Related Excursions
Striking gold!
Travel back in time to Australia in the 1800s and immerse yourself in the sights and sounds of life on the goldfields.
Students are learning to
Students will be successful when they can:
The watercolour illustration of the Mount Pitt bird was probably painted in India. It is believed the painter used the skin of a preserved bird to complete the painting and that it was not painted from life.
The identity of the painter is not known. The artist is known as the Sydney Bird Painter and there are other examples of his paintings of birds from between 1780 and 1800.
Find Norfolk Island on a map with your students, before discussing the following questions whilst viewing the image of the baby Mount Pitt bird:
Share the following story with your students.
Norfolk Island was first colonised by East Polynesian people for a brief period about 400-500 years ago. The first European to sight the island was Captain James Cook in 1774. Norfolk Island was colonised by a small group from the First Fleet, just months after the colony of Sydney was established. By 1790 the colonies in both Sydney and Norfolk Island were desperately short of food and supplies. The crops on Norfolk island had failed and the colonists faced starvation. The governor decided to send the two ships Sirius and Supply from Sydney to China, via Norfolk Island, to get provisions.
Unfortunately, the Sirius was shipwrecked off Norfolk Island. The shipwreck meant that the small and already hungry colony on Norfolk Island had 400 more mouths to feed. The arrival of the Mount Pitt birds, which nested on the top of Mount Pitt, in late March proved to be the settlement’s salvation. Unfortunately for the birds they had returned to Norfolk Island to breed just as food was in shortest supply for the colony. This lucky timing meant the Mount Pitt bird was also called the Providence Petrel. Providence refers to the belief that God is taking care of human beings. The Mount Pitt bird and its chicks and eggs became an important source of food.
These clumsy birds were easily killed. Colonists headed up the mountain at sunset when the birds returned in their thousands to their nests after hunting for food during the day. The colonists collected both the birds and their eggs as food. Some reports suggest that the Mount Pitt bird tasted like pigeon, which was considered a luxury food and a delicacy back home in England. The Mount Pitt bird, or Providence Petrel was also called a mutton bird because their meat had a high fat content like mutton.
Lieutenant Ralph Clark of the Royal Marines was on the Sirius as it travelled to Norfolk Island. His journal is in the collection of the State Library of New South Wales, and can be found here. Ralph Clark believed that up to 200,000 birds were killed as food over just three months in 1790. He tried to record the number of birds killed in his journal, and his final tally for 1790 was 172,184.
Perhaps surprisingly, the danger of over harvesting this valuable resource was quickly realised. Orders were issued limiting the numbers of birds which could be taken and the hours during which they could be hunted. Wanton cruelty was punished and attempts were made to preserve their habitat. Convicts who destroyed eggs or the burrows the birds nested in were punished. The ruling officer on Norfolk Island even attempted to prevent the forest habitat of the Mount Pitt bird from being cleared to help save the species. However by 1800 (only ten years after they began to be harvested) the Mount Pitt bird was extinct on Norfolk Island. Some estimates suggest that over one million birds were killed between 1790 and 1800.The birds only returned to the Norfolk Island area in 1985. About 100 birds are nesting on Philip Island, a small islet off the coast of Norfolk Island. Over a hundred years later it is believed none of the Mount Pitt birds will land or nest on Norfolk Island.
In Activity 1 students are to formulate open and closed questions that express what they would like to know about the painting.
If you are asking a question with a YES or NO answer then it is a closed question. These are not always simple questions!
For example:
An open question requires more than one word for the question to be answered. It might be a few sentences long and require an explanation.
For example:
Students write a short description of a baby Mount Pitt bird. An activity sheet which provides sentence starters can be found as a downloadable resource in the Student Activities section.
Explain the different names for the Mount Pitt bird to your students before assisting them to complete the research task.
The answers to the research task questions are provided below.
What is a Providence Petrel?
A large, robust, greyish-brown bird with a head, wings and tail browner than the rest of the body. They live mainly in the south-west Pacific Ocean region.
What is a Petrel?
Petrels are a type of sea bird. They only return to land to breed.
Why were they called Mount Pitt birds?
They were known as Mount Pitt Birds because they nested in the forests of Mount Pitt on Norfolk Island.
How big is a Mount Pitt bird?
About 40 centimetres long or the size of a pigeon.
How do the Mount Pitt birds move?
They are very graceful when they fly but are very clumsy once they land on the ground.
What do they eat?
Providence petrels eat fish, squid and crustaceans such as crabs.
Where do they breed?
They only breed on two mountain tops on Lord Howe Island and on Philip Island, a small islet near Norfolk Island.
During the breeding season in winter they return to these two nesting sites to raise their chicks. At other times they migrate to the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea.
How do they nest?
They make nests by burrowing into the ground and or hiding in rock crevasses or between the buttress roots of trees.
Providence petrels survived on Lord Howe Island because they nest at the top of high mountain tops.
What are the threats to the Mount Pitt bird?
Predators that threaten the survival of this species include rats, cats and pigs.
They are also drowned when they try to take bait from the hooks used by long line fishing fleets.
Providence petrels are considered a vulnerable species. This means they are at risk of extinction.
How many are alive today?
There are believed to be between 64 000 and 100 000 Providence Petrels in the wild today.
A student:
Students:
EN1-1A
Develop and apply contextual knowledge
Understand and apply knowledge of language forms and features
Respond to and compose texts
EN1-2A
Understand and apply knowledge of language forms and features
Respond to and compose texts
EN1-9B
Respond to and compose texts
In each year of Stage 1 students must study examples of:
Across the stage, the selection must give student experience of:
Learning across the curriculum
Cross curriculum priorities:
General Capabilities: