MAORI NATURE NOTES

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 73, 10 March 1930, Page 7

MAORI NATURE NOTES

FOR TRIBUNE READERS (Copyright—J.H.S.) Readers of the “Tribune” who are interested m the Hora and bird life of New Zealand, by cutting out these Maori Nature Notes each day as they appear and fifing 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 years to come.

PIOPIO (upmbers), the Native thrush, in habits ridiculously like his English cousin, who his forbears cannot have seen in ten thousand years. Like the imported birds, he came down beside the man who intruded upon his garden in the bush, and watched from the corner of his bright «yu while he sat back to haul a worm from the packed soil. Dr. Buller and Captain Cook both observed its marvellously swift flight through the tangled undergrowth, and each regarded it as among our best songsters. A fat thrush, spitted on a stick before a glowing rata fire in the bush was a favoured dish by the Maori, anil indeed by the bushfeller whose hunger killed all sentiment. They were once found in thousands at Piopio on the North Island trunk line, and gave their name to the locality, which, with their memory is now all that remains. OTil diggers say they used to hop iriTo the tents at daybreak in search of crumbs, while yet the men lay on the bunks and watched for their coming.