120 NicHOLLs, Study of Penguins on The Nohbies. Vic. [.^f"")",! 



In Captain Cook's third voyage to the Pacific Ocean (1776- 

 1780)3 mention is made that on 6th October, 1776, in lat. 35° 15' 

 S., about the level of the Cape of Good Hope, they saw three 

 Penguins and some Pintadoes. In consequence of this, says 

 Captain Cook, they sounded, but found no ground \\ith a line of 

 150 fathoms. A White-capped Noddy settled on the rigging, 

 and was taken on the 8th. They arrived at Cape Town on the 

 i8th. On the day they saw the three Penguins the nearest land 

 was then distant 100 leagues (some 300 miles). Penguins were 

 also met with on all the intervening islands visited between the 

 Cape and New Holland — Prince Edward, Marion, and Kerguelen 

 Islands — and were used for fresh food. 



Prior to this, on his first and second voyages. Cook had met 

 with Penguins and Pintadoes. Cook was not the first Australian 

 bird-observer, but, curiously enough, the Pintado was the first 

 Australian bird ever described. A footnote in Dampier's 

 '' Voyages " (1699) states that the Pintado-Bird was the Daption 

 capensis, and Dampier describes them as being " as big as Ducks, 

 and speckled black and white." Professor Ernest Scott went to 

 some trouble in establishing the identity of this bird in a paper 

 read before the Club in 1906.* It proved to be the Cape Petrel, 

 a bird fairly common to these seas. 



As Captain Cook's meeting with the Pintado was an historic 

 one, it may be quoted here : — " On the i8th of March, 1770, in 

 the morning, we were visited by a Pintado-Bird and some Port 

 Egmont Hens — an infallible sign that land was near, which we 

 discovered at six o'clock in the morning of the 19th, four or five 

 leagues distant. To the southmost point in sight we gave the 

 name of Point Hicks" (Cape Everard). That m^ts Cook's first 

 sight of the Australian coast, and incidentally of Victoria, not so 

 many miles distant from the Penguin rookery on The Nobbies. 



The first Australian Penguin to be described was a Crested 

 Penguin, Catarr hades chrysocome {Pengitinis chrysocome chry so- 

 come). The type was secured by Tobias Furneaux, one of Cook's 

 captains. In March, 1773, Furneaux accompanied Cook on his 

 second voyage. Their vessels became separated in a storm, and, 

 whilst Cook steered for New Zealand, Furneaux made up for 

 Tasmania and anchored nearJPenguin Island, in Adventure Bay. 

 This island, without doubt, received its name from the numbers 

 of birds upon it, but the species would not be the crested one, but 

 the small E. minor, as the Crested Penguin {Catarr hades chrysocome) 

 has only been recorded half a dozen times, or less, from our coasts. 



Captain Cook also visited this island a few years later, for during 

 his third voyage it is mentioned that " Captain Cook went again 

 on shore and found the grass-cutters on Penguin Island." 



Thus there is a long chain of Penguins stretching between the old 

 and the new worlds down the long years of discovery. 



The first record^ we have of the Little Penguin, Eudyptula 

 minor {E. minor minor), is Forster's account of the New Zealand 

 form, described from Dusky Bay, New Zealand, where it was 



