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It is extremely abundant in the seas surrounding Tasmania and among the islands in Bass s 
Strait, to some of which it resorts in countless numbers for the purpose of breeding. Gieen Island 
is described as the great Petrel nursery ; and a most interesting account thereof, by Mr. Davies, may 
be found in the second volume of the ‘Tasmanian Journal. The following extracts must suffice. 
“ About the commencement of September these birds congregate in immense flocks, and shortly alter 
wards proceed, at sunset, to the different isles upon which they have established their rookeries. 
Here they remain during the night for the space of about ten^ days, forming their burrows and 
preparing for the ensuing laying-season. They then leave and continue at sea for about five weeks. 
About the 20th November, at sunset, a few come in to lay, and gradually increase in numbers until 
the night of the 24th. Still there are comparatively few, and a person would find some difficulty in 
collecting two dozen eggs on the morning of that day. It is not in my power to describe the scene 
that presents itself at Green Island on the night of the 24th November. A few minutes before sunset 
flocks are seen making for the island from every quarter, and that with a rapidity hardly conceivable. 
When they congregate together, so dense is the cloud, that night is ushered in full ten minntes 
before the usual time. The birds continue flitting about the island for nearly an hour, and then settle 
upon it. The whole island is burrowed ; and when I state that there are not sufficient burrows for 
one-fourth of the birds to lay in, the scene of noise and confusion that ensues may be imagined ; I 
ivill not attempt to describe it. On the morning of the 25th the male birds take their departure, 
returning again in the evening ; and so they continue to do until the end of the season 
Besides Green Island the principal rookeries of these birds are situated between Flinders Island and 
Cape Barren and most of the smaller islands in Furneaux’s group. The eggs and cured birds form a 
great portion of the food of sealers, and, together with the feathers, constitute the principal articles 
of their traffic It takes the feathers of forty of these birds to weigh a pound ; consequently 
sixteen hundred must be sacrificed to make a feather bed of forty pounds weight. Notwithstanding 
the enormous annual destruction, I did not, during the five years I was in the habit of visiting 
the Strait, perceive any sensible diminution in their number. The young birds leave the rookeries 
about the latter end of April, and form one scattered flock in Bass’s Strait. I have actually sailed 
through them from Flinders Island to the heads of the Tamar, a distance of eighty miles. They 
shortly afterwards separate into dense flocks, and finally leave the coast. 
The following extract from Flinders’s Voyage (vol. i. p. 170), describing a single flight of these 
birds, will give the reader an idea of their prodigious numbers “ There was a stream from fifty to 
eighty yards in depth and three hundred yards or more in breadth ; the birds were not scattered, but 
were flying as compactly as a free movement of their wings seemed to allow ; and during a full hour 
and a half this stream of Petrels continued to pass without interruption, at a rate little inferior to 
the swiftness of the Pigeon. On the lowest computation I think the number could not have been 
less than a hundred millions. Taking the stream to have been fifty yards deep by three hundred in 
width, and that it moved at the rate of thirty miles an hour, and allowing nine cubic yards of space 
to each bird, the number would amount to 151,500,000. The burrows required to lodge this quantity 
of birds would be 75,750,000 ; and allowing a square yard to each burrow, they would cover some- 
thing more than I8J geographic square miles of ground.” 
It is very plentiful in the Hauraki Gulf, and is diurnal in its habits. It associates on the water 
in large communities, has a vigorous flight, and utters a peculiar cry represented by the syllables hor 
TiWd-kwdi from which it derives its native name. It breeds on all the islands in the Gulf not, how- 
ever, in colonies, but each pair selecting its own locality and excavating a deep burrow, sometimes 
5 feet in extent, with a rounded chamber at the further end, where a single egg is deposited about 
the end of September. A specimen in my son’s collection, from Lord Howe’s Island, is of a lather 
elliptical or slightly pyriform shape, measures 2-75 inches in length by I‘6 in breadth, and is 
perfectly white. 
