BIRD SONG IN THE FOREST

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 256, 28 September 1932, Page 10

BIRD SONG IN THE FOREST

September and October are the best months in tho year lor bird song in the forest. Early morning, just as tlio grey, soft dawn precedes tho sunrise, sleepy little smothers of sound stir in tho bush. Then, where the old rimus, totaras and matais still stand, as they wero hundreds of years ago, ono gets real bird song—not a lone tui gurgling, nor a bellbird ringing mournfully, but a chorus infinitely lovely, incomparable, but often so brief that looking back one recalls it more as ail unfinished symphony (says a writer in the Auckland Star). Just as one’s whole being stands tiptoe for tho next-—no more. A heavy flutter or so, a call, rustling of leaves, light drifts across the world, and day is here.

Of all our natives, the tui’s song, witli the pure liquid, throaty call once heard never forgotten, is perhaps the most widely known. Since I have left the forest lands of the outback these lovely songsters have frequented my garden here in these older-settled parts, but their song is not the same. Their notes lack just a little of the richness of the faraway natives. Magpies abound in this district, and at times the tuis imitate them marvellously in the challenging harangue that is their particular gift. In all, their notes are harsher, more strident and higher to a slight degree. It is my own idea, and quite open to argument, but perhaps the mere copying of these high and at times raucous notes may have altered tho delicate throat muscles and sharpened the key. Years ago I remember an Hawaiian mother hushing the shrill cry of her baby with infinite patience, training it down to a softer pitch. Upon, my questioning her, she replied, “If the little ono scream so she will never sing; she will make tho singing hard like the scream.” That there is a difference in the timbre is quite obvious when one goes from one district to the other in a few hours and listens carefully. Magpies have outnumbered tuis in about the proportion of ten to one, and although 1 have seen battles royal between odd birds, as a general rule they flit round the garden without incessant quarrelling. J list now the blossoming trees, wattles, flowering currants and japonicas, are alive with birds. A flowering currant, in full bloom, will call a tui from afar and yet one sees quite large gardens bare of this old-fasliioned sweetness. Any twig grows, and 1 have planted dozens this year. Quite by accident I drew a regular bevy of birds round my kitchen window. On the green outside a weeping elm had been attacked by borer, and a friend recommended filling the holes with mutton tat. Shortly afterwards I watched two blackbirds, their yellow beaks busy, filching the fat from the holes; now I refill the holes, more for the fun the little birds have extracting it. Two worked quite a plan ono day—the male pecked at the fat and the female picked up the crumbs that dropped, in true wifely fashion. However, the cat put an end to that domestic bliss, and the little wife now waits patiently on a nearby twig until her lord and master is replete. For months a lone tui controlled the bird life in our garden, or rather forbade it. He was an outlaw and lie allowed no other birds to enter his domain. His heavy wings beat round the house incessantly, and when on odd occasions we would decide he must be shot he would mount the extreme tip of a nearby tree and sing himself a reprieve most gloriously. Other tuis decided that the weaknesses of humans did not coincide with their ideas of right and wrong, so one day he was surrounded by many of his kind, and they put an end to lus bad life.