BIRDS AND BEASTS

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21256, 30 August 1934, Page 5 (Supplement)

BIRDS AND BEASTS

(By Johannes C. Andersen)

The Pipit

Everyone seems to love the sky- j lark; poets sing of it in their poems, j musicians in their music; and Shakespeare's joyous song starting: Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings, I And Phoebus ','lins to rise has been set to music as joyous as the words by the greatest of songwriters, Schubert. Phoebus, as you know, is a name that has been given to the sun. The skylark was introduced to New Zealand from England, and has taken to this beautiful country so kindly that now you may hear it everywhere, from the towns to j the high mountains; you may | hear it in Hagley Park, on the j Canterbury plains, on the high i mountains that are the companions | of Mount Cook. On those heights 1 have heard them singing, singing at heaven's blue gate, and my heart has been lifted up with their song till it was at the blue gate of heaven too. How pleasant to rove out over the wide paddocks; over the hillsides; catching the scent of the clover, the nutty' fragrance of the gorse; the apple-sweet smell of the young sweet-briar leaves; seeing the golden-centred oxeye-daisy; the red and white campions; the marooncoloured spikes of valerian which some call kiss-me-q'-'ck; the tall spikes of foxgloves—if they have escaped.. Weeds these are called, but they are beautiful all the same, and they are the flowers that beautify the home of the skylark. The skylark?— Yes, and the pipit, too. This is a New Zealand bird, which has been called the ground lark because it is so like the skylark in appearance. Its habits, too, are similar; for it builds its nest on the ground, in the shelter of a clump of tussock or rushes; its eggs are the same freckled brown as the skylark's, though experts can distinguish them by their different shades of colour. In colouring, too, the birds are similar, with this great difference—that the pipit has two white feathers, the outer feathers on both sides of the tail. In some of its habits the pipit differs from the skylark; it is more friendly. If you are walking slowly across a paddock, the pipit will run before you, opening and shutting its tail quickly now and again and so showing the white feathers, as if to say "You see I am the pipit, and not the English skylark." If you are walking along a road the pipit will settle on a post till you come near, then fly to the next post or the next but one, and so keep you friendly company for quite a while. One day I saw what I thought was a skylark rise from the ground, and when about eight feet above it started a soft warbling song; and I thought "There's a skylark singing close to earth as if heaven's gate were on earth—which indeed it really can be." Then I saw the opening and closing tail —and suddenly it struck me—"Why; it is my little friend the pipit showing his colours!" —and I blessed the friendly bird; for it was the first time I had seen the pipit soar, the first time I had heard its soft song. It does not soar high like the skylark, nor iing with the skylark's almost end-

less fountain of song. But there was as much beauty in it, for a violet may be as lovely as a rose, though it is so much smaller. When, then, you next see our friendly pipit, may you think and feel as I always do when I see it— Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings.