THE BELLBIRD

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 April 1946, Page 3

THE BELLBIRD

PERPETUATION ASSURED.

Within the last 20 years the bellbird has so increased even in settled and urban districts, particularly in the South Island, that it seems that the bird has adapted itself to the new conditions sufficiently to ensure its perpetuation, writes Mr. R. ,A. Falla in “Forest and Bird.” One factor in this is undoubtedly the variety of its tastes as regards food. In the winter it feeds largely on insects found on the furrowed trunks of broadleaf, under the papery bark of fuchsia and native holly or on the branches of all kinds of introduced trees. Berries are also eaten, especially those of coprosma, fuchsia, cabbage tree, and mistletoe. The native ivy tree, New Zealand flax, ratas, Australian banksias, acacias and eucalypts, tree lucerne and red-hot pokers, all have flowers bearing nectar accessible to a bird with a brush tongue. But it is when feeding on fuchsia or kowhai that the birds give most pleasure, adding acrobatics to their other charms as they hang down in all sorts of grotesque attitudes in their efforts to insert their bills into the drooping flowers. Their fondness for nectar enables us to attract bellbirds to our homes by exposing coloured tins bf sweetened water.

. The .song of the bell birds has much in common with that of the tui even to the whisper songs, jangles, sneezes, gutturals, and chuckles. Towards dusk they utter a succession of notes like the tolling of some distant bell.