IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

Otago Witness, Issue 3961, 11 February 1930, Page 7

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

THE ALBATROSS

By

J. Deummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S.

It is the majestic royal albatross, apparently, that Mr E. M. Guest, of Owenga, Chatham Islands, refers to in a note on the birds of the group on which he lives. “ I went with some Maori friends to the Forty-fours on one of their periodical trips for young albatrosses for food-sup-plies,- ’ he writes. “ Three launches made the venture. It is a venture. The fog almost had us beaten. At 11 a.m. •we felt like giving it best; but the sun broke through here and there, and less than half a mile away were the rocks. Tlie approach is quite as impressive as the approach to an old-world cathedral. Greens and browns and greys glisten in the sun and in the mist, making a very effective picture. By noon, most of us had climbed to the top. It was rough going, but the rocks were safe and reliable, unlike those of Bitt Strait, which in many places are treacherous. It was in September. About 300 birds were brought away, all young, fat, and almost ready to fly. Sometimes twice that number are taken. The older birds were not molested, the Maoris doing everything defbently and in order.”

The isolation of the Chatham Islands is shown by the fact that the species of albatross which nests on the group, anil which, apparently, Maoris are allowed to take, with the same right as they take mutton-bird petrels, has not been identified definitely. For many years is was believed that the wandering albatross favoured the Chathams. Mr G. Archey, jeurator of the Auckland Museum, spent several monthr ou the Chathams eight years ago. He did not see the albatross, but the evidence he collected led him to conclude that the Chatham Island species is the right royal member of the famous family which Linnmas dedicated to Diomedes, the valiant Greek captain at the siege of Troy. Fine black pencilled markings on the back are the easiest means of distinguishing an adult wandering albatross from an adult royal albatross. The young of the two species wear more distinctive costumes. A young wandering albatross is chocolate brown; a young royal albatross is white. Mr Guest has not described the nests on the Forty-fours. All species of albatross seem to follow the same plan in this important part of their domestic affairs. Scraping up loose material from the ground, they make a solid mound, often conical, some 18 inches high. In a depression on the top, a single white egg is laid. The nests are made in communities, often established on a hillside or on a slope running down to the sea. When members of a New Zealand scientific expedition steamed close to Disappointment Island, near the Aucklands, albatrosses, sitting on their nests, made the place look like a beautiful field of daisies.

On Disappointment Island albatrosses feed their young only every other day. Mollymawks, which are a different kind of albatross, going under an alias borrowed from the Swedish language, are more considerate. They feed their young regularly morning and evening. Mr Guest, by the way, used for these birds the name “ mollyhawk,” a common corruption of the corrupted word. The Swedish word is “ mallemucke,” used primarily for the stormy petrel, but also for all large petrels; and the albatrosses and t he mollymawks, after all, with their great sizes and thenr immense spread of wings and their majesty of flight, are merely giant petrels, characterised by having nostrils strangely formed in two tubes, a character that ho other group of birds possesses. The borrowed Swedish title sometimes is given mollemoke, malmock, and mollemock. “ Mollymawk ” has come into general use in English: “ mallyhawk ” has no justification. It should not be Used. Mr Guest describes the mollyIna wks of the Forty-fours as very hand-

some birds. They had finished their nesting affairs before he arrived at their island homes. A dozen belated ones, at home to the visitors, paraded up and down, unafraid, but uttering strange notes, which were not unpleasant. The albatrosses were disgruntled, and seemed untidy after their long brooding.

There are several species of mollymawks, as well as of albatrosses. The mollymawk on the Forty-fours is distinguished in its clan as the mollymawk. in the same proud way as The Mackintosh and The Mac Nab arc distinguished as the heads of their clans. All the species of mollymawks have black bands through their eyes, and they wear brown or black mantles. Their habits are slightly different from the habits of the albatrosses. Mollymawks dive sometimes, although they do not like to do so; albatrosses never dive. The mollymawk is piratical. It watches Die small brown petrel catch a fish. Then it gives chase, running on the surface of the water, croaking and with wings outstretched. It compels the petrel to drop the fish, which it seizes quickly before the fish sinks again. Some acumen is shown by the mollymawk in despoiling the brown petrel, as this is the most expert diver of all the petrels. Fond of diving, it stays under the surface for several minutes, and then comes up, shaking the water off its feathers like a dog. Flying past a vessel, it may poise itself in the air 20 or 25 feet above the water. Then it closes its wings and takes a header.

Chatham Island Maoris, in taking young albatrosses, seem to exercise a right of conquest established when Pomare and his Ngati-Awa tribesmen 94 years ago, left Wellington in a commandeered brig, swept down on the Moriori inhabitants of the Chathams, slaughtered them, took possession of the group, and set things in train for the extinction of the Moriori race. Some 45 years ago a party of Maoris took 700 young alba trosses from the Forty-fours and the Sisters, wringing their necks and preserving them for food in bags made of the giant kelp, in the same way as mutton-bird petrels are preserved to this day. On a previous occasion the Maoris, chartering a schooner, took no fewer than 2000 young albatrosses from the same islets and several hundred from a rock off Pitt Island. While the nests Were being plun dered, the owners swept along in wide circles overhead, but did not offer resistance or utter a note of protest. Having no superstitions, in this direction at least, the Chatham Island raiders do not feel, like the Ancient Mariner, who shot a single albatross, that they do “ a hellish thing,” multiplied again and again. In spite of these yearly raids, the numbers of albatrosses and of mollymawks are not decreasing. Mollymawks may be seen in many parts of the Southern Ocean. Albatrosses have a much wider range, extending over the Southern Ocean between 30. and CO degrees south, to the coast of Peru, the Indian Ocean, and the North Pacific.

When Mr W. Beebe, of New York, first saw albatrosses on their nesting grounds on the Galapagos Islands, off the Peruvian coast, he felt as if he was unwarrantably watching a prima donna making an apple pie in her kitchenette. He explains that the voice of a great singer and the flight of the albatross are amongst the wonderful things of the world, and that people at first hesitate to think of the possessors of these gifts in relation to the trivial things of life. Whatever may be the case with the home life of a prima donna, the home life of the albatrosses, as disclosed bv Mr Beebe, is in the nature of a shock. On land, he saw these incomparably graceful creatures of the air move with an appallingly awkward gait, suggesting flat feet, fallen arches, rheumaticky joints, crippled limbs. At each step the whole body turned with the leg, and the whole head and neck swung around and down on the opposite side to keep a balance. He has seen many birds in many lands, but never a more ungainly,

effortful walk. Some day, he believes, an epic will be written on the law of compensation, one of the most dramatic things in Nature—the peacock with its aristocratic display of exquisite coloin and its Billingsgate squawk; the nightingale, embodiment of glorious, soulstirring song and with feathers of the dullest russet and grey; and the albatrosses. master flyers, tottering miserably along as if each step brought acute agony.