A cutting from a Geneva newspaper tells of the pride of the head of the bird centre at Genthod, not far away, when he was able to release two storm petrels, birds not normally found in his country, but blown there by the terrible gales of Christmas. They were released into the Camargue on the French Mediterranean coast. The birds had been found on the Geneva lake - miserable little balls of black feathers, touched with white, completely exhausted after being blown about a thousand kilometres by the storms reaching, "the cutting says, 60 to 180 km an hour".
These tiny birds, hardly bigger than a sparrow are, pelagic, that is, they live on the oceans, hundreds of kilometres from the shore and come to land - especially on islands - only to breed. So they sleep on the ocean, in the hollows of waves, living on plankton, small fish, jellyfish and anything that might fall from fishing boats. In all, 23 of these birds were picked up at Genthod, most of which died in the night. Two out of the last three survivors lived.
Only twice before in the century had a storm petrel been seen in Switzerland: in 1948 in Geneva and in 1984 in the neighbouring canton of Vaud. The survivors were fed with bits of fish, cod liver oil, mussels and sea plankton or krill. Two out of 23 - still, says the newspaper, it was a fine victory. And what a strange bird this storm petrel is. Most of us have never seen one. One book describes them as small whiterumped black tube-noses, (i.e. the nostrils lie in two short tubes on the bill). Except when storm-wrecked, they come in to islands only to breed in holes and crevices. Like a housemartin, says another book, with a square tail. Their ability to walk on the surface of the water, wings a-flutter, gave rise to the name petrel, it is said, from the apostle Peter, who did so. (From 1703 in English).
Ronald Lockley, who lived for 13 years on a rocky island, Skokholm, off the Welsh coast, wrote with affection of these birds who nestled in his hedgewalls. Not only a purring sound gave their presence away, but the smell of musky fluid which they discharge from mouth and nostrils. You could smell them if you couldn't hear them. Lockley tells how he has taken abandoned chicks from their crevice or burrow, which had never flown before, to the cliffs and released them. As long as he could watch it, "the tiny two-month old fledgling continued its graceful zig-zag flight away out to sea, keeping low over the waves, a marvellous, humbling sight." David Cabot reckons we have 30 per cent of the total European population. Have you never seen one? Y