"PENGUIN PARADE."

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 161, 11 July 1939, Page 9

"PENGUIN PARADE."

MILLIONS OF BIRDS. SUB-ANTARCTIC ISLANDS. VICTORIA LEAGUE ADDRESS. Striking scenes and rare experience.--among Xew Zealand's sub-antarctic it-lands were deeeribed by Mr. Gilbert Archey at to-day's meeting of the Victoria League. After building up the background of Maori legend and geological history, he told of his tour in the Auckland Islands, the Snares, and Campbell and Antipodes Islands.

I The great, -{ron-blaek cliffs of th° I snares were his first sight of land after ! leaving the Bluff, just as they were years ago for sailors on early vessels bound for Xew Zealand. Here, as on tlip other islands, was a huge bird popuhi - tion, and it was the bird life he had come to study. Flocks of pretty little fern-birds and black robins flew rou:;l the party as they went inland, whero they met the "penguin parade. thousands of birds marching inland t" the rookery.

Similar sights were encountered throughout the tour —weird forest* of writhing , , twisted trees, in some ca*e-= almost flattened by the force of *ho "roaring forties," and barren granit? rocks, covered with swarming birds of ali descriptions. Some of his most interesting observations were made on Campbell leland, where he saw a nesting colony of albatross, at the time when the chicks were hatching.