NATURE NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18019, 18 February 1922, Page 1 (Supplement)

NATURE NOTES.

By J. DHCMMOND, F.L.3., P.Z.3.

Dr. R. Fulton, Dunedin, who has studied the habits of New Zealand's two cuckoos more closely than they have been studied by anybody else, and whose inquiries have extendod to the perplexing habits of cuckoos generally, has written commenting on Mr. E. Chance's exploits hi filming an English cuckoo actually flying down to another bird's nest, removing the legitimate eggs, and substituting her own. All Dr. Fulton's notes on hew Zealand cuckoos are marked by commonsense and shrewdness, as well as by patient study and his comments on the reports of Mr. Chance's work are valuable to all ornithologists. They are useful to New 1 Zealand observers, as the parasitical habits of this country's cuckoos, probably, are identical with the habits of the Old Country's cuckoos, In the first place, he gives a warning that some of Mr. Chance's statements should not be accepted until more details are available. Mr. Chance's startling announcements are made as a olimax to four years' study of one female cuckoo on a Worcestershire common. Dr. Fulton is not satisfied that it was the same cuckoo which was seen on the common each year. He does not know of evidence that young cuckoos are apt to return annually to the places where they were born, although he accepts as undoubted the belief that adult females return to places where previously they had nested. One of Mr. Chance's cuckoos might have been born in the nest of a meadow-pipit, but as several pairs of meadow-pipits nested on the common, other female cuckoos might have been hatched in these nests, and if the theory of return is tenable, they would " be apt to return annually" to the same place.

A statement, that the hour and minute at which a female cuckoo will lay her egg may be predicted, is questioned by Dr. Pulton, because the act is affected by many factors. He asks if anybody can say positively that any bird can lay an egg just when it wishes to do so, and if the act is not partly involuntary. He takes exception to the heading in London newspapers, " Hbw Cuckoos Lay," and suggests that it should be " How Cnckoos' E?"8 are Hatched." He continues : " Mr. Chance says nothing of male cuckoos. He should have seen a fairly large number, and should have many valuable facts to place before us that might throw light on the ourious state of polyanary in which those birds live, and. perhaps, help u s to discover the cause of the strange parasitism among them. It is known that female cuckoos lay at intervals, but nobody knows that they carry their eggs in their bills for a considerable time, searching for suitable homes for their young, and that they have placed partly incubated eggs in the nests of other birdseggs removed from other nests, or carried in their bills until incubation had begun. It is impossible to prove the statement in the report of Mr. Ohance's observations that sixty eggs in four years is a record, as there is nothing to show that one cuckoo laid them all, and it is not known what numbers other cuckoos have laid."

The report of Mr. Chance's observations credits Edward Jenner, discoverer of vaccination—who. by the way, was offered a trip to New Zealand as naturalist in Captain Cook's second expedition, but preferred to practice as a doctor in his native village in England, in order to be near his eldest brother, to whom he was much attached—with being the first to record the act of a young cuckoo in shouldering the owner's young out of a nest. Dr. Fulton states that Jenner was the first to record the act in England, and was elected a Follow of the Royal Society for his work on cuckoos, but that that particular feat by young cuckoos was known since the days of Aristotle, about SSO B.C. It is assumed that Mr. Chance's films show that a female cuckoo, before she lays, removes one of the rigbtful eggs from the nest she has selected, holds it in her bill while she is laying and carries it away when she leaves. The report adds to this item that " cuckoos already had been observed carrying eggs in their bills but they were taken to be their own eggs." In regard to this, Dr. Fulton states that it is wrong to say that female cuckoos always take an .egg from a selected nest. Hundreds oT observers have found cuckoos' eggs in nests that contained the usual number of rightful eggs; in none of these cases was there any evidence that the cuckoo had stolen an egg. In other cases, the shining cuckoo in New Zealand, notably at Akaroa, has been found destroying the eggs of other birds, and, apparently, eating them.

Referring particularly to this country s shining cuckoo—it seems to have some kind of ineffable individuality, as it is regarded with more tolerance bv both other birds and human beings than ■is shown to its congener, the long-tailed cuckoo—Dr. Fulton writes: "New Zes.landers usually hear the beautifully subtained notes of their visitor about th« last week in September for the first time. -As in England the first notes -of the common cuckoo are not what they are a few weeks later, and in New Zealand the first arrivals, the males, are silent, or their 6ong is decidedly shorter and more limited than when the mating season is in full swing. Their courtship notes are entrancing."

In Australia, it is reported, the first shining ouckoos of the season are silent. In warm seasons in Now Zealand the females arrive earlier than usual, and the full songß of the males in those conditions are heard earlier than usual. The males, apparently, wait for the arrival of the females before coming into full voice. Dr. Fulton's reference to females of the common English cuckoo, recently filmed, practising polandry, brings to mind reports that female New Zealand shining cuckoos always are in a minority. The polyandrous practice, evidently, is followed by female cuckoos here.

A good deal of evidence has been collected by Dr. Fulton to show that New Zealand's long-tailed cuckoo is carnivarous occasionally. He hag no doubt that it often robs sparrows and other imported birds of their eggs and young, but he thinks that it is the male alone who does this. "The female, if it ever is a thief, ' he writes, "is no fool, and it is almost certain that it 'refrains from touching the eggs of birds in whose nests it deposits its e gg t Very few cases of egg-robbing have reported against the female longtailed cuckoo, and the cases reported occurred since English birds were imported into this country." According to "Dr. Fulton's observations, and records sent to him by correspondents, this cuckoo— the Maoris' koekoea, kawekawea , and kohoperoa— favours thickly foliaged introduced trees that stand out well fiom the native bush, including maerocarpas, firs, and Finns insignus, which other native birds seldom frequent, and never inhabit. Those trees harbour, in addition to countless insects, sparrows, linnets, and greenfinches, which nest there in large numbers.

Near Mr. H. M. Atkinson's house at Awakeri, Whakatane, Bay of Plenty, there is a lofty plantation, a favourite nesting-place of small birds. His daughter at the end of last year took from the trees two unfledged birds, evidently linnets or greenfinches, kept them, and fed them with earthworms. Some weeks later, when they were fully feathered, one came to an untimely end by thrusting its head through the wire netting of its cage. As the other seemed to fret, its mistress liberated it. Two hours later, to her surprise, she heard it calling from a tree. It. allowed her to catch it. Ever since, it has had its liberty, but it returns to the house when it is hungry, and it is caged at night. One night it did not attend, but on the following morning it was near the house again s.nd called to her as usual. "To-day is very wet." Mr. Atkinson concludes, "and onr pet is having exercise in the house. As I write, it is running about the table."