M.VKION ISLAND. 179 



The young ones utter a curious whistling cry, of a high 

 pitch and running through several notes, quite different from 

 the simple bass note of the adults. 



The rookery was only inhabited in about a quarter of its 

 extent, but it was strewed everywhere with the bones of the 

 penguins in heaps, and on the verge of the rookery was a small 

 ruined hut, with the roof tumbled in, and overgrown with weeds, 

 and containing an old iron pot and several old casks, and some 

 hoop iron ; evidently an old sealer's hut. The sealers had pro- 

 bably employed their spare time in making penguin oil, and 

 taking perhaps skins, which are made up into rugs and mats at 

 the Cape of Good Hope, often only the yellow streaked part 

 about the neck being used. Hence the many bones and empti- 

 ness of the rookery. The egg of the King Penguin is more than 

 ordinarily pointed at the small end. It is greenish-white, like 

 other penguin eggs. 



Living also about the rookery was a flock of about thirty 

 Sheath-bills {Chionis minor). The instant they saw us ap- 

 proaching they came running in a body over the floor of the 

 rookery in the utmost excitement of curiosity, and came right up 

 within reach of our sticks, uttering a " Cluck Cluck," which with 

 them is a sort of half -inquisitive, half-defiant note. We knocked 

 over several with big stones and our sticks ; but the remainder 

 did not in the least become alarmed. They just fluttered up off 

 the -ground to avoid a stone as it was sent dashing through the 

 thick of them ; but immediately pitched again, and ran up, as if 

 to see how the stone was thrown. I only on one other occasion 

 saw the Chionis thus living gregariously in flocks ; at Kerguelen's 

 Land we found them already paired, except one flock which I 

 saw near the entrance of Eoyal Sound, and at Marion Island 

 many were already paired. That they should thus form flocks, 

 when not breeding, is what might be expected from their near 

 alliance to the Plovers. 



At the rookery these birds were living on all sorts of filth 

 dropped by the penguins, and were the scavengers of the 

 place, and when I drove some of the brooders off their eggs, 

 and an egg or two got broken, the Sheath-bills, who had 

 followed us up closely, notwithstanding the slaughter we had 



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