Muttonbird Island is the rocky knob at the end of the long breakwater that encloses Coffs Harbour. A sealed and graded walking path climbs the spine of the island in about twenty minutes from the marina car park, and the view from the summit lookout takes in the harbour to the south and the long arc of Park Beach to the north.
Between September and April the slopes are honeycombed with shearwater burrows; the birds return at dusk in great wheeling flocks and call from inside the ground all night. Stay on the path — you are walking over the nests. The same lookout is also the best free vantage in town for humpback whales, which pass close to the breakwater on their northern migration in June and July and again returning south in September to November.