THE DIVING PETREL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27212, 15 October 1949, Page 6

THE DIVING PETREL

Written for the Daily Times by ; L. E. Richdale s ’ Not long ago a friend showed me a strange little bird about six inches • long which he had found , dead on a : local beach. It had a black? beak, the {feathers were dark on top of the body -•and white underneath, and the legs and feet were a cobalt blue. The , i nostrils were in the form of tubes on sfop of its bill, which meant that it ben longed to that large class of birds r-,known as “tube-nosed swimmers,” or petrels. The bird was; a Diving Petrel. On islands surrounding Ne\v Zea--t .lanck these birds exist in Vast num-

- bers; they are many times more numerous than the sparrows around 7 our homes on 1 the mainland. Further, /..they lay only one white egg in a sea'l": son, and exist on what appears to be ' ■a most dangerous environment—-the • ocean with its many storms. In addition, many are eaten by Sea Hawks ’’Lor Skuas, yet the number of these Diving Petrels cannot be counted. At the moment of writing, Diving -' Petrels are laying their solitary eggs in burrows in the ground on their lonely island homes. In something /'like eight weeks the eggs will hatch

h and out will come a baby petrel most beautiful to behold. He is covered with pure white down which is •broken only by the little black beak '4 and the jet black eye. The little creature weighs less than half an ounce. The parents feed him nightly and as the chick grows the white down disappears and he becomes a darkish brown in colour. After some eight weeks in the burrow, the fledgling ■ feels an urge one evening and he leaves the burrow for ever and, unJ/v taught, flies from his island home for the wide watery wastes.