Albatross Colony Great HI Asset

Northern Advocate, 7 January 1948, Page 3

Albatross Colony Great HI Asset

DUNEDIN, Wed. (P. A.).—“Nothing in the field of natural history is more ’■crlh.v of the best public protection than the royal albatross colony on Ctago Peninsula,” declared Dr Robert Z ashman Murphy, world authority on oceanic birds in an interview.

Chairman of the department of birds at the American Museum of Natural History in New York Dr Murphy has made a number of visits to the peninsula in the past week to observe and photograph bird life. • The coloured photographs he has taken will be of considerable interest to ornithologists throughout the world, as will be his observations and those of the well-known Dunedin ornithologist. Mr 1... E. Richdale. “New Zealand possesses a tremendous asset in this albatross colony,” said Br Murphy. “These birds of the faraway southern seas have come to breed in the very heart of civilisation. •There is no limit to their educational and general spiritual value.” SPECIAL INTEREST Dr Murphy has a special interest in these birds. They are the smaller species of two types of royal albatross and the first specimen of them was taken by. Dr Murphy off the coast of ChiK end named by him. The only two known breeding grounds in the world are islets off the Chathams group and the Ctago Peninsula. Much more has yet to be learned of this species, and for this reason among others. Dr Murphy expressed appreciation of Mr Riclidale’s work. Mr Richdale, he said, was continuing to learn a great deal of what had never been known by ornithologists before. Some of the facts about the birds proved by Mr Richdale were that they teck seven or eighgt years to mature and breed. They were long-lived. They formed long attachments before mating and they possessed the instinct to return to the grounds where they were hatched. Dr Murphy deplored the recent action of vandals in stoning one albatross with the result that it had to be destroyed.