EAST AUSTRALIAN WHITE-FACED STORM-PETREL. 
Mr. Charles Belcher writes : “A specimen, of this petrel was picked up 
dead in a garden in Geelong in 1903. In November, 1901, we found a colony 
of these birds established on Rabbit Island in Franklin Sound, Fumeaux group, 
Bass Strait.” 
Hull* records this species breeding on Broughton Island, Port Stephens, 
in October, 1910. He says : “ Many burrows contained birds sitting on 
perfectly fresh eggs ; a few eggs were about half incubated, while other 
burrows contained a bird but no egg. None of the eggs taken were spotted with 
reddish, as was the case with a fair proportion of the eggs taken the previous 
year off Wollongong. . . Numerous fragments or skeletons of dead Petrels were 
lying about, and we were informed by the launch proprietor that some 
domestic cats which had been liberated on the island were responsible for much 
slaughter of those innocents. I am inclined to think that several Harriers 
I saw loitering about the locality were the real offenders, the remains having 
the appearance of being picked rather than chewed.” 
Mr. J. W. Mellor tells me he found this Petrel breeding on Storehouse Island, 
near Cat Island in Bass Strait, on the 4th of December, 1908. A colony had 
burrowed into the black sandy soil up the sloping side of the island, amongst 
the low, stiff herbage. The birds were sitting on their single egg. The nest 
was a few bits of grass and seaweed at the end of a burrow, which 
was about a foot or two long. The birds were helpless when brought 
to the light, and seemed dazed. They could not fly, and when thrown 
up only soared down into the bushes flfty to one hundred yards away, and 
ran into cover quickly. 
When Moquin-Tandon, in Webb and Berthelot’s Hist. Nat. lies Canaries, 
Zool.,p. 45, 1841, described his Thalassidroyna hypoleuca irom that group, he noted 
that there was a similar specimen in the Paris Museum labelled “ Terra Van 
Diemen (Labillardi^re),” and suggested that the occurrence of the same bird in the 
Canaries and Van Diemen’s Land seemed dubious, and therefore Labillardi5re’s 
bird might have been collected at Teneriffe, and an erroneous label attached. 
This is probably the first note of this bird. 
Mr. Frank Littlerl says : “ During a visit, extending over nearly a fort- 
night, paid to Ninth Island, on the north-east coast of Tasmania, in September, 
1909, I had exceptional opportunities for observing the White-faced Storm- 
Petrel. Before going to the island I had been informed that large liumbers of 
this species nested there. So naturally, I expected to witness some interesting 
sights when the birds came in to clean out their burrows. Nor was I disappointed. 
On arriving on the island on the 22nd September, a keen search was made for 
* Emu, Vol. X., p. 253, 1911. 
^ Handb. Birds Tasm., p. 161, 1910. 
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