at sea with their young. The colony is dominated by Kittiwakes and Gannets and the air is full of their calls, especially the onomatopoeic ‘kitti-wake, kitti-wake’ call of the slender Kittiwakes. The Gannets are less vocal, perhaps because this is a low density colony for them – the narrow ledges, interspersed with sections unsuitable for nesting, limit where the Gannets can nest and so you do not get the densely packed colony structure more typical elsewhere. Bempton is also unusual for the fact that it is Britain’s only mainland Gannet colony and one of just three located on our east coast. The colony itself was founded in the 1920s, most probably by birds dispersing from the Bass Rock colony which lies to the north. For decades, just a handful of pairs nested at Bempton but then, in the 1970s, the colony suddenly started to increase in size; by the mid-1980s it had reached 780 pairs and by the mid-90s it had reached 1,631 pairs. The most recent census, carried out in 2000, numbered the colony at 2,552 pairs. The sudden growth in the colony also brought with it other changes, namely an earlier onset to breeding and increased breeding success, both thought to be the result of the increased social stimulation that comes from having more birds within the colony.

How this breeding colony will fair over the coming years is less certain and will very much depend on the availability of nesting ledges and the abundance of fish stocks in the North Sea, with overfishing and climate change worrying factors that may yet have a part to play in the future of Bempton’s Gannets.

Riding out the storm

The onshore gales that are a feature of October bring with them birds more often encountered on the open ocean. If you are brave enough, and well prepared with several layers of windproof clothing, then you can spend a profitable morning seawatching, scanning the horizon for passing birds with your telescope. Many remain distant and difficult to identify as they are repeatedly picked-up and then lost from view, rising and falling in flight to dip below the crests of growing waves. In amongst the more commonly encountered species may be scarce birds like Great and Sooty Shearwaters; it is for these birds that many seawatchers brave the elements, hunkered down out of the worst of the wind.

However, for me it is the more common Gannets that tend to catch my eye. These striking birds, with their dazzling white adult plumage and black-tipped wings, have always fascinated me. I have been fortunate enough to see them on one of their breeding islands and to marvel at their two metre wingspans close-up. The breeding colonies themselves are boisterous affairs, as neighbouring pairs squabble, and the associated noise gives rise to the feeling that you are in the middle of a troublesome football crowd. Grounded, Gannets are somewhat ungainly but when on the wing they exude the grace and power of a heavyweight plunge diver.

Many of the Gannets passing east along the North Norfolk coast in autumn are young birds, fledged from one of our northern breeding colonies and now following the impulse to migrate south. Gannet chicks invariably leave the nest carrying extra fat reserves and so, having made the first short flight down from their island colonies, they land on the sea and find themselves too heavy to take off again. As such, their journey south begins with the bird swimming. Once some of the fat reserves have been used up, the youngster is able to take to the wing and begin its journey proper, passing down either the Atlantic or North Sea coasts and into the Bay of Biscay. These young birds show the strongest migratory urge and many migrate as far south as Senegal or beyond. Although Gannets typically do not breed until their fifth or sixth year, many do return at least some distance north the following spring. In fact, as the birds get older more of them return to the breeding colony, such that by the fourth year many males will set up a small nest site and attempt to recruit a mate. The Gannets that are passing our shores now are a mixture of ages (and plumages) and well-worth seeing. While you may see one on a still day, it is the rough ones that boost the numbers passing close inshore.