OUT to sea on the Sunshine Coast, an epic river of flight is
wheeling its way south on the great annual mutton bird
migration. But like every great surge of nature, some of these
long-distance fliers are starting to drop from the skies and
wash up on beaches along Sunshine Coast and Moreton Bay islands.
Biosecurity Queensland test results on several short-tailed
shearwaters, otherwise known as mutton birds, which have fallen
victim to their non-stop mass migration from Russia to rookeries
in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, may be available
today. The Department of Environment and Resource Management
believes the birds were probably suffering from exhaustion after
encountering bad weather along the way. “A similar event
occurred five years ago when short-tailed shearwater birds were
found deceased around Fraser Island,” a DERM spokesman said.
“Tests at that time confirmed they died from emaciation and
starvation as a consequence of the migration.” He said more than
a million migratory birds travelled t