MUTTON BIRDS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21829, 16 December 1932, Page 13

MUTTON BIRDS

FLIGHT ACROSS WORLD . SCHEDULE MAINTAINED. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, December 1. Once more the migrant mutton birds have performed the astounding feat of arriving exactly on time at Phillip Island, off the coast of Victoria, after their annual flight from Siberia. For years past, flying south for the breeding season, the birds have completed their world flight from their northern haunts on November 22 and 23. On November 21 expectant watchers on the island sanctuary saw the first flights approaching about dusk.' Soon afterwards the rookeries on the coast were resounding to the raucous cries of the birds contending for the possession of the burrows. -Interested spectators could scarcely bear themselves speak owing to the din made by the squabbling birds.' Jumped claims were probably responsible for some of the noisy differences of opinion. _ The sooty-tailed petrelmutton bird is the popular and commercial name —has a remarkable sense of place ag well as of time. _ Some years ago the officers of the Fisheries and Game Department of Victoria marked certain burrows and put a corresponding identification on the birds which occupied them. The next year the same birds were found occupying the same burrows The mutton birds have a sanctuary at Phillip Island, and are protected by tho Victorian laws. It is only on certain islands in Bass Strait that they are taken for food and exported in large quantities. Every year the migratory flights, containing many thousands of birds, maintain their average numbers. And every year the main flights are preceded by a few birds in September or October, to clean out tho burrows. The, mutton bird world -is carefully organised and keeps strictly to schedule. Each female bird lays only one egg during a season. Once licensed, persons were allowed to collect the eggs, but now this is prohibited. The only menace which threatens the mutton birds on_ Phillip Island is the drifting sand, which often covers -up the burrows and smothers the mothers in the nests, which they will not leave. Acres of burrows havq. sometimes been smothered up with sand.