THE BIRDS OF ANTARCTICA.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7979, 7 April 1904, Page 4

THE BIRDS OF ANTARCTICA.

Describing tlio birds of the Antarctio regions, Dr Wilson writes :— We mow a good deal of the penguins that we* met since we left England, thanks to the exertions of all who accompanied Mr Royds in hie journeys to Cape Orozier last year, Mr Skelton especially, and Blissefc, lance-corporal R.M.L.1., who was the lucky ■ finder of the first Emperor Penguin's egg, still -tihe only authentic egg known, unless the" German* or the Swedss have been equally successful. Thora are other birds, however, that have every claim to be considered Antarctic, birds that are quite unknown away from the ice of these southern regions, and, further, there are birds which j are met with by everyone that comes with- j in the Antarctic Circle, but which are not limited to ioe-bound regions. For example, j we Ibave the snow petrel, tli« Antarctic i petfrel and ekua, whioh was seen so abimd- ' antly in the summer months : M'Cormack's skua, as he is known to science, and an excellent change from seal meat, as he lias come $o be known to ourselves this winter.; These three birds never leave the neighbourhood of ice. But the Giant Petrel,, Wilson's Petrel and the silver-grey Southern "Fulmar Petrel, are birds which have a, far wider range than the Antarctic area.| The Southern Fulmar, for instance, hag, bfien killed off the coasts of South Africa and South America. The Giant Petrel wo ourselves met with as early as September, 1901, when we were in latitude 35 S., and all through October and November we rarely missed his ungainly figure somewhere near tho ship. And as for the little martin like Wilson's petrel, it would jbe hard td find a more world-wide traveller, for he is known in almost every ocean of the globe^ and has been on the coasts of Britain again and again. Still, these three are typically Antarctic birds, and could not be omitted. Wilson's petrel breeds here, as well as on the islands about the latitude of Kerguelen, where the other two do all their, breeding. . It is strange, and not a little disappointing, that we saw so few of these southern birds since we settled into winter quarters. The reason must be that we are. too much, cut off from open water, and, (consequently only such a bird as the skua, which we provide with seal for food, dares to visit us in any number. For the rest we have noth-i ing, and we are far from their food supply ,i which is co abundant among the disintegrate ing ice of the pack. There they congregate, and, as near there as possible they breed ; at C*pe'Adare, for example, and the Possession Islands, and, no doubt, at the new island discovered by the Morning on, her way to. .us, j THE BNOW PETREL. I No one Has yet discovered the nesting place of the Antarctic petrel, arid, now that we ha-ve discovered the Bmperc-r'a egg, this is the only bird that lives down here - whose egg is still unknown. Snow petrels' eggs were taken in some nmatSere by M'Cormack in Ross's expedition, on Cockburn and Franklin Islands, and by members of tie {Joutlwwpn. ftymwMtirtm &L Cane Adare trad

lin Robinson Bay. Here they lay their •single white eggs in holes and' crannies of i the cliff, to the height wMnetimca of 1«100 feet. At Cape Adare the end of November is given as the data to look for them, but oven during the first -week in January there were still eggs to be found f>n C'iokburn Island, though they -were well incubated. The appearance of" these snow-white birds to those who were .sledging to the south last year ) away on the barren srurfac-e of the Barrier, sixty miles from their food supply, was as surprising as it was refreshing, and created no little excitement among the dogs, who last saw winged gam© sonse seven months before. Our first introduction to snow petrels on the Discovery was coincident with 'her introduction to the iea in November, 1901. It has been the same with every ship in these latitudes. They did not follow us out of the ice. We met. them a^in with the pack on January 3, 1902, and from that day to the end of the first week in February they were our mosfc constant attendants. On January 11 we were off the Possession Islands, and saw immense flocks of them alternating with flocks of Antarctic petrels. The difference in their habit of flight was well contrasted, for whereas the Antarctic petrels wheeled and soared as though by conceited action, as starlings flying In flock, the snow petrels were flying in all directions at onoe, as one e«es at Home a collection of swallows migrating in October. They, were feeding, too, about thss time so close 'to the ship that one could see their method of feeding as plainly as tie shrimp-like echizopod ion which they fed. This little beast was thrown up on the weather side of the ioe floes by the breaking surf, and before the next wash could restore it to the water, j , down would drop a snow petrel ,to horer for I a moment in the spray and pick it off. Undoubtedly this is the reason why they are plentiful among broken ice and leas plentiful where tie sea. is clear or *fche ioe