140 Sydney Porter—Notes on New Zealand Birds


Petrels are a group of highly specialized birds, many with

extraordinary nesting habits. Their powers of flight are amazing,

most species never resting upon land except at the breeding season.

In fact, owing to their weak legs, which are only adapted for

swimming, they cannot walk upright, but simply shuffle along on

their tarsus helped by their wings. Neither can they take off from

flat surfaces owing to the great wing span, but have to mount some

raised object or throw themselves over a cliff to enable them to take

flight. From their method of life, wdiich is purely aquatic, it will

be realized how strange are their nesting habits, for a good number

of this interesting family nest only in the depths of dense forests

on mountain ranges, where they excavate deep burrows in the soil

anything up to 15 feet in length, where they lay their single egg.


One of the chief nesting places of the Petrel in question is a

group of small islands known as the Hen and Chicken Islands off the

coast of New Zealand, which I was fortunate to visit during the

breeding season. The birds burrow r into the loose soil on the forest-

covered slopes of the mountain sides. The burrows instead of going

straight down often turn and twist, which must make it much

harder work for the birds in getting rid of the loose earth. After

a great many preliminaries a single white egg is laid in a chamber

at the end of the burrow. In some burrow's we found an adult pair

of birds with no egg at all. They fiercely defended themselves

against our intrusion, and they can inflict very severe bites with

their large hooked beaks. Sometimes the burrows are also tenanted

by the unique Tuataras ( Sphenodon punctatum), a strange and

excessively rare reptile, supposed to be the last living link with the

prehistoric reptiles of the far dim, distant ages. These creatures

were once common around the coast of the North Island, but have

long since been exterminated and are now found only on one or two

small islands off the East Coast. We saw quite a few on the Little

Barrier and the Hen and Chickens. Although they look very

formidable they are in reality quite harmless. They have very large

and expressionate brown eyes. They are very strictly protected by

the Government and it is to be hoped that they increase, but it is

hardly likely that they will do to any extent as they are very slow



