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NATURE AT PUERUA

HOW SHAGS DESTROY EELS

TWO REMARKABLE PHOTOGRAPHS,

In a letter to the Field Club, read at its meeting this week, Miss Finlay son writes from Puerua;— Signs of spring are everywhere. The little Corysanthcs triloba is flowering (September 8) in the Awakiki bush. It has been flowering for a fortnight past. This little orchid grows right in the bush, often in dense shade, and often in quite a dry place. At present it is usually covered by dead, fallen leaves, and it is only when these are brushed aside that the little plants can be seen. Kowhais are to be late in flowering here this season, and most of the trees have held their, leaves throughout the winter. The little fern, Lindsaya linearis, is commoner than 1 formerly supposed. The fertile fronds at this time of year are yellowish-green on their _ upper surfaces, and, being erect in growth, seems to catch the eye more easily.

The rata blossom last season was glorious, though the flowers were unusually late in opening. At the beginning of March wo climbed a low range of hills overlooking the upper Glenoamaru Valley, and found ourselves looking down over the tops of thousands of flowering ratas. It was a wonderful sight. No one, having seen it, could ever say our New Zealand flowers were Jacking_ in color. Tuis and bellbirds were sipping the honey from the blossoms, flying about, and singing as if they wore glad to be alive. The rata does not bloom so richly every year—perhaps about once in three or four years. The top of this low range would bo a fruitful field in which to study the Ganltheria family. There seems to be three main varieties, and a largo number of hybrids, but this question I leave to experts. . ...... The common manuka in this district seems to spread as fast as any of the introduced weeds. There is a- hill here, which, twenty years ago, used to be quite open. Now it is almost coveied with a dense growth of manuka 16ft to 20ft high, and often Sin or 4in m diameter. The manuka makes splendid firewood, leaving no charcoal and very little ash, but the ground on which it has grown, if cleared, scorns to be very poor, poorer than before the growth of the manuka. I am sending two photographs of a shaff, showing how these birds destroy eels. This bird was shot on the luerua Stream. It was unable to fly because of the enormous meal it had just enjoyed. That is the photograph No. 1. The photograph No. 2 gives an'idea of the comparative sizes of bird and eel. Shags are seldom soon on the Puerua now, but eels swarm there. During the summer it is quite common to see them swimming upstream, nosing under every stone, sometimes two or three together, ihe shag is an outlaw, 1 know, but 1 think he does more good than harm. A few years ago, on a stream that shall bo nameless, i saw bittern catch a trout. It was a June afternoon, when, from a little distance, 1 saw the bird strike at some object in a shallow, gravelly ripple. Fie rose with a trout in his talons, lint in his fright at seeing me close, dropped his catch and flew off. The trout was still alive when I picked it up, but was badly torn, and died almost at once. It weighed 12oz. Native pigeons are still to be iound in this district, though, indirectly as well as directly, the opossum is likely to do them harm. Opossums do eat eggs and young birds, though they are pofc voracious creatures, and on the

whole prefer ,a vegetable diet. Opossum hunters, especially tlie_ poacher variety, often carry pea rifles, and pigeons make a welcome addition to tho menu. Every bit of bush, even the most isolated, is now searched through and through by the man looking for the good trapping ground. Last year a little grey owl’s nest in an old barn was watched. When first found three young owls were in one corner, in the other was tho larder containing three thrushes and two blackbirds, all without their heads. Tho next morning two native larks were added to tho heap; they, too, wero headless. Grey owls are often caught in rabbit traps. They do not seem to increase very fast in this district. It is surprising how some birds will take to a diet which must be foreign to them. A native lark which used to come about the garden learned to cat bread crumbs, and seemed to look eagerly for them. One winter, a pair of kittle bush wrens, or riflemen, which used to come looking for spiders round tho windows, learned to eat crumbs laid on the window sill, and came every day about the same time looking for tho food. This same pair of wrens, later in the season, appropriated an empty tea tin under a tank by the back door, and built their nest and reared a family there. Four or five red-fronted parrakeets have made their home in the Awakiki bush for more than a year now. Brown creepers, too, are always there. _ A little over two years ago a pair of bush hawks built their nest in a patch of bush at Gienomaru. The nest was built on a tangle of lawyers at the edge of a small open space. It would he 7ft or Bft from the ground. The foundation seemed to be loosely made of a few sticks and large twigs, and the nest itself was made of strips of fuchsia bark and dead dry leaves of cabbage tree. it contained four brown mottled eggs. Both birds made fierce demonstrations against visitors. The nest was not interfered with, and the hawks reared their family in peace. . . . Waxeyes wero very numerous last autumn, and did a great deal of damage to fruit. They came quite suddenly in large flocks. Old inhabitants say that it is more than twenty years since the birds were as plentiful here. Many of them have survived tho winter, too, and seem very bright and lively. Last summer 1 watched an old thrush feeding an almost full-grown young bird. The old bird was hunting for worms in the grass, and the young one was following. All at once the old bird pulled a flower of tho “cat’s ear,” that yellow pest of grass lands, beat it well, and fed the young bird with it. Starlings, too, sometimes give the flowers of cat’s ears to the young birds. A pair cf starlings built in a close-clipped macrocarpa, and on several occasions 1 have seen them pull off flowers of laburnum and red ribes of flowering currant and lay the flowers round the nest. This looks like a decorative instinct showing itself. Is not the satin bower bird of Australia a distant relation of the starling?

Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ESD19261008.2.83

Bibliographic details

Evening Star, Issue 19375, 8 October 1926, Page 8

Word Count
1,159

NATURE AT PUERUA Evening Star, Issue 19375, 8 October 1926, Page 8

NATURE AT PUERUA Evening Star, Issue 19375, 8 October 1926, Page 8

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