is high and unbroken, as it is along the Barrier. At our winter quarters but few were aeen through out last summer, and they were only oa&ual visitors ; the unbroken flow proved no attraction to them. THE ANTARCTIC PETREL. Still less have we seen of the Antarctic petrel. None visited our winter quairters last summer t and though we saw large flocks near Possession Island* on January 11, 1902, and numbers scattered about the ice-bound coast of the land of our farthest East, we have seen none since. Where they r-esfc, and what their migrations are no one knows. We have seen, of them what others have seen, and nothing more. WILSON'S PETREL. The gaane must be «aid of the little Wilson's petrel, which vre were fortunate enough to catch nesting at Cape Adare. Here, in a- burrow some three feet long, under a heavy macs of rock, wo were led to a nest) by the constant hovering of the bird around the entrance. The floor of the tunnel to the end -where the neat lay was t(he har<l ice, which required long chipping to admit an airm t but when the end was reached tihere wag found a strange collection. In a warm pest of penguin's feathers lay the flattened; mummy of a petrel, a very rotten egg, an<i another egg clean and recently laid. Sitting 'together o» these were two twittering Wilson's petrels, both in the b*st of pluma/ge. This is how they are generally found, several birds and often several eggs in on* nest, though there is do doubt whatever that one bird lays but one egg in the season, and that nearly half of its own size. This little petrel is not unlike several others which we s*w in miHer climates, but from all of vacua, it can 'be distinguished by the length and atenderneas of its legs aaid the bright orange webs of its feet. Since settling into winter quarter we 'have seen nothing of the bird, save that on two 1 occasions when a> sledge party was passing the end, of White Island, miles away from open water, one of these little petrels came and hovered round the sledges. THE SOUTHERN FULMAR. Of the Southern fulmar there is even less to be said. Since we left the pack ice proper we have not seen one, and unless on the way north: we run into psvck ice, there is but little probability that w« shall see the bird again. It is nowhere common, though so widely distributed. It is said to breed at Kerguelen Island,- but there is still gome uncertainty about its nesting habits. THE GIANT PETREL. Of the giant petrel, the '"Nellie" or "Stinkpot," call him which you will, we saw far more in milder climates than we have seen- since we entered th« ice- At Ca-pe Adaxe it is true that we saw a number, and among them all varieties of shade, from the white albino to the chequered grey and the dark • individuals, of which 6ome were dark all over, even to blackness, and othera had" light coloured heads and neck contrasting with their darker bodies. It is strange that we should have found here a dozen or so of this albino variety, for a. white Giant Petrel was considered a great rarity by the members of the Southern Cross expedition, nor was more than one seen there during the whole time of their stay at Cape Adare. The " Nellie " has never been found nesting co far south of the Circle, but breeds freely at most of the islands that lie a short way north of it. Variability is its marked characteristic, far more so than it is of the Skua, whose changes, we see, bear some relation to the age of the individual. It appears, however, that the variations in the Giant Petrel are independent of sex and age, and it may result in some way from the safety it enjoys from enemies that it has need in the economy of life to maintain any! definite colouring, and therefore individual variation has full play. MYSTERY OF COLOURATION. It is always a little puzzling to account for what is apparently protective colouration in the skuas in these regions, for they would seem to have no need of it, since there ia no or beaet to molest them. Both the skuas themselves and £he eggs, •when, sitting, are very hard to see, and the chicks are equally visible, and appear to know it, for they remain absolutely motionless when one is anywhere near them. There seems no need for this at all in these regional, though there may be good reason for it in their very close relations

to th© Antarctic .skuas that we found breeding on Ma*-:qunrie Island." In the case of the Giant Petrel ife may be tJiat the species is divided into two, a darker and a lighter. It seems very certain that the lighter variety is much more often seen the -farther south one goes, for in all references to the bird in the milder regions a a albino is 'always mentioned as a rarity, far more so than we should consider it from what we have seen down here. Therefore, .it nicy ba that ths future nay produce a white Giant typical of the Antarctic regions, as it has produced the white Snow Petrel and the white teal. But why should any of these be white? Not for protection's sake, for the " Nellie " wants no protection. Not for the sake of obtaining food, for the "Nellie" is a carrion feeder, as wo saw at -Cape Adare, requiring no stealth to possess itself