EXPEDITION TO THE SNARES

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25362, 9 December 1947, Page 6

EXPEDITION TO THE SNARES

SURVEY *MADE BY SCIENTISTS

CHRISTCHURCH MEN RETURN

It would not be possible to find the original station, but he had reobserved within a few feet the magnetic station established on the island in 1107, said the director of the Magnetic Observatory, Christchurch (Mr H. F. Baird) in an interview with “The Press” last evening. Mr Baird was a member of the scientific expedition to The Snares, a lonely group of islands about 70 miles south of Stewart Island, and he returned to Christchurch from Bluff last evening. The expedition, which was led oy the director of the Dominion Museum (Dr. R. A. Falla), included Dr. R. C. Murphy, an American authority on sea birds, and Mrs Murphy, Mr Baird, Mr C. A. Fleming, a geologist, Mr E. F. Stead, of Christchurch, Major R. Wilson (Bulls), Mr F. Newcombe, of the Department of Internal Affairs, and Messrs Roland Stead and Hugh Richards. Dr. Murphy made an investigation into seal stocks on behalf of the Marine Department and, accompanied by Dr. Falla, he has gone on another short expedition to the fur seal rookeries on the West Coast of the South Island, They are not expected back in Christchurch until the end of next week.

Mr Baird said that the ultimate results of the magnetic survey carried out would be recorded in the hydrographic charts of the British and American navies.

The islands, he said, lay just south of the forty-eighth latitude. There was one main island about one and a half miles long with the highest point rising to 600 feet. To each end lay a small series of precipitous islands known as the East and West Reefs. The coast dropped sheer into the sea and depths of 17 to 40 fathoms were recorded a few feet from the cliffs. There was a good covering of olearia vegetation over most of the island, and there was also tussock rising a

jot or go.out of the mud. The mud, e said, was the worst he had worked

in since the Murchison earthquake. Often it was knee-deep and made conditions particularly unpleasant. Mr Baird kept in constant radio communication with the Alert, the motor launch from Bluff, which took the party to the islands, and he paid a tribute to the work of the crew in maintaining the communications.

Bird Life on Islands It was to be hoped that The Snares would be declared a bird sanctuary. There were about 8,000,000 mutton birds on the island, but if mutton birders brought cats and rats to the island the birds would soon disappear, said Mr Stead. One of the main objects of the expedition was for Dr. Murphy to study mutton birds and seals, and to collect material for a display on the islands at the American Museum of Natural History. In this and in all its other objects the expedition had been a success, he said.

The whole of the end of the island on which the party stayed was inhabited by hundreds of thousands of penguins, said Mr Stead. The eolpnies varied in size from 56 to 1000 birds. The floors of each were a sea of mud and very strftng-smelling. They were usually at the tops of cliffs, and in some cases the penguins had to do some prodigious climbing feats to reach their nesting sites. One was on top of an almost precipitous cliff nearly 350 feet high, and with a heavy surf beating below its occupants had an enormous job to climb up. However, there was a constant stream of birds going up and down, and at times there would fee as many as 5000 on the face at one time. Mr Stead said that it had long been discussed whether Cape pigeons nested on the islands. Last Thursday Dr. Falla landed on the West Reef and came across some specimens of the rare petrel’s eggs. The petrel usually breeds in the polar regions, and this was the most northern breed-

ing habitat yet found. There were only three endemic land birds —the sedentary snipe, tom tit, and fern bird —on the islands, but all three were in great numbers, said Mr Stead. Another interesting observation was the presence of starlings, blackbirds, tlfrushes, gold finches, hedge sparrows and chaffinches, all of which, he said, had got there “under their own steam.” The noise of the mutton birds coming in at dusk and leaving at dawn was like the roar of heavy surf on the beach; and when the individual cries of other birds close at hand mingled it was reminiscent of the wild shouting of a crowd at a football match and every bit as loud, he said.