Ouessant

In September 1913 Collingwood crossed the Channel once again, to spend eight days on the Isle of Ouessant at the entrance to the English Channel from the Atlantic on the western fringe of France. The island is an important staging post for migrant birds and Collingwood was especially interested in those killed at the Creach Lighthouse. Apart from enjoying the birds, he was charmed by the Ouessant girls in traditional dress.

Lampaul  (Ile d’Ouessant), 20 September 1913
The first thing to strike one is the singular mode that the women have of having wearing their hair down their backs, old and young alike : showing their locks to full advantage. Not a few appear to have been blessed with prettily wavy hair and when this hangs under a dainty lace bonnet and around a chubby wind-coloured face, the effect is charmingly picturesque. …….

……These conservative folk always dress in black, the only touch of colour being a kind of revere where the bodice overlaps, and is pinned in, never buttoned, across the chest. This practice of using large headed pins is another quaint custom that seems to be peculiar to this western extremity of France. The shawls are often embroidered with black silk. The women have a swinging, masculine walk that carries them over the country with that peculiar air that stamps the agriculturalist – a gait that always betokens work in the fields where it pays to swing ones beclodded feet, once you have succeeded in lifting them, as far as can be.

22 September 1913

……  After lunch, together with two telegraphists ^[1] we paid a visit to Keller Island, which is separated from Ushant by a narrow strait barely 200 yards wide. This island belongs to a certain Madame Gaches – a veritable ogress by reputation who stoutly refuses all admission to her territory. Luckily she had left for the ‘continent’ (as they call France) some days before, as could be seen by the shuttered windows of her bleak château, a dingy building perched like a lighthouse on the crown of the island. I was anxious to visit Keller as my friends in the hotel spoke of it with bated breath as being the haunt of countless hordes of seabirds and the place where we would find the wonderful ‘parraquet de mer’ a bird ‘exactly like a real parraquet only with webbed feet. I did not of course hope to find the puffins still at home but I expected to see some sign of these ‘countless hordes’. The bold cliffs and soft ‘thrifty’ turf that surmounted them were absolutely lifeless, though certainly not out to sea where a large flock of (common?) terns were playing havoc with a shoal of fish, and above them floated a few stately gannets while occasionally a cormorant and a herring gull passed athwart the glistening ocean that spread out like a carpet at our feet.

   Suddenly we turned a corner to find ourselves in the arms of our enemy. Three men were busy rabbiting and one of them proved to be Madame’s Guardian, whom, we had been told, was safely on the mainland.  How dare we land? Who had granted us permission. The fellow was white with indignation at the enormity of our offence – when, lo! out popped a rabbit. His excitement instantly obliterated his wrath. ‘Tirez-donc, tirez-donc’ he yelled, but Mr Bunny, taking advantage of the diversion, had by this time made good his escape. An hour later we were cracking open a bottle of Madame’s wine in her sacred château.

26 September 1913
...... The lighthouse keepers had a fine harvest for me, many poor birds having been lured to their doom in the thick, damp atmosphere of last night. The following is a list of the birds examined :- 4 wheatears (one very large, one very small), 1 firecrest, 1 robin, 2 lesser whitethroats, 4 sedge warblers, 1 great reed warbler (the keeper said this was a rare bird at the light), 1 grasshopper warbler, 2 white wagtails, 1 pied flycatcher, 2 turtle doves, 1 jack snipe, 2 water rails (these birds strike rather frequently according to the keeper) 1 stormy petrel, 1 great shearwater (this bird apparently very rarely strikes the light, Manx shearwater often do so in the summer months)

   It will thus be seen that no fewer than fifteen species were killed last night, but not an extraordinary number of individuals. I think Eagle Clarke must have been misinformed when he was told that 8,000 perished in a single night. Today one of the lighthouse-men spoke of 400 as being an extraordinary number in a single night and this fellow had been at Creach for 30 years.

   Some of the sedge warblers were almost bursting with fat. This, I suppose, is a provision of Nature to enable the birds to traverse long distances without having to take nourishment. None of the birds I skinned had the smallest particle of food in its stomach and I believe this to be invariably the case with migrants killed at the light.

   Several species are of interest. What was the firecrest (and great reed and grasshopper warblers) doing in Ushant. No part of the formers’ breeding area lies to the north of this island, so Ushant must obviously be very wide of a direct line to their winter quarters. In fact it lies west, perhaps even NW of their summer homes. Why do they take two sides of the triangle? This is difficult, nay impossible, to answer.

   Among the wheatears was a veritable giant, S. o. leucorhoa the Greenland form, with a wing measuring 110mm, tarsi 30.5mm male, while there was also a remarkably small specimen with wings only 95mm, tarsi 28mm. This is doubtless, by its dull plumage, a bird of the year, female by dissection.