THE MIROMIRO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18297, 13 January 1923, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE MIROMIRO.

BX BEN KEYS.

NEW ZEALAND'S TOMTIT.

Km ana, kai ana, te mimiro; Noho ana, noho ana, te titapu. , He koro kai pea, i kaere rail ai, Ki aim kai, e whitu, ki aku kai e warn! Ana o kai, e to atua! Matapiko! Ngakau kino!. I was talking, to an old gentleman of the Ngatirangiwewehi about the tomtit; and of a sudden, with animated gestures, ho spoke the quaint words above-written. " 'Twas a saying of the children in my childhood," he explained, "when we quarrelled over food. If one had refused to give share and share, and then afterwards came to beg from his companions in the silent manner of sitting by, he was rewarded with this taunt and a scrap thrown contemptuously at his feet." The tomtit eats and cats; Ana the bell-bird sits by, sitfl by. one has no food, perhaps, that she comes lo my seven kinds of food, to my eight kinds of food! There, then, i a food for thee, thou disagreeable one 1 . Thou mean one! Thou stingy one! There are two native tomtits, one peculiar to the North-and the other to the South Island in this we have an illustration of the strange fact in regard to New Zealand birds that in several cases the descendants of a parent species have developed different characteristics in the two Islands. The tomtit of the south has ft yellow breast, besides Bome other diversities from its congener of the north; and from all accounts it seems to be less retiring and to have held its own more successfully against the dangers consequent upon the advent of foreign enemies. But the notes in this article refer only to the northern bird. The tomtit, or to use a more euphonious Maori name, the Miromiro, is, I think, the most engaging of, all native birds. It is so small, so quietly exquisite, and so. attractive in appearance and he bits. Formerly very plentiful, it was afterwards thought to bo gradually disappearing, but of recent years I have noticed a great increase in its numbers. About Rotorua, for instance, the sight of one or two in a day's walk used to bo an event of note; yet on a morning in July of 1920, I counted in a couple of hours nearly thirty along the coach road between Paengaroa and Okero. In September of that year I noticed some ai Onekeneke, near Taupo; and in 1921 and 1922, during several visits to Mokai and Whangamata (on the north of Lake Taupo), I saw scores end scores of them. Elsewhere, too, there is an increase. The miromiro mates in August and September; and during those months in 1921, at Mokai, in the Makomako or _ winebury thickets, the pretty simple trill of the male bird was by far the most commonly hoard of all bird songs, except the call of the English Chaffinch.

The Tomtit Eye. The miromiro is about the same size as the fantail, but its tail feathers are not so long and do not spread out fanwise. In colour the male is jet black, with a little white bar over the bill and some white in tho wings and tail, and greyish-white on the breast and abdomen. , The female is very shy and seldom seen I remember to have noticed only two or three in all my observations. In her plumage the feathers are a dingy dark-brown instead of black. The male bird in the mating period commences to trill soon after dawn. Last season I watched one that used to play about in a putaputaweta tree, sinking happilyand I saw that he was awake in the mornings soon after tho skylarks, and before the thrushes and blackbirds. IS a few days he was joined by his lady love, 'but alio was always silent, and much less active than he. When about to sing the male gives his tail a little upward jerk and, setting the crest feathers momentarily erect, he trills the few notes that occupy barely a second of time in the singing. In addition to the marriagesong he has faint little chirp, usually uttered twice in succession and sounding more like a squeak than a bird-note, that seems to come from all sides of the listener at once.

The miromiro is said by the Maoris to bo particularly sharp-sighted and to be especially clover at searching out insects and grubs. Hence the saying applied to an observant person"he karu miromiro," meaning literally, "a tomtit eye" and being equivalent to our hawk-eyed, or eagle-eyed. And the. reference in the lines above quoted to seven or eight kinds of food is based on 4 that same characteristic —the bird's quick sight ensures to it plenty of varied sustenance. Its flight seldom takes it more than eight or ten feet above the ground; and when alighted on a twig it often remains very still for a minute at a» time, sometimes with its head slightly twisted to one side in the most winning fashion. At such times it looks as if it were deep in melancholy meditation, The miromiro does not go in companies or flocks, nor is the male bird timid—rather is It inquisitive and trustful when in the shelter of the trees, approaching quite close to the intruding human. Notwithstanding its smallness, its beauty, and its lovable ways, it was eaten in the olden days, being specially esteemed when converted into huahiiathat is, when preserved in its own fat. A Well-Known Bird. That the miromiro was well-known is shown by i>" number of names it bore— miromiro, mimiro, komiromiro, pimiromiro, mirumiru, ngirungiru, pingirungiru, pirangirangi, kikitori, and pipitori. All these names, except the last three, are probably onomatopoetic; but the miro series possibly refers also to the quick movements of the bird, for the verb miro or mimiro means to twist, or twirl, or move rapidly. The Maori liked to get, if possible, more than one significance into his words —we have good example of this in the modern "paparakauta" for a public house. Strictly, "house" should have been transliterated into "hauhi," but the natives substituted "kauta" to express in the name that tinge of contempt they felt towards the old-time pub. Kauta means cooking-shed, a place that, in their social system, was formerly frequented only by women, or by the persona of low birth, and slaves. The "pi" or "pipi" prefixed to four of the names mentioned above is a generic term for little birds. The habits of the North Island tomtit do .not seem to correspond exactly with those of the South Island species. Speaking of the latter, Mr. Geo. M. Thomson, in his highly interesting book "A New Zealand Naturalist's Calendar," indicates that the bird ia found in gardens and settled places. "I know of no native bird," ho says in one passage, "which has shown so much confidence in human beings as this perky little bright-eyed tit." That cannot, however, be said of the North Island bird. I have only once seen a miromiro near a town, and that was in 1909, at Putiki, near Wanganui, where I observed one in some trees beside a roadside lawn. Certainly it freely approaches bush-settlements and farmhouses; but usually it is found in shrubs and copses on the waste spaces, and in the smaller trees on the outskirts of the bush, though it also lives in the more open parts of the forest. One might safely say that though it does not fear man, it does not desire his constant presence. Perhaps the shyness of the female is responsible for this fact. Yet it has the tomtit characteristic of nesting sometimes in extraordinary places, I heard a little while ago of a pair having built on a beam on a separator in a milking shed. There the hen bird hatched out three chicks, despite the twice-daily noisy operations of the machine; but she ' was • afterwards found drowned in a vessel of cream! The young ones then died in the nest. There is much Maori folk-lore referring to the miromiro, and on-that subject I hope to write some notes at a future time.. ■ .'■■;'■. -- : v - • <;<'