34 MUTTON BIRDS 



stuff, and a green slime was everywhere spread 

 on the ground. 



Only a very small percentage of these bigger 

 burrows had been scraped out, and even these 

 were usually vacant. In one we got a brace of 

 Mutton Birds, and in it there was no sign of a 

 nest. Two burrows contained each a solitary 

 Mutton Bird, and in each of these two birds' 

 breeding chambers there was a well-constructed 

 nest of twig and leaf. 



About seven in the evening the Mutton Birds 

 began to arrive, and continued to come in for 

 about half an hour. The numbers of their in- 

 flight were as nothing in comparison with the 

 fall of Kuaka at Herekopere; nor did the big 

 Petrels appear to be wholly in earnest. That 

 night it seemed to me that only a proportion of 

 the birds hawking and skimming over the 

 islands touched land at all. 



The manoeuvres of one particular Mutton 

 Bird we could closely follow. His burrow was 

 a few feet from the whare door, and in the dim 

 light cast by our fire of wet wood, still further 

 damped by the stream of rain that flowed down 

 the iron chimney, he could be watched 

 in comfort. There, at intervals he 



laboured, scraping violently and throwing 

 the excavated dirt high enough to be 

 lodged on the tops of the tall leaves of the 

 dripping Stilbocarp. There next morning we 

 found the gritty peat, the freshly-worked hole, 

 but not the worker himself. 



A second day's exploration of the island con- 

 firmed the impression that the Mutton Birds 

 were not yet breeding in bulk; perhaps, owing 



