Rambles along Nature's Highway

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 307, 28 December 1935, Page 5 (Supplement)

Rambles along Nature's Highway

name, Muscicapidae, which is a title simply to the effect that -they are "flycatchers." You only need now to call quite a few small spiders and every small insect "fly" to make the name correct. They search most diligently for all email creatures of this kind. They hunt in pairs at all times of the year, and if you sit in a favourable spot in the bush, say, at the end of a spur, you will be fairly certain to find yourself, in good time, right in the way of two hunting grey warblers. They will pass you, scarcely pausing in the search, which they seem to carry into every cranny and round every leaf. How can they miss anything? For the second picks up almost certainly what the other misses. To those who do not already know the fact, it gives pleasure to find that the grey warbler has benefited many an oichardist. Small noxious insects 'such as aphides are hunted for by the warbler as readily as are insects of the bush. Hard Nesting Work. One part of our recent diary of spring contained a note on the nesting of riroriro. He who meets with this at first hand has a good "find" to his credit. There are remarkable points such as these connected with grey warbler habits of nesting: (1) The hanging nest, which is pearshaped. This is kept from swaying by guys fastened to the surrounding, twigs. (2) The two broods usually reared in one season. (3) The events connected with the presence of a usurping young cuckoo in the case of the second house-keeping.

I should like some day in the bush to end with my seeing exactly how the shining and long-tailed cuckoos get their egg into the nest of the riroriro. Then I should follow up the story until it ended happily for the cuckoo, even happily for the parent grey warblers, but sadly for the riroriro eggs or young birds which the young cuckoo soon throws out.

The eggs of the grey warbler, found in this most comfortable of bird cradles, are of pinkish hue (actually white, with purplish brown spots.) The larger Chatham Island warbler, by far the commonest native bush bird on the Chatham Islands, also lays pinkish eggs in a hanging nest. It is interesting here to remember that the eggs laid by the shining and long-tailed cuckoos are, respectively, pale olive and pale buff in colour.

Of the two broods usually reared each season (counting the cuckoo, which possibly may take the place of a little warbler brood), the first comes early in September, while the second follows closely in October or November.

FLOWER NAMES. THEIR ORIGIN AND MEANINGS. HAVE you' ever considered flower names apart from the .flowers themselves and wondered how they originated. A great majority of the weeds and garden plants here have been introduced to New Zealand from England and naturally they are known by the names they have borne for centuries in their native home. , Very often the name points to some peculiarity in form and colour. There are buttercups, eyebrights, larkspurs, snowdrops and bluebells. The reason for such names and their appropriateness is apparent on examining the flowers. Buttercups, for example, are cup-shaped, golden and were supposed by the country people to enrich the colour of butter produced by cows that fed on them. Before this modern age of rapid travel manv communities and large districts w*ere very isolated. Few people in the counties, except the gentry, ever travelled farther afield than to the towns and.villages near their own parishes. So it arose that some districts had their own names for the plants that grew about them. Manv of these have survived in the rural areas of the British Isles but many more have disappeared with the passing of time. The harebell of England is the same flower as the bluebell of Scotland. Those flowers were called witches thimbles too.

Another flower that has several popular names in Great Britain is the foxglove. The flowers are called dead man's bells in some parts of Scotland and ladies' thimbles in

others, and the Irish peasants kno them as fairy thimbles. Th e Ba * foxglove is most probably. <} er j 7? from folk's glove and .connected wit? the fairies or little folk with who rural fancy peopled all the wf and bogs and glens of Old EmjW It is' unlikely that the flower ■ any way connected with the ifc as the word would at first snog,? So you see it is not wise'tofain to conclusions when assigning ,J ? ings to words. The name of anou," English plant is likely to - mislJ! this is the dogwood tree. Doot VOo j was not connected with dogs. D a j goads or skewers were made fr£' its hard tough wood. Ift Saxon name is translated goadtaV Every country has among" it 8 fJt lore tales explaining the "origin 1 the names of various flowers. Two famous classical legends refer to tt origin of the; hyacinth and the anemone. There must, be some eenti mental reason for such names forget-me-not.

Pansies for thoughts! The word pansy is derived from the Pr enc i. peiisee—a thought. The wild pansy of the English meadows; and laji were called heartsease. It, too had several other names. It was' thi flower that Oberon sent Puck to s ee u and use to bewitch Titania and he speaks of it as A little western flower, Before milk-white, now pumle wn love's wound, y *"* And maidens call it love-in-iiJi eneß! Some plants take their names from a peculiarity of the fruit" Shepherd's purse has a' capsule likj the wallet of a shepherd of olden times. Shepherd's nee'dlea has sharply pointed capsules. Another appropriately named flower is the daisy; the name means day's eye and describes the little' field daisy most accurately as the flower opens and shuts with the rising and setting of the sun. Of course all daisies have not thb habit and some have special names to emphasise some special quality,