mutton bird

plural mutton birds · alternative mutton-bird · alternative muttonbird

1. AustraliaNew ZealandAny of various seabirds whose flesh is said to taste like mutton when cooked, especially Puffinus griseus, Puffinus tenuirostris, or a petrel of the genus Pterodroma.

   He dubbed them mutton-birds, for they came like lambs to the slaughter.

   1941, Ernestine Hill, My Love Must Wait, A&R Classics, published 2013, page 186

   3 more examples

   Mutton Bird (Puffinus tenuirostris) Ornithosis Early in 1953 Dr. D. L. Serventy sent us twelve mutton birds from the Bass Strait Islands for another investigation. One of these birds died shortly after reaching Adelaide.

   1959, Monographiae Biologicae, volume 8, page 422

   The oil he sprayed on his customers was derived from the oil glands of mutton birds hunted in the islands of the Bass Strait by the descendants of nineteenth-century sailors and the Tasmanian Aboriginal women they had kidnapped.

   1983, Robert Drewe, The Bodysurfers, Penguin, published 2009, page 17

   Thousands of small birds, Tasmania′s entire population of mutton birds, take flight at the crack of dawn, headed toward Antarctica.

   2000, Donna Eden, David Feinstein, Brooks Garten, Caroline Myss, Energy Medicine, page 260