Night Birds.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 519, 30 July 1932, Page 8

Night Birds.

Nature Notes.

By James Drummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S. twenty-seven years ago, Mr A. C. Morton, of Paki-iti, near Feilding, while mustering with three mates in the back of Alarlborough, camped one night on the tip of a range, selecting a saddle between two peaks. Alaking the smoothest bed possible on bare shingle, they lay down under the open sky. It was a perfect night, still and clear. Sleep did not come readily, and Mr Morton was telling his mates something about the stars, when they he. rd in the south-west weird sounds. The old hand, who had lived on the hills for twenty-five years, said that they were the cries of the night birds. From the same direction as the sounds there came three birds, flying with remark-

able speed. They passed not more than twenty feet above the men. They flew so swiftly that, after they had passed overhead, they were almost immediately lost to sight. The outlines were defined clearly, and the pointed tips of the wings were noticeable. The impression Mr Morton received was of brown birds, but he is indefinite as to colour. .He writes: “Although the birds flew close above us, we heard no sound from the wings. I asked the old hand if he had seen the birds previously. He said that he had not, but had heard the notes on several occasions when he camped at similar places. I presume that, as we camped on a saddle at a high altitude, we were favourably placed for seeing the night-birds. I never met anybody else who saw them.”

The birds were nocturnal petrels, flying probably, between their burrows in the hills and the sea.

Black petrels nest on some of the mountain ranges in West Nelson, and they may have mountain homes in parts of Marlborough also, although they have not been authentically reported there. They favour the North Island, particularly the Little Barrier Island and cliffs in the Bay of Plenty, but they sometimes travel inland.