MAORI MEMORIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 November 1938, Page 7

MAORI MEMORIES

TITI. (Recorded by J.H.S. for “Times-Age.”) The mutton bird “titi” (squeak) is found in the most southerly part of New Zealand literally -in millions. There they form permanent rookeries, burrowing in the high cliffs or the ground to nest and rear their young. Their massed flights to and from these are made with remarkable regularity year by year, varied as to the day and hour only by the most severe weather conditions. They are not attractive in form, flight, plumage or voice. The feathers—are dusky brown, like the eartn where they sit. They seem to feed exclusively on fish, but are rarely seen in the act of eating. The flesh abounds in oil, which makes it easy to preserve. In one bay alone the Maoris say they have caught and sealed in fat. enclosed in the bark of a tree, no less than 10,000 each season. So regular are they in hatching and flight, departing and _returning, wanting in intelligence or the art of self-preservation, that their capture is simple. The captain of the Westphalia, en route south of New Zealand to Australia, reported passing through a massed flight of mutton birds 30 miles by 6 miles. When they settled down to feed they looked like a reef of black rocks. The Kermadec Island variety is named by the Maori hunters “pia koia” in imitation of its cry. They are preserved by smoke or by pickling in sea water as brine.