NEW ZEALAND BIRDS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 19 July 1924, Page 10

NEW ZEALAND BIRDS

L,Ft TUBE IA MRS iM. M MONVRIKFK

With the petrels come the a Him trusses and up to lately very little was really known about them especially as to where they bred and how lo distinguish them on the wing. Those birds have a wonderful llight, sailing round and round ships in greif swoops, never appearing to move their wings. Another remarkab,le thing is how silent, they ate; • ne never hears them yammering like gulls. Like the petrels the albatrosses only seek thi‘ land at breeding seasons. To those desirous of seeing their nesting piaces tin' Auckland and Campbell Islands. also Adams Island, afford the best sites from November onwards. Albatrosses and Kingfishers feed their young lotigethan any other birds. In the case of the wandering albalioss, flic albatross of Coleridge's poem, l believe the chick surpasses its parents in weight. When this happens the parent abandon it Jor four months during which time it becomes fully fledged and is (biased, away on the birds return, the whole process taking one year. Albatrosses only lay one egg a year ; that Ts one reason for not classifying them with gulls. Another is of course that they never go in-

land like gulls. The two largest- albatrosses are the Royal and the Wandering hut they can he. distinguished by the Hoval having no tranverse marking on the back. The sooty albatross lias a euneated tail and Hies higher than the other members of the Inanity. Albatrosses apparently cannot stand any warm temperature which accounts for their strictly limited range. This at least is Major le Soeuf’s theory. Dr Casey Wood wrote in the Emu to that effect- also. As soon as the temperature rose to above 70 degrees at four o’clock p.m., the birds following the ship turned and sought cooler seas: hence the reason we do not have albatrosses in the Atlantic: they have never crossed the line. The eleventh order of birds is only a small one. consisting of members of the grebe family under the order, eolymbiformes or diver-shaped birds. These are waie: birds with webbed toes, bofh sexes alike. Where the young birds assume) the dress of the parents right away the only way of telling them is that they are usually duller. Grebes have long necks and no tails, also crests or ruffs in the breeding season. In New Zealand we have two grebes, the great crested and the dabchick. The latter is rare in New Zealand, whereas, in Britain, it is the reverse, the dabchi.-k is common and the great crested very rare. The dabehich is quite a small bird with a habit- of popping under the water with a leap. If you were to take one in your hand you would find no tail, just a silky bunch' of feathers. If you were lo disturb its nest when there wore young you might see the hen dive away with her young on her back. Dabchieks httvc been known to carry their young for quite a distance in this manner. We finally come to the last order of birds, Sphcnisciformes, which contains the penguins. These birds have sldf wing feathers and use the wings is swimming organs. The front toes are united by :i web. These birds nest mainly in

burrows and, as is usual when the young are helpless, they are fed for sometime by their parents. The smallest penguin wo have is the little white ilippered just like the blue penguin but with white flippers the name denotes. The little blue penguin is to be seen over the bay and during the mating season can be heard. Have you heard the noise of a baby being murdered? Well, that is the noise. A friend of mine poured pepper down a blue penguins burrow, but like the cook in “Alice in Wonderland’’ it merely continued its ditty pausing lo sneeze the while. We are justly proud of our penguins as nowhere else except in the southern hemisphere are they to be found. It seems a great mistake to Kill a lot to send them to the British Empire Exhibition. Nobody cares for stuffed birds like that and it merely encourages the private collectors. The king penguin at the Wellington zoo was one destined to be killed but mas mercifully reprieved. Some of the penguins swim so fast through the water that they leap in and out of the waves like porpoises also they are the only birds which swallow their food under the water. Many of the penguins make'no nest carrying the eggs between their legs. (Finis.)