of more dead penguins than it can possibly manage to eat. In the north, where birds and beasts must protect themselves from owls, stoats, foxes and bears, it is easy to see that white will' make them less conspicuous. And the ptarmigan, lemnnlingß and hares, upon which the animals mentioned subsist, are more easily stalked if fche stalker is as white as snow. This, also, is easily understood. But in the couth, not only are the white birds not preyed upon, but- neither do they require invisioility to pick crustaceans off an ice-floe, or to devour a penguin that has already died a natural death. It looks rather as though the climate ifcself had more to do with the tendency to whiteness in the south, indicating, perhaps, some need for regulating the absorption of the sun's he*t. Which way this works ifc would be unwise to guess without experiment, for it is a recognised fact that some white materials, white lead for. example, ab- - sjjrb as much heat as lamp-black and a good deal more than Indian ink. Some feathers may do the same. THE SKUA. Evidently the first year's skuas are dark brown all over, with a very faint tinge o? j straw* colour at the back of the neck, and this dark colour remains, I believe for some years, the golden tinge on the neck increasing gradually throughout life, even after the head, neck and underparts have all turned a hoary gray, for the golden sheen is even more marked then. The feathers are much weathered towards the summw,' and the whiteness of the quills gives a still more worn and bleached appearance to the' feathers of the back. Of their nesting I need say little-, for the eggs and young have been seen by all. One thing may have escaped notice, namely, that at Cape Adare, where we saw so many young birds of all ages, ag well as eggs, and at Granite Harbour the same thing was borne out, although two eggs were always found and, when recently hatched out, two chicks were always in the nest, in the more advanced stages of growth there was never more than one survivor ; the second had always disappeared. Those who went adrift on an ice-flow in Lady Newnes' Bay had the opportunity of seeing the «kuas force their brethren to disgorge on the wing in precisely the same way as that in which th« northern birds treat gulls. For in every way they are very like the northern skuas and other gulls. They tend to breed in colonies, not always close to a penguin rookery. That their sense of sight and smell is acute was pretty certainly proved on the southern sledge journey — for on several occasions when a dog was killed and cut up in a southerly breeze the camp was visited by a skua or two soon after. They were seen on the Barrier as for south as 80deg 20min latitude, some 150 miles from open water. From last year's experience we. may expect to see them in winter quarters again at the beginning of November. Belated individuals were seen on March 30, in 1902, and on April 7, 1903, bnt had we not provided them with food by Mlling seals there 13 little doubt that they would, have left us last summer earlier than they did the .previous one. We have seen them eat Adeli© penguins 3 eggs and young, but thds lasts them only a month or two,, and no doubt they make the most of it, as we do when we can. But for th.^ fish and crustaceans that form theif ordinary diet, they must have open -water-. SURMISES. This brings to an end the short list oi birds that have so far acclimatised tfnemselves to the Polar regions in. the south as to Be able to find a living. One would think it must be uphill work and that much stress of tome kuad must have been put upon a bird in temperate climates to induce it gradually to leave them for good a» the snow petrel hae^ for instance, and the. Emperor and Adelie penguins. It would appear that of all three- birds the snow petrel was or.» of the earliest to \afce to Polar life. The differencs in colour of t&e chicks of the King and Emperor penguins seems to indicate that they parted company earlier in their history than one would be led to think, judging only from the present similarity of the ' adults. It is possible, however, that there was a greater, number of bird forms adopted to this climate at the time when the' southern glaciation extended somewhat fartiher to the north, and that of these only one or two have found reasons for carrying th«ir acclimatisation to a more perfect state. Of these reasons there is no doubt the two most powerful ones are the struggle to obtain food for themselves and their young, and the struggle to avoid exposing themselves and their young as food for their enemies. But the question 'here touched, upon 'is a very difficult one. All we oan hope to do at present is to find out" every detail of the life of every bird to see here, noting, above all, in what -waya they seem to be well or ill-adapted to the lite, what are their enemies, what their dangers, what their food, and 1 in what various ways iftev manage to avoid the one while obtaining the other. When more is known it wiil be more possible to try and realise, a little deeper than we can at present, something of the history of their past.