58 MUTTON BIRDS 



CHAPTER VIII. 

 THE YELLOW-EYED PENGUIN. 



JERTAINLY two species the Yellow- 

 eyed and the Blue Penguin, locally 

 known as the Rock Hopper, breed on 

 Stewart Island, and I believe near 

 Pegasus there is also one colony of 

 the Tufted Penguin. This last bird, again and 

 again I was told, nested in many parts on the 

 north and east of the island; but the rookeries 

 always proved upon examination to be those 

 of the Yellow-eyed bird. My acquaintance, in 

 fact, with the Tufted Penguin is of the briefest, 

 and the individual bird found by me in Chew 

 Tobacco Bay was no doubt a straggler from 

 further south preparing to moult. He was 

 standing in the shade of a high rock face and 

 near a little waterfall just above high- water 

 mark, and viewed our approach with non- 

 chalance. 



Probably at a later period this bird would 

 have been found retired many hundred yards 

 into the woods with his shed feathers lying thick 

 about him. "Shedding" is perhaps hardly the 

 word, for the old plumage seems rather to come 

 off. in patches and pinches and peelings and 

 flakes ; and I have seen a bird felting off its old 

 coat just as a sick sheep casts its wool. 



