NATURE NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18891, 13 December 1924, Page 1 (Supplement)

NATURE NOTES.

MAKING FRIENDS WITH CUCKOOS.

BT J. DRUMiIOND, F.L.S., F.Z.S.

-\s a member of the Government tri angulation survey party, Mr. J. M. Graham, Ohinepanea, Bay of Plenty, had many opportunities during the past few months to visit the haunts of New Zealand's two cuckoos. He saw the longtailed cuckoo for the first time this season, on October 21, when he was on top of Mount Te Aroha; the cuckoo flew across the gullies below, uttering its peculiar shrill notes. Shining cuckoos were plentiful near the mountain, and often were heard in stately pines in the public gardens in Te Aroha. At Mount Otawa, Te Puke. Mr. Graham noted the longtailed cuckoo's ventriloquial qualities. At first, he found some difficulty in discovering the position of the cuckoo, but in a short time it could be seen flying over the ridges below, or circling above, its long tail and fluttering wings giving it almost an artificial appearance.

.Mr. Graham supplies the following account of his acquaintance with the cuckoos:—"l have imitated the lung-tailed cuckoo's weird notes, while 1 remained motionless. It has circled overhead, but coming closer ami closer, until it discovered that the whistle that answered it was merely an imitation by a human. It then, in most cases, dived with surprising, rapidity into the bush below, much in the same way as a gannet dives from up-top into the water. The long tailed cuckoo is shy toward humans. 1 have seen it hiding in a tree, with its body, head, and tail flush along a branch. In that position, its protective colours made detection of it difficult. A male and a female tui indignantly chased that same long-tailed cuckoo from their tree, pursuing it until it was a fair distance away. Alongside our camp there is a beautiful big weeping willow. A 'Lining cuckoo that lives in it seems to Law a tolerant, even a friendly, disposition, in spite of the fact that our galley smoke often enters its abode. By standing below and imitating the last falling-away note peculiar in the call, I can induce our friend to answer. 1 was so successful that I sometimes had to relinquish my effort to outlast the songster, as the sustaining qualities of my whistling powers are very limited. It then repeated its song a few more times, as if to show its superiority. Occasionally, when the sun was rising, it settled on the top strand of a wire fence. Although the possessor of a brilliant sinning coat, beautiful as only Nature can beautify it, that cuckoo in a democratic spirit, .seemed to enjoy the company of two common, drah sparrows, who tried vainly to synchronise with Prince Shining, as, with wide-opened bill, he uttered his plaintive but pretty song."

"Starlings are well known as clever imitators of all kinds of noises," Mrs. E. M. L. Haeusler, writes from Milford, Auckland, but the following incident is sufficiently interesting to be recorded: —"Early ono morning, about five months ago, I was surprised to hear a voice call out 'What say '/' from the roof just above my bedroom window. The words were spoken quite distinctly and were an absurdly close imitation -of my own voice in the question '"what do you say !" which 1 had frequently to ask my husband in the next room. The speaker was a starling, one of a family hatched under our roof. For some time the bird seldom asked the question more than once in one morning, but later it called out many times in succession and regularly answered when I put the same question to it. On the occasion when he called out the two words another starling answered in exactly the same manner from the roof of the. shed. The effect of hearing those birds apparently speaking to each other in their own usual language, and every now and then asking quite seriously. 'What say ?' was very comical."

New Zealand's daddy-long-legs are receiving a great deal of attention from entomologists at present, more, perhaps, than any other group of insects in the Dominion, except the moths and butterflies. Among those who have collected specimens are Messrs. C. C. Fcnwick, in Otago, T. R. Harris, in Wellington Province, E. S. Gourlay and J. \V. Campbell in Canterbury and on the West Coast, G. V. Hudsou, in Wellington, W. G. Howes, in Otago, S. Lindsay, in Southland, and M. N. Watt, in Wellington. As a result of their activities, knowledge of the daddy-long-legs in recent years has been developed more rapidly in New Zealand than iii any other country. At the end of 1918, 57 species of those insects were known; no fewer than 350 species are known now and fresh additions are being made. The latest contribution, as far as working out the involved relations and systematic positions of the species is concerned, is by Dr. C. P. Alexander, a member of the entomological staff of the Amherst Agricultural College, Massachusetts, United States. One species was found by Messrs. Campbell and Gourlay in large numbers near the Avon, about five minutes' walk Horn Cathedral Square, Christchurch. It has been reported from no other place except Opawa. Members of this species are described as being like harvest spiders not only in appearance, but also in their movements, as they have the same springy gait. Mr. Gourlay states that they delight to hang motionless on tall grassblades, while they bask in the sun. He caught a fairly large number in half an hour on a hot day.

Rounded and angular volcanic boulders scattered in blue clay at Abbotsford, a few miles south of Dunedin, apparently were carried by a glacier in New Zealand's Ice Age, from high hills which ring three sides of the Abbotsford Basin, and which are crowned by volcanic rocks. The boulder-clay formation occupies the floor and slopes of the basin. It ranges from n, few feet in thickness to 40ft. and from about 100 ft. above sea-level it. rises gently to 475 ft. Examined under Professor J. Park's microscope, silt that occurs in pockets in the blue clay is seen to be rock-flour, material which glaciers grind from rocks in minute particles, and which gives the milky tinge to rivers that flow from glacial regions. The blue clay occurs in pockets at different altitudes. Professor Park believes that it. accumulated in hollows where the glacial waters were pounded by ice-dam l -. He has examined boulder-days at the foothills of the European Alps and the Vosges Mountains, in Aberdeenshire and Morayshire, in the English lake country, in North Wales, on the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, and on the shores 01 Puget Sound, New Zealand; and he knows of no agency except ice that could have formed such a heterogeneous deposit as the Abbotsford boulder-clay.

Investigation.s by Professor J. Malcolm. Otago University, and Mr. T. I>. Hamilton, show thai the paua, usually spell. pawa, one of the commonest shellfishes in New /.calami, used by Maoris as food, as well as lor ornament, has a fairly high food value. They state that an adult paua. weighing about 200 grammes, probably is as much as one person would wish to eat in one meal. It would yield 5 grammes of fat, 4 to 5 grammes of inorganic matter 2.5 grammes of glycogen, and about 28 grammes of protein, and there would be about 10 grammes of substances of uncertain food value. Ihe paua is comparatively rich in inorganic silts.