Mother Carey’s 
Chickens. 
(126) THE BIRD WORLD. 
a quarter of a million. In three sepa¬ 
rate areas the saltbush ridges are abso¬ 
lutely honeycombed with their burrows, 
new and old. Visitors should walk 
carefully among them, or at every few 
steps they find the ground collapsing 
under them, and in the nesting season 
they would unconsciously smother scores 
of young birds. 
Afraid of the Water. 
The fully-fledged Petrels, when taken 
out of their burrows in daylight, are at 
first confused by the light, and struggle 
to get back again. They have a quick 
intuition of the meaning and purpose of 
the sea, as far as they are concerned. 
Some of the young ones taken from the 
burrows—and which had never seen day¬ 
light before—were put in shallow water, 
and at first they seemed alarmed by it, 
and flapped almost as helplessly as a 
land bird would have done. They were 
unquestionably afraid of water. But if 
left to themselves for a few minutes all 
fear seemed to pass away, and soon they 
were ducking their heads under water, 
tossing it playfully over their backs, 
and preening their feathers just as the 
young Swans were doing out on the 
sandpits. In looking *at a Stormy 
Petrel one finds it difficult to sympathise 
with the sinister views of the old sailors, 
who thought it a bird of ill-omen. It is 
soft, delicate, beautiful—one of the 
most innocent-looking and apparently 
the most trustful of birds. 
Nature's Orchestra. 
If the Petrels were mute when we 
watched them on Saturday night, there 
was no lack of bird sounds in and about 
Mud Island. There are immense flocks 
of sea and shore birds all round it. All 
night we heard the trumpeting of Swans, 
the loud quacking of Black Ducks, the 
croaking of Herons—of which there are 
great flocks, of three species; but most 
characteristic of all calls were those of 
the water and shore birds. Among them 
we were able to identify the notes of 
the Curlew, Golden Plover, Godwit, 
Stint, and several others which in autumn 
will leave us to visit the northern hemi¬ 
sphere. On Sunday morning they were 
spread in flocks over the marshes, feed¬ 
ing with the Terns and Gulls. In 
another fortnight there will probably not 
be a single Stormy Petrel left on Mud 
Island. 
An Interesting Picture. 
The aviary in which Australian Parrakeets are declimatised at 
Messrs. Payne 6° Wallace’s Little Zoo, Bath. 
