Hawaiian Petrel lays egg in extinct volcano crater
The black-rumped petrel is 2 feet (6 dm) long with a wingspread of 4 feet (12 dm). An ocean bird, has a nesting pattern that is totally inexplicable by any theory of evolution. Call it a miraculous 55-day gestation for a petrel chick – designed by our Creator.
These petrels knows at nesting time to migrate from wherever they are in the broad Pacific – to the Hawaiian islands. How they get there is a mystery. Arriving, they fly all the way up to the top of the extinct volcano, Haleakala, the highest mountain on the island of Maui.
It is said to have the widest crater of any volcano in the world. They nest in that crater. The problem is that it is 10,000 feet (3,048m) up! Their nests are built higher than any other ocean bird nest in the world.
The female lays only one egg, which is set on longer than is done by any other bird in the world: 55 days. It takes 3 weeks just for the egg to form withing the mother! This is because the yolk in the egg must be so rich. They baby will have to live, inside the egg, on that yolk for 55 days.
The mail sets on the egg for 2 weeks, while she is skimming the surface of the ocean,m eating fish. Then she flies up and set on the egg for the next 2 weeks, while the male goes down to the ocean to eat.
At that altitude, there is little oxygen and the air is very dry. This could injure the chick within the egg, since, like every bird egg, it absorbs oxygen and the emits water through tiny holes in the shell. But this egg has fewer holes than any other bird eggs; in fact, just the right amount to let water vapor out and no more. But, even though those are fewer holes, the oxygen still gets in – because it is a scientific fact that oxygen travels through eggshell faster at higher altitudes, and gases come out faster also!
So this egg was “designed in advance” for high altitudes – or all the baby petrels would have died before evolution invented that special egg shell.
After the chick is hatched, because it grows so slowly, it is fed by its parents for 4 months! The parents have to travel long distances down the mountain, and then another distance out from the land into the ocan to get fish to feed it. However, they make a special, rich oil in their bodies which they also feed the chick. This provides it with a rich meal. Otherwise it could not receive enough nourishment since they do not arrive very often with food.
Scientists have tried to figure out why the clicks vary in frequency as the bird gets closer to the wall. They eventually discovered that the tiny bird – with a brain an eight as large as your little finger – does this in order to hear the return echo! The problem eis that the click must be so short and so exactly spaced apart, that its echo is heard by the ear of the bird – before the next click is made. Otherwise the next click will drown the sound of the returning echo.
