Mutton birds and other birds

Description:

Parara in burrow Identifier: muttonbirdsother00guth (find matches)
Title: Mutton birds and other birds
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Guthrie-Smith, H. (Herbert), 1861-1940
Subjects: Birds -- New Zealand
Publisher: Christchurch, N.Z. : Whitcombe and Tombs
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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of an entireabsence of any perceptible motive power.Maybe it was the glamour of night or that theemotion of the swifth^-wheeling bird movedsomething in the man not stirred by the vaster,slower balancings in distances more immense ofthe Albatross. It was a never-ending interest to follow withthe eye one of these living, moving lines of flight,to mark the earthward swoop, to trace it dark-ling across the islands bulk, to link up onceagain the half lost curve as it emerged black anddistinct against the pale, pure, evening sky. In each of these giant Ioo^ds of flight, the birdmost nearly touched earth over the mouth of hisbreeding burrow, but the speed at which thepoint of attraction was passed, at firstgave hardly a hint of any desire toland. After many revolutions there camea time however, wdien a certain retarda-tion of pace could be marked, and whenthe faintest hesitant wing flicker, the meresttremor of the extreme tips of the primariescould be observed. Still later, ahvays just over
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AND OTHER BIRDS 27 the Inirrow, this tremor became a poise,—a poiseinterpolated for an instant in the ))irds yet swiftunwavering flight, and without apparent checkto the speed of the sk)n;^ard climb, a miracle ofbalanced flight. At last the bird would diopwith a plump through scrub, or rustle with armi into tangles of vine. Most of these flying Petrels arrived without acall of anv sort. The Kuaka was quite silent;the Mutton Bird was also quite silent on thisnight, although later in the year, but even thenvery rarelv, I have heard him call on the wing,—a call, I may say, entirely dissimilar to the Te-te-te and burr of the Petrel that duringDecember can be heard at night flying inlandover many parts of the east coast of the NorthIsland. From either the Parara or Titi Wainui,ghost-like in their pale blue plumage now almostturned to white, came a rare Zp-zp. About eight or nine oclock there werehundreds of thousands or, as I have computed,millions, of birds on the island, the vast ma

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