MILLIONS OF PETRELS

Taranaki Daily News, 23 December 1931, Page 9

MILLIONS OF PETRELS

STEWART ISLAND COAST AMONG THE NOISY MUTTON-BIRDS. A NATURALIST’S EXPEDITION. ! . “One of tlie sights of the bird world is to see the petrels coming in at dusk on Solomon Island. The air .is absolutely full of them —they are like swarms of bees—and from any point of vantage a quarter of a million birds can be seen m the sky at one moment,’ said Mr. E. F. Stead, interviewed by the Christchurch Press on Saturday after his return from a stay of five weeks on the island, which is off the south-west point of Stewart Island. With him in the party had been Major R. A. Wilson, of Bulls, and for part of the time Sir John Hanham and Mr. E. Hay, of Pigeon Bay. To go there Mr. Stead had chartered the schooner Britannia from Bluff, taking two days in fair weather to make the journey, though when Mr. Hay went down he was at sea ten days. The mpin purpose of his stay, on the island was to observe the bird life there, to see what species were to be found, and in particular to note the habits of the six kinds of petrels, which had their nests on the island, said Mr. Stead. The family of petrels included a great number of different types of birds, from the little stormy petrel—not so big as a blackbird —to the wandering and royal albatross, with the biggest wing-spread of all birds. Mut-ton-birds were also grouped with the petrels and belonged to a sub-family, of the shear-waters. FLIGHTS OF 200 MILES. Very little bad been done in the study of petrels, mainly because of the difficulty of observing them. The smaller ones were nocturnal on land, nesting in burrows, wandering as far as 200 miles from the coast during the day in search of food, and coming ashore only after dark at varying hours,, many of them not arriving before midnight. They nested in burrows, and on coming ashore spent a few hours either with their mate or changing places with her on the nest while she went to sea, and leaving the land again before daybreak. Mutton-birds were the commonest of the petrels on Solomon Island, and though their young were taken every year to the number of more than a quarter of a million, the birds were the; j actually in millions. Mr. Stead identified the different species of petrel which nested on the island, and. there were doubtless others that he did not see or hear. “The birds are most strongly vocal, so much so that the noise is trying when you wa. i to go to sleep,” he went on. “There is practically no noise until they settle for the mutton-bird does not call when in flight, probably not one in a thousand makes any sound on the wing, but wlVn they are leaving for sea there is a terrific noise. A gannet rookery makes a subdued murv muring compared with the petrels when landing. On the day before I left I was wakened at 3.15 a.m. by the muttonbirds preparing to go, and there was such a, noise that I had to strain my ears before I could discover that my companions, 7ft away, were shouting at each other to make themselves heard.

“On these particular islands the land birds are absolutely as they were before they were visited by white men. It is amazing to see birds that are nearly extinct on the mainland just as common as ever. One day I saw in a small tree 20 yards from our hut saddlebacks, robins, tu'is, a moki-moki, and a yellow-breasted parrakeet, while a weka grubbed about in the fern below. A robin with a nest close by used to come regularly into the huts for crumbs, of when we were chopping wood was always on the look-out for grubs. .It was impossible to go anywhere, and. stop for, 20 seconds without one of these little fellows — grey, with a yellowish breastputting in an appearance to see if there was any food about.

DANGER FROM CATS AND RATS. “It is dreadful to think—in view of the wide variety of bird life there—that by the least carelessness rats or cats may get on to these islands, for their presence means the absolute extermination of all land birds. You can tell as soon as you get near an island, by the number of birds seen or heard, whether either cats or rats have been introduced. What happens is that rats get on to the islands and interfere with the mutton-birding—l believe that they eat the chicks when they are very small—and then the mutton-birders introduce cats to deal with the rats. That is the death-knell of every land bird in the place. At one island we went to we were greeted by dead silence.’ Both fur and hair seals were seen by Mr. Stead, though not in any great numbers. He saw one catching a large fish, biting it hard, shaking off in turn the pieces on either side of his mouth, swallowing what remained, and then rolling over to dive for the rest. He watched this from 30ft away, and found that in general the seals were tame'and confiding/There were no traces of old sealing occupation on the island, though a great deal of it used to be done there.