MAORI NATURE NOTES

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 46, 6 February 1930, Page 9

MAORI NATURE NOTES

FOR TRIBUNE READERS (Copyright—J. H.S.) Readers of the ‘‘Tribune” who are interested in the Bora and bird life of New Zealand, by cutting out these Maori Nature Notes each day as they appear and filing them in a suitable scrap book may compile a book of reference which will be to them a source of pleasure and instruction in the Pears to come. KUAKA, the Godwit, famed in tlie history of migration, as was Cook in that of navigation. The departure in tens of thousands from the Far North is seen by many persons who know to a day when to look for it. The habit is persisted iu by each fresh generation, though it is obvious that myriads must perish on every journey. Departing in great numbers and breeding in the other hemisphere, they return only in scores. But each year finds the quota. Evidently they arrive in scattered flights and unseen. Some day there will be found a more likely reason for the great flight than that it is merely a survival of the age-old habit, confirm cd in them a million years ago, when wo linked up with Europe as ono great continent. They may bo identified by the grey and brown plumage and more than average length of bill. Tho flight of the Godwit from To Reinga is a source of world-wide interest.