Meaning of mutton bird | Babel Free

Definitions

Any 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.

Australia, New-Zealand

Examples

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

CEFR level