MONOGRAPH OF THE PETRELS. 



boundless bosom,' and are then not more plentiful than the other Petrels. This 

 periodical ' mustering of the clans ' is doubtless due to a superabundance of some 

 particular food-supply in the part of the sea where they congregate. Whale Island 

 is one of their favourite breeding grounds, the places selected being the stony, scrub- 

 covered slopes near the summit, as well as the holes and crevices among the rocks far 

 above high-water mark. The adjacent little island of Motoki is also a nesting 

 site. The island of Karewa, in the Bay of Plenty, and the numerous islands in the 

 Hauraki Gulf are also favourite breeding grounds. They nest in communities, and 

 their burrows are like rabbit warrens, covering acres in extent. As a rule they go 

 down vertically for about a foot, and then spread off laterally for a distance 

 of two feet or more, thus forming a chamber in which the Petrel deposits her single 

 egg, and afterwards cradles her young. In the early morning the old birds go off 

 to sea, and do not return to their nests till after dark, when there is a great noise and 

 excitement among the nestlings in their eagerness for food which has been stewing for 

 them all day long in their parents' crops. 



" The Maoris state that the young birds quit their nests for the sea towards the 

 end of February, which would accord with my observations on Whale Island. The 

 natives do their best, however, to interfere with this domestic arrangement, for when 

 the fledglings are about to take their departure, they are visited by Maori hunting 

 parties, who capture sometimes four or five hundred of them in a day, and pot them 

 in their own fat as huahua, which is esteemed a great delicacy. Having regard to the 

 profit, the island is strictly tapu during the early part of the breeding season, and no 

 native is allowed to land there. The expiration of the tapu and the slaughter of the 

 innocents form one and the same event. 



" It breeds on several of the large islands in the Hauraki Gulf ; and Mr. Cheeseman 

 found it nesting on the ' Hen and Chickens.' 



" An egg of this species in my son's collection is broadly oval, measuring 2.3 inches 

 in length by 2.0 in breadth, and is perfectly white." 



Adult male. General colour above sooty-black ; wing-coverts like the back ; 

 quills and tail-feathers black ; crown of head sooty-black, like the back ; sides of head 

 also sooty, with a little white mottling on the lores, and a white line above and below 

 the eyes ; throat and under-surface of body pure white ; the cheeks, sides of throat 

 and sides of neck dull ashy, mottled with white ; over the thighs a patch of sooty-black ; 

 under tail-coverts pure white ; under wing-coverts also pure white, with a narrow 

 edging of black mottling round the wing ; axillaries smoky-brown, with narrow white 

 tips ; quills dusky below, slightly more ashy along the inner webs ; " bill dark grey, 

 lighter and more yellowish-grey on the under mandible ; tarsi and toes pinkish flesh- 

 colour, stained with blackish-brown along the front of the tarsus, and on the outer edge 

 of the toes ; the webs darker ; iris brownish black " (Sir Walter Buller). Total length 

 13.5 inches ; culmen, 1.35 ; wing, 8.5 ; tail, 2.5 ; tarsus, 1.75 ; middle toe and claw, 1.9. 



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