STORMY PETRELS

Evening Post, Issue 86, 8 October 1936, Page 25

STORMY PETRELS

THE BIRD OF ST. PETER

THEIR WAYS OF LIFE

It was nearly half an hour after sunset when, looking over the bows of a ship well out in Bass Strait, I detected a small dark form, like a moth astray, skimming close to the water and silhouetted against the reflection of a cloud on which the hidden sun was casting its last rays, says a writer in the "Sydney Morning Herald." It had gone before I could- determine whether it was a moth or bird. Then watching closely this patch of light on the water, which extended like a pathway from ship to horizon, I was able to see one or two others proceeding in the same direction.

And when my eyes became accustomed to the dusk, then fast falling, I made out what appeared to be a- continuous movement of small-winged bodies flickering over the tops of the waves, becoming lost to sight either in the trough of a wave or in the gloom on each side of the silver cloudline. Within the next five minutes, before night finally draped the ocean with its mantle, some hundreds of little forms passed in silhouette across the course of the ship, apparently bent on reaching land some 70 miles to the east.

There had been sufficient light in that brief period to enable me to identify them as storm petrels, better known to mariners as "Mother Carey's chickens." It was late November, and they were bound, no doubt, for their nesting colonies on the Bass Strait islands, after a day's fishing at sea. SCENES ON AN ISLAND. It was not long afterwards that fulfilment came of an ambition which had its genesis on that ship, to acquire a closer acquaintance with these birds by visiting one of their nesting islands. A romantic impression gained by the spectacle at' dusk of diminutive bodies1 fluttering through the darkness on an unerring course for home, with only an inherited sense of direction for a guide, was not dispelled by the reality, as sometimes first impressions are. Landing on a low-lying island from; a fisherman's craft, there was no evidence that the

place was inhabited; a few gulls flew overhead and an oyster-catcher piped its alarm notes from the shore but not a petrel could be seen.

It required but an hour for darkness to blot the sea from view, and, being prepared to spend the night on the island, I sought a camping spot behind a low, wind-torn bush overlooking a lagoon, into which I believed the birds would ultimately come. On the opposite side of the Jagoon was a bank of sand well anchored by grasses of various kind and scattered scrub, and honeycombed with ratlike burrows. After tea I waded across to this area, and at 9 o'clock, when the air was almost ominously still, I saw the first bird. Its arrival was heralded by a slight eerie rustling as it flew close to my head. I switched on a powerful torch and caught a fleeting glimpse of a grey form darting through the light rays.

In the next hour the night was thick with fluttering birds. Hundreds of wraith-like creatures had come in from the sea, and from the burrows in the sand their brooding mates emerged to meet them, so that they intermingled above my head, darting and twisting and encircling the lagoon, searching for their nests and apparently in a frenzy about the sweeping beam of light; though this was merely conjecture, for in the maze of flying forms not a sound was heard. All appeared to be voiceless. It was 11 o'clock when I left them, and they had not then settled down. I was up before daybreak in the hope of seeing the morning departure, but the birds were earlier than me. By that time not one was visible, and when the sun rose the scene was just as placid as when I had landed there the day before and equally as destitute of birds. SMALLEST SEA BIRDS. There are no sea birds so fragile in appearance or so graceful as the storm petrels. The white-faced storm petrel, an elf-like creature that breeds on certain islands off our coast, is scarcely seven inches long—the smallest of the pelagic birds—and is garbed in grey and white, with, long black legs and yellow webs. One that I extracted from a burrow for examination sat in my hand with quivering breast as though overcome by fear. It made no attempt to escape. I could not refrain from contrasting it with the behaviour of larger petrels, especially mutton-birds, which bite and scratch and injure themselves in their struggles to escape.

One of the characteristics of these

storm petrels is the rapid fluttering on wings close to the surface of tho sea. Indeed, their webbed feet often, touch the water as they dip for food, and, at times, they appear to be walking on the surface among the waves. And so they have been given the name "petrel" after St. Peter, whose waterwalking effort is set down in Biblical history. '

Because of their appearance during stormy weather, the small petrels are regarded by some sailors as birds of ill-omen. It is they who are thought to be responsible for the storms! This impression has persisted for many; ages. An old book on birds tells üb, somewhat gruesomely, that the seaman is "powerfully affected," when at the decline of day, with sudden darkening over the sea, he descries hovering about his barque an "ominous little pigeon. . . . It is a shadow of hefl,- an evil vision, which strides along the waters, breasts the billows, crushes under its feet the tempest. The stormy petrel, or 'St. Peter,' is the horror of the seaman, who sees in it, according to his belief? a living curse. What does it cpme in quest of, if not of wreck? It sweeps to and fro impatiently, and already selects the corpses which its accomplice, the atrocious and iniquitous sea, will soon deliver up to its mercies."

Such are the fables of fear. Petrels do find their food in a storm, but not from human bodies. A broken sea brings to the surface much minute artimal life on which they thrive-r----plankton, neckton, and a host of otheo oceanic mites, which constitutes the food of bird and pelagic beast. The petrels are adapted purely to a life at sea, and are happiest when playing in the teeth of a storm.