PUFFINUS CHLORORHYNCHUS. 



Very few details of the colour of the soft parts in Mascarene birds are to hand. 

 Grandidier, in the " Histoire Naturelle de Madagascar," says that the bill is greenish 

 and the feet yellowish. This is the only instance in which I have found the colour 

 of the bill to be in accord with Lesson's name of chlororhynchus, and I doubt if this note 

 can have been taken from a recently killed bird. Dr. Coppinger gives the colour of the 

 bill as dark horn-colour in a specimen he obtained on Bird Island, Seychelles, and the 

 feet as fleshy-grey. The birds procured by the late Sir Edward Newton had yellowish- 

 white legs and feet {Ibis, 1861, p. 181). Specimens from the Seychelles, in the 

 Rothschild Museum, collected by M. Thibault, bear on their labels a note to the effect 

 that the bill and feet are " rose." This is a remarkable observation, being entirely at 

 variance with the other records, but it must be mentioned that a specimen in the 

 British Museum, received many years ago from the Maison Verreaux, as from the 

 island of Reunion, had the bill and feet painted of a rosy tint. It is evident, 

 therefore, that we have not yet arrived at a solution of the question as to 

 whether the Reunion and Mauritius birds are the same as the Australian, but the 

 evidence at our disposal seems to hint that they may, after all, not belong to the 

 same species. 



P. chlororhynchus inhabits the islands and coasts of Australia from Queensland 

 to New South Wales and Tasmania, and thence to Western Australia. 



Specimens procured on Raine's Islet, off Northern Queensland, by the late John 

 Macgillivray and Dr. J. Beete Jukes, are in the British Museum, as well as one from 

 Bird Islet, doubtless also collected by Macgillivray, and formerly in the Gould Collection. 

 The species breeds on Norfolk, Philip, and Nepean Islands (Crowfoot, Ibis, 1885, p. 

 268), and Mr. Robert Etheridge says that it is found together with P. tenuirostris on 

 Lord Howe Island, breeding on " Mutton-bird " and " Goat " Islands, and also on the 

 Admiralty Islets (Rep. Lord Howe I si., p. 14). 



The Shearwater which breeds in such abundance in the islands of Bass's Straits 

 appears to be P. tenuirostris, and not P. chlororhynchus, and the latter is not mentioned 

 by Gould or any recent writers as nesting there. Mr. D. Le Souef, however, states 

 that it formerly bred near Sorrento, in the vicinity of Melbourne. 



He visited the locality in 1901, and found a deserted rookery on the Cape 

 Schrank side. The Crown keeper stated that no Shearwaters had nested on the 

 mainland for the past ten years, as the foxes killed them all, and he had found scores lying 

 about on the old rookery with their heads bitten off. On the Portsea side Mr. Le Souef 

 found no evidence of the existence of these birds. 



In a joint paper by Mr. A. G. Campbell and Mr. A. H. E. Mattingley on the Petrels 

 of Mud Island, opposite the entrance to Port Phillip Bay (Emu, VI., p. 185), there is 

 an excellent account of the nesting of Pelagodroma marina, in which " Mutton-birds " 

 are also mentioned. The writers were informed by Mr. Joseph Gabriel that many 

 years ago the White-faced Storm-Petrel (P. marina), and also the " Mutton-birds " did 



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