titi
. The
titi
or muttonbird has long since disappeared from the Port and Peninsula hills, but in the Maori days it was plentiful on many such high places. It loved to build on lofty hills, where the soil was soft enough to enable it to make its burrows. There was a cliff at O-te-Patatu, says the
Kaumatua
, where the
titi
lived and bred in great numbers in the long ago. The Maori tribes who lived on the beaches and on the trenched and parapeted promontories made expeditions to the hilltop in the season when the young birds were fat, and caught, cooked and preserved them in kelp baskets and pottles, just as the Foveaux Strait and Stewart Island Maoris do at the present time. But the
Patu-paiarche
who lived on the crags of O-te-Patatu and Tara-te-rehu also hunted these