MUTTON-BIRD 
41 
MUTTON-BIRD 
Neonectris tenuirostris brevicaudus 
Though there are rookeries of considerable extent 
on the seaward end of Phillip Island — I have picked 
up scores of the bodies of birds which had fallen 
victims to foxes in the dense growth of scrub which 
covers the outlying peninsula at Cape Schanck — the 
Mutton-bird is very rarely seen, alive or dead, on the 
coast to the west of Port Phillip Heads. An old 
fisherman once told me how, visiting a sequestered 
and rock-girt bay in the wild irregular line of cliffs 
that stretches from Torquay to Point Addis, he found 
hundreds of these birds dead, piled up on the beach, 
killed no doubt by the final crash of the surges on the 
treacherous reefs which have before this meant death 
to more than Mutton-birds. Another, who plies 
his calling within Port Phillip, says that Mutton-birds 
were once numerous throughout the bay in the 
summer months. 
My own experiences of them about Geelong are 
limited to the sight of a few birds at different times 
in the outer harbour and the finding of an occasional 
little dusky body on the sandhills to the south ; the 
last was in March, 191 1, near the mouth of a ravine 
called " Jaar-nu-ruc " — " The Place of Conference " — 
on the old maps, not far from where the bones of 
the Scammell lie embedded. 
So rare is th,e bird with us, that it is difficult to 
