Like an eel on legs - Flinders Island residents love to eat mutton bird | ABC Australia

On Flinders Island in Tasmania, everyone can tell you their favourite mutton bird recipe.

Everyone has a couple of birds tucked away in their freezer for a special occasion.

You might know them as shearwaters, the birds that fly a whopping 13,000 kilometres from Alaska to shores around the Bass Strait each year — and then back again.

On Flinders and Cape Barren Islands, they are known as mutton birds, and they are revered and devoured.

The Aboriginal and broader community on Flinders have always harvested birds and eaten them.

Bartering is alive and well on Flinders Island, and the mutton bird is a flowing currency.

As Linden Evans dishes up his smoked mutton bird, he says he doesn't buy meat anymore.

"I swap the mutton bird for other things, crayfish, fish. It's like that here," Mr Evans says.

"Eat up! [It's] a delicacy!"

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