BIRDS OF BANKS PENINSULA.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20630, 20 August 1932, Page 16

BIRDS OF BANKS PENINSULA.

PIPITS AND ROBINS. The third #itide in The Press series devoted to the interests of the \ outli Hostels Association in Canterbury and its itineraries on Banks Peninsula is by Mr Johannes C. Andersen, Tiitnbull Librarian in Wellington, who has made a special study of New Zealand birds. The fourth article will appear next "Wednesday. There is one thing sure: when you are walking on the hills or whiling in the bush your thoughts are free from the distractions of the town and its business; your eyes and ears are more alert to the sights and sounds around you in their infinite variety. You have left the homes of men for the homos of the birds; auH as you find your world within four walls, so the birds find theirs under tho open vault of Heaven. And here you join them for a few blissful hours. Over the hills of Banks Peninsula on a summer day one of the first arresting sounds you hear is the song of the skylark, tho favourite of Heaveu, of children and of poets. You will at once have ringing in your mind what Wordsworth wrote of it, what, Hogg wrote, what Shelley wrote, what Shakespeare wrote; —but listen to the words of one of another tongue: La gentille nlouette avec son tire-lire Tire lire a lire lire-lirant tire Vers la voute du ciel, puis son vol vers ce lieu Yire et desire dire adieu Dieu, Adieu Dieu. True, the favourite of Heaven; and the old French writer heard the sounds that Shakespeare heard when he said The lark which tirra lirra chants. Listen; and you will hear that, though the homo of the skylark has been changed, his greeting to "le bon Dieu," which we arc privileged to hear, has not. You will see him on the hillsides, too; but most of those dainty greybrown birds you take for skylarks are not skylarks at all; they are New Zealand pipits, our own ground-lark. Hero on the open hills is something to watch as you walk along; watch the pipits. They do not soar like the lark, do not sing at Heaven's gate like the lark, their more usual notes being the ones that gave them tlicir name. They nest like the lark on the breast of mother earth under the lee of a tussock or tuft of grass, and their eggs are like those of the lark, a stone grey or warm creamy grey ground thickly covered with spots and speckles of brown in all shades, from light to dark edging into purplish. Vou can at once distinguish a pipit, however, by the two long white feathers oil either side of his tail; and as lie is fond of sitting near you for a moment, flicking that tail, you cannot fail to see the whites when lie turns, flies off to a little distance, sits and waits for you again, and so precedes you for chains — especially if there arc fence posts on which he can sit and wait for you. lie seems to like, your company: and there is no harm in your thinking he does so. Blackbird or Thrush? As you go on you are sure to hoar in a clump of bush at some valley head, or in a not far distant plantation of introduced trees, the songs of thrush and blackbird. Of the former the notes can usually be vocalised; the note of tho latter is more flute-like and definite in its phrasing;! .but 1 can never be certain as to whether the bird I am listening to is thrush or blackbird, and thnf only makes me listen the mor?, with never-failing gratification. Tho skylark, thrush and blackbird have penetrated far into our Alps; I have heard them in the first hours of summer mornings away up in the Malte Brun Kango, and over the valleys and steep mountain sides confining the milky Tasirian. There, too, I have heard the chaffinch, with its white barred wings, have heard his "chimp, chimp" call, and his little roulade "chichi chichi clii wittaweeo," where ho runs quickly and incisively down a chromatic seale, with a flourish at the finish. Tn the heat of the day you may be lying at a valley head, and from some copse or brush near by, but sounding far enough away, &n upward-slurred, burred whistle, "bttth," sleepy-sound-ing and lulling, it may come from that brush across the valley, but as you listen it might as well be coming from a, valley in those dreamy mountains you see in the distance across th;? plains; and you will think of Tamlane —

The queen o' {aerie she was there And took me to horsel. And a. dream will naturally follow, from which you will bo rudely awakened with a "time's up,'' and off yon march again, with another dream taking the place of the one disturbed. You will probably liear the lialfplaintive "tweeee" of a goldfinch, if you do not catch sight of the red and the yellow. A Scotch thistle is usually considered a harsh and repellent invader, a "nemo mo,*' etc., sort of a fellow, on which you feel like proving the contrary. But when you sec how the aggressive interloper is graced by the dainty goldfinch, which is courted by the lioary head of the prickle-bearer, you begin to think that after all lie may have flowing wells of bounty that you had not dreamed of. Driven by the sun or lured by the shade, should you win past the barrier of bush-lawyer and parsonsia and convolvulus that fling their protective entanglements around their beloved bush, perhaps you will, be blessed avi th a sight of some of the dryads protected by these stubborn loyalists. A longlegged, beady-eyed robin may suddenly appear. If you are seated there von may hear him announce liis coming in five or six clear staccato whistles, running down the scale: and with five or six staccato hops he is before you and stands for a few moments like a carven image. He is usually on the ground or low in the foliage; a habit that has been largely his undoing. Or you may be visited by the little yellow breasted tomtit, with his soft cascade of song; you will admire his velvety black cap: and note that liis mate is all sober greyish. If von should be lucky enough to catch her and her mate at their nest in the shallow hole in the niahoe, you will hear her singing softly to her young ones as she brings them tit-bits of lace-wing, or caterpillar, or spider, and you will see how different ho is; solicitous, but fussy and suspicious. Vanished Birds. You wilJ see no more the saddleback, or kokalco (the so-called Xew Zealand crow), which used to be so common on the Peninsula; but you may hear the "be quick, be quick, take 1110 back, take me back" of the bright green parrakeet, or the harsh linnetlike whistle of the long-tailed euckoo, or the silvery slurred call of the shining cuckoo, or the plaintive trillinjr song of its dupe, the riroriro. Xor will you hear the cry of the Maori quail, after whie'i Quail Island was named, but you may hear the call "Miss Harper, Miss Harper," or "Maewhirter, Macwhirter" of its Californian and Australian cousins. Plenty to watch and plenty to listen to; and I have said nothing of the tui or the bell-bird and their musical or cacophonous rivalry; of the silent j

trees where they chimo their bells or whisper their love lyrics, or sing in now diminished numbers their predawu chorus—Was it praise or joy, or somp emotion unknown to us, but which we may yet learn from them as we court the dim shades after enjoying the sunny heights'? I hen a way again. As the map view broadens and all Canterbury is under our ken, our breast expands and outown view is broadened too.