FAIRY PENGUIN 
3 
capacity for beating the pistol," diving, as it seems, 
on the flash. 
Later on in the winter I have watched them from 
the Yarra Street Wharf, rarely rising to the surface, 
but quite easily followed by the eye as they swim 
with shooting flapper-strokes after the shoals of 
tiny fish which form their food. Corio Bay fishermen 
dislike them because of their propensity, when in 
pursuit of fish, for getting inside the set nets. 
On the outside ocean-beaches one sees more of the 
dead bodies of Penguins than of the living birds. 
Particularly after easterly gales, numbers are thrown 
up on the sand, battered to death by the surges. 
Now and again a bird reaches the shore alive, but 
return is impossible, and it perishes of hunger. 
No breeding-places of Penguins now exist on the 
mainland between the Heads and Cape Otway ; a 
few breed on the seaward side of Phillip Island, 
Western Port. Most of our birds are migrants from 
the islands of Bass Straits, whence at the approach 
of the winter storms they move northwards towards 
the continental bays. In November, 1901, I found 
this species breeding in large numbers on small 
islands off Flinders Island. The birds were sitting 
each on a pair of white eggs, either under the shelter 
of rocks or tussock-grass, or else in old Mutton-bird 
burrows. 
Granting that all these birds belong to one species, 
they show amazing individual variations. Of two 
I picked up at Torquay after autumnal gales in 191 1, 
