n on Phillip Island. An
excellent account of the habits of the bird is given in Campbell's Nests
and Eggs of Australian Birds.) Writing of what he saw off the extreme
north-west of Tasmania in December, 1798, Flinders said:--

"A large flock of gannets was observed at daylight to issue out of the
great bight to the southward; and they were followed by such a number of
sooty petrels as we had never seen equalled. There was a stream of from
fifty to eighty yards in depth and of three hundred yards, or more, in
breadth; the birds were not scattered, but 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 a pigeon. On the lowest
computation I think the number could not have been less than a hundred
millions."

He explained how he arrived at this estimate, the reliableness of which
is beyond dispute, though it may seem incredible to those who have not
been in southern seas during the season when the sooty petrels "most do
congregate." Taking the stream of birds to have been fifty yards deep by
three hundred in width, and calculating that it moved at the rate of
thirty miles* an hour, and allowing nine cubic yards for each bird, the
number would amount to 151,500,000. The burrows required to lodge this
number would be 75,750,000, and allowing a square yard to each burrow
they would cover something more than 18 1/2 geographical square miles. (*
Flinders is calculating in nautical miles of 2026 2/3 yards each.)

The mutton-bird, it will therefore be allowed, is the most prolific of
all avian colonists. It has also played some part in the history of human
colonisation. When, in 1790, Governor Phillip sent to Norfolk Island a
company of convicts and marines, and the Sirius, the only means of
carrying supplies, was wrecked, the population, 506 in all, was reduced
to dire distress from want of food. Starvation stared them in the face,
when it was discovered that Mount Pitt was honeycombed with mutton-bird
burrows. They were slain in thousands. "The slaughter and mighty havoc is
beyond description," wrote an officer. "They are very fine eating,
exceeding fat and firm, and I think (though no connoisseur) as good as
any I ever eat." Many people who are not hunger-driven profess to relish
young mutton-bird, whose flesh is like neither fish nor fowl, but an oily
blend of both.