An Owl's Exploits.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 829, 1 August 1933, Page 6

An Owl's Exploits.

Nature Notes.

By

James Drummond,

F.L.S., F.Z.S.

■AT PEGASUS HARBOUR, Stewart Island, Mr H. Guthrie-Smith was surprised to note that the morepork owl took even the little diving petrels, which fly in small flocks on the New Zealand coasts, fluttering near the surface of the water, settling down, diving and flying under water like penguins. He failed to discover how the morepork kills this seabird and afterwards raises such a relatively immense weight many feet perpendicularly from the ground, but morning after morning he found sometimes one newly-killed petrel, sometimes two of them, in a morepork’s nest in an opening where a storm had wrenched a branch from the trunk of a tree, forming a shallow cup, in which the owner brooded during daylight. At first the adult morepork tore the flesh from the bones and gave it to the two young moreporks. Later the young were allowed to help themselves. They reposed peacefully on or beside the masses of flesh, their home having become like a butcher’s shop.