NATURE NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18173, 19 August 1922, Page 1 (Supplement)

NATURE NOTES.

8T J. DBDMMOND, F.L.S.. T.Z.9.

"The night of December 6, 1921, and the early morning of December 7, at Puyse<rur Point Lighthouse, Preservation Inlet, was thick -with misty rain and fog," writes Mr. R. Stuart Sutherland. " When I reached the'' lighthouse at midnight— my watch was from midnight to daylightvery few birds were about, although their shrill cries were heard as they flew around below, and an occasional crash against the window told of the thickening and closing in of the fog. About 1 a.m., following five or six loutd crashes, I went out on the balcony to see what was doing. Where the long thin shafts oit light were broken by the eddying clouds of mist, some sixty yards from the tower, flocks of petrels were wheeling swiftly. A bird suddenly with a piercing cry, turned partially aside and flew towards the windows. It could be seen clearly as it came nearer, struggling desperately, but in vain, to alter its course. Crashing against the iron framework of a window, it was killed instantly. As it drormed on to the balcony, I picked it up, to discover that it was a mottled petrel, a somewhat rare species at Puysegur Point. I obtained only five individuals of it in three years. "Climbing the ladder to the coping around the lantern itself, I saw seven greybacked storm petrels. Only one of. them, which had a broken wing, was injured. The birds now were crashing in rapidly. Broadbilled dove-petrels were by far the most plentiful. Nine of them struck thoiS panes in less than half that number of minutes. Two of the nine were killed outright, and three were injured badly. Very few birds that strike the panes are injured about the head. The injuries mostly are broken wings, broken Legs, badly .smashed bodies, or, much more rarely, broken necks. Sitting in the tower, a watcher can identify by the sound of the crash the species to which the unlucky bird belongs. I have no record of the panes having been broken. This is somewhat surprising iii view of tho great force with which a mut-ton-bird strikes. I have been told that at the ..uoeraki Lighthouse, panes have been smashed by black swans. '.'. It is hard to find an explanation of the light's attraction to the birds.~-<ls is evi- j dent that they are powerless to resist it. Everybody has seen moths flying into' candles. Large flocks of seabird s wheeling around a lighthouse in the lonely watches of the night is a sight few people have seen." • ;' , . ■ ■ ' :

A strange feature of the appearance of i mutton-birds near the. lighthouse is that : on one night §11 the individuals killed against the "panes are males, and on an- ( other r=ight all are females. They make their burrows, lav their eggs and rear.their . young on Crayfish Island,/ close to the lighthouse, and Mr. Stuart Sutherland suggest B that the sexes take turn about in findino- food for the young. Females with ■ partlv developed eggs have been killed at, the lighthouse early in December. Mot-, tied petrels, which also breed in the dia-11 trict, seem to have the same division of the sexes, all individuals killed on one nicht heir" the same sex. The gqdwit, or kuaka, which migrates between New Zealand and Siberia, is uncommon at the I lighthouse. About a dozen were seen in J three years; only one was killed. . The I pretty little white-eyes, whose migrations have attracted much attention oh land" thio winter, sometimes sit | oh 'the grating' and the"' handrail around the lantern. They -are seen i usuallv in the early morning, about ail hottr before daylight: a few of them are killed. Fairy dove-petrels ,Ure '.'■ plentiful, but not so much so as broad- ' billed dove-petrels, which are in evidence every month of the year, sometimes in 1 hundreds. Mr. J. Bowie, Palmerston } North, j has written. criticising a theory set j up by Professor J. Park, Otago Uni- i versitv. that an extinct glacier, in Pleistor gene times filled the Hautapu Valley, west j of the Kaimahawa Range, in the Welling- | ton Province. Mr. Bowie states that i Professor Park has built his Jbeory *on boulders strewn over hills aroundTaihatfe, but that th' 3 boulders came from an. extinct volcano about a mile from Taihape, and are hot glacial. Professor Park, whether hie theory, is sound or not-—it has been questioned by some other geologists—has collected a good deal of evidence in itt support. Ke describes hills in the district with the smooth-Sowing outlines and ferrates, slopes .characteristic of erosion by glaciers. Many of the higher hills are domed, and the lower hills are hummocky and whale-backed. The Taihane hills are beautifully rounded, coned, and domed. When, he first found the boulders' in clay in the Hantapu Talley, many years ago, he could not decide whether thev came from a local volcanic centre, or from Mount Ruapehu, which rises 9175 feet north of the valley. On a later examination of the district he found that a huge stretch of, country, begining , near the loot of Ruapehu and extending over dividing ridges into Hautapu Valley, '■ i s covered with a sheet, which he describes \ as glacial boulder-clay. / s"\ > The boulders which are andecite. always • are angular, or semi-angular. I®e semi- • angular form is the result of weathering. i Although water-worn material is present, ) it always is a small proportion of the \ material. Near Ruapehu, the boulder-clay $ is composed mostly of clay, boulders be--1 ing absent or few; but after the dividing , ridges into the Hautapu Valley are crossed, , the boulders become more plentiful, until, i in the lower twenty miles of the valley, • thev are the bulk of the material. Below" Taihape, they gradually become fewer, ' and they seldom are seen as far down as i the junction of the Hautapu River and . the Rangitikei River. The boulder-clay . extends some twenty-six miles down the • Hautapu Valley, and the andecite boul- • ders at the southern limit have travelled ' about forty-five miles from their source at \ Mount Ruapehu. The area over which they are spread, as far as the clearing of the forests discloses is from two miles to five mileg wide. Professor Park's «sctinct glacier, to give the theory its application, transported them over ridges from 600 to 900 feet high above the Karioi Flafc.

Professor Park believes that- evidence of glacial action ■yviH be found in many other places in the North Island, notably at Newtown, Karori, and Johnsonville, near Wellington; in the Wairarapa, near the Tararuas; and on the east side of the RUahine Range, perhaps near Woodville; Captain P. W. Hutton, in a map of the area in New Zealand covered by ancient glaciers, shows almost half of the South Island under & continuous sheet of ice. Professor Park, in the light of evidence not available to Captain Hutton, extends the glaciers over most of the South Island and over a part of the North Island. He suggests that they were caused by an uplift of the land by 3000 feet or more, and there Beems to him to be clear evidence that New Zealand's Great I<je Age sychronised with the Great Ice Age of the Northern Hemisphere, in the Pleistocene Period, at the end of the .Tertiary Era. Opposition to Professor Park's theory that glaciers were present in the Hautapu Yalley, seems to be based mainly on the assumption that the ;boulder-cjay is not glacial, but is a deposit laid down by rivers that flowed from active volcanoes now extinct. Br. P.: Marshall and other geologists hav<? expressed an opinion that the North Island,mountains ha\e not been glaeeated, or have not supported large glaciers in recent geologicar jH»fiods. In i many places on the western side of the ~Sonth Island, ancient glaciers l'eachsid.the coast-line, and ;in the eastern side of that ■island they threaded, far through l * moUn- ■ tain valleys towards the coast, but he does not think iJi at New Zealand Pjeiator cene glaciers Wfte eufficiently l*rge ':'&*' ty> an ice-sheet. "...'" "'.--'.>'- .. ■