FREAK BIRD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 303, 22 December 1932, Page 9

FREAK BIRD.

WHITE-EYE SONGSTER.

MISTAKEN FOR NIGHTINGALE.

identification by expert.

A report that a nightingale had been ieard singing at Balmoral Road, Mount Eden, in the locality between Dominion Road and Pine Street, was investigated early last evening by a number of interested people, including Mr. R. A. - Falla, ornithologist at the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

At the expected time and place —an acacia • tree in the front garden of a iQUse fronting Balmoral Road—the bird burst into song. Mr. Falla identified it as a . white-eye, a small bird of greenish plumage which is fairly widely known also under the names of blight-bird or wax-eye.

strange part of it is that the white-eye has no reputation as a songB ter. Its plaintive cheep as it flits to fnd from trees and shrubs in gardens j® well- known. According to authorities lot. one in a thousand sings, and its song has only been recorded in very dry summers.

Mr. Falla said that four weeks ago at Devonport he heard a strange bird-song «arly one morning, and on investigation found that it was a white-eye perched high in a tree. When informed yesterday that a nightingale was making melody at Balmoral he was fairly sure that it was a white-eye, but he felt that a trip out there was well worth while to make : sure.

; 'But for the fact of identification by Mr. Falla the Balmoral white-eye would Certainly have been classified in the locality as a nightingale. Its notes last evening were like the trilling, of a tanarv, and Mr. Falla said it was the nearest approach that one could have to the song of the nightingale.

The wliite-cye is a migrant, and first Wade its appearance on the West Coast of Now Zealand about 1856. It was probably blown across from Australia. The Maoris called it the Tauhou, which means "stranger."