36 MUTTON BIRDS 



stirring the loose dead leaves, shuffling over the 

 peat and proceeding to clean out his hole or, if 

 so disposed, to chant and howl. Others, 

 few in number comparatively, arrived by a more 

 direct method, dropping through the trees with 

 just the sound of a heavy pear loosening itself 

 on a warm night from a high branch, 

 dropping, too, with wings folded plump on to 

 the ground. 



This surprising fall, judging by sound, not 

 broken in any degree by the use of the wings, 

 and from a height of ten or fifteen feet perhaps, 

 could not but suggest the thought that these 

 Mutton Bird islands must have originally borne 

 a very different vegetation, and that when the 

 forebears of the present-day Petrels alighted 

 they must have pitched from but a foot or two 

 into thick grasses and ferns. 



Probably in ages past all Petrels thus reached 

 their burrows. Now, it is only the dropping 

 birds who follow the ancestral custom, the 

 others, owing to a change in the vegetation, 

 having gradually acquired the habit of alighting 

 on the nearest cleared space, usually on the 

 cliff edge, and thence running to the nest. 



On the wing no bird uttered a sound; but I 

 believe, though it was too dark to be positively 

 certain, that upon arrival at a burrow the 

 Mutton Bird often took up a position similar 

 to that of the Kuaka, noticed on Herekopere, 

 gazing into the darkness of the burrow mouth, 

 and howling and whining in unmelodious 

 ecstasy. 



With the first approach of the evening influx 

 the call " Too-woo-woo, " repeated again and 

 again, began to be poured forth from each hole 



