AND OTHER BIRDS 



our find. With one long sigh of dog's delight, 

 and with one long ecstatic inhalation, his strong 

 blunt nose burst the loose fibre apart. In the 

 miserable light of that dark afternoon there was 

 little to be seen; but, listening at the burrow's 

 mouth, we could hear from time to time a faint 

 sniffing noise, and this, I believe, proceeded 

 from the parent Kiwi; at any rate throughout 

 a long acquaintance with the chick, I never again 

 heard it. The hole was tunnelled out of slightly 

 rising ground beneath the bole of a living 

 kamahi; this tree had grown after the manner 

 of its kind in Stewart Island, at first parallel to 

 the ground and had only later sent forth tall, 

 erect shafts. Heaped above its prone trunk, and 

 acting as a farther shield from penetrating wet, 

 masses of fallen timber were piled in rough 

 pyramid form; the hole was overrun with 

 Billardier's polypod and the burrow's mouth 

 darkened and screened with tall lomarias. The 

 length of the tunnel was about two and a half 

 feet, the height of the breeding chamber about 

 eighteen inches, and both roof and sides in this wet 

 season, smeared smooth like undried plasterers' 

 work. Through a tangle of gnarled roots, there 

 was an alternate entrance into the tunnel. The 

 birds, whilst still undisturbed, sat or rather 

 crouched with their backs to the light, the bills 

 of neither parent nor chick being visible. The 

 actual nest was quite a considerable structure, 

 the base composed of twigs and sticks of an inch 

 round, and lined with fern fronds and leaves. 

 We now began to experience the trouble we 

 were to endure again whilst Petrel nesting. The 

 more the burrow was opened up, the more 

 restless grew the old Kiwi, and observations 



