NATURE NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18897, 20 December 1924, Page 21 (Supplement)

NATURE NOTES.

AN ISLAND SANCTUARY.

BY .T. DB.UMIIOND, F.L.S., T. 7..5.

An illustration in the latest issue of the New Zealand Journal of Science shows that one of the most interesting reptiles in the world, which belongs to a reptilian order of its own, and whose nearest relative is the extinct Homceosaurus, an inhabitant of Europe in the Qurassic Period, has a comfortable and secure home on Karcwa Island, in the Bay of Plenty. The illustration is a photograph of a tuatara lying extended on the prostrate trunk of a tree, among a mass of stones and boulders in a cool, secluded nook of the island. Mr. B. Sladden, who visited the. island a few months ago, reports in that journal that tuataras may be seen there in that characteristic attitude. Others, with head and shoulders protruding, permit visitors to draw near before they disappear silently into the recesses of their burrows. Further evidences of their presence are tracks made by their trailing bodies as they crawl along the ground, deposits that contain the undigested remains of black-winged beetles and fragments of parchment-like skin, shed by tuataras. Taken out of the burrows and handled, they seem dull and stupid, and capable of only sluggish movements, but Mr. Sladden noted that when they were disturbed outside the burrows they were active in trying to find refuges.

The flesh-footed shear-water, a member of the great order of the petrels, is the most plentiful bird on the islet. It gathers there in vast numbers in the spring to nest, and hatch its young. The ground in places is undermined with burrows in which the eggs are laid. It is necessary for the shearwaters, in order to roach their homes, to drop through a canopy of the interlacing .stems of a shrub. Some of them become entangled in the .stems and are trapped, and die miserably. The pretty diving petrel ranks next to the shearwater in numbers. It arrives in July, and the young diving petrels are hatched before the shearwater has completed its preliminary domestic arrangements. The bluo heron and the blue penguin also arc plentiful on Karewa. It has few land birds. Among them are the white-eye, and the Old Country's blackbird, and flocks of starlings arrive from the mainland at dusk, spend the night on the islet, and leave again at daybreak. Karewa has been a sanctuary for about seven years. From a distance, Mr. Sladden states, it seems to be suspended between sea and sky. The illusion is very pronounced when atmospheric conditions produce a mirage-like effect. This probably accounts for its name, which means " to uplift."

An incident that came under the notice of Mr. W. W. Smith, New Plymouth, is recorded by him as a warning. A boy ten years of age took him a tin with living spiders in it and asked him to name them. Mr. Smith was surprised to find among them two large katipos, a male and a female. " I caught them with my fingers in grass that grew on the sand," the boy said, in reply to a question. He explained that he picked them up quickly and threw them into the tin. Mr. Smith, who has experimented with katipos for years, has found them always quick to use their falces, or poison fangs, which are movable, hard and sharp. The boy, he is convinced, was fortunate in escaping a dangerous bite. He urges parents to instruct their children never, with • bare hands, to catch or even touch any spiders. The katipo is not the only New Zealand spider which, when seized, • will give a severe wound. He points out that New Zealand possesses an extensive spider fauna, but that little is known of the good or bad characters of any except a few species. Many years ago, Professor A. Bickerton, at his residence on the sandhills at Waiononi, near Christchurch, was asked by his children to. go out and see the toy farms they had made in their playtime. He was surprised to see that in the miniature farms, fenced with sticks and twigs, the sheep and cattle were represented by live katipos, caught on the sand. Katipos, apparently, do not restrict their abodes to sandy, places near the seashore. Mr. P. R. Maxwell, who spends much of his spare time- roaming the Port Hills, near Christchurch, found several under stones on a ridge of the hills, about 800 ft. above sea-level.

Captain 0. Schulze, Wells Street, during one of his voyages in the South Pacific, touched at Hull Island, then uninhabited, lie made fast to a reef, and prepared to look for pearl-shell in the lagoon. A week was occupied in proving that an experiment, made five years previously, in planting pearl-shells was unsuccessful. The result was disappointing, but he marie good use of his time by observing the frigate bird. The island was surrounded and the air black with different species of sea-birds of all sizes and colours. They made a terrific noise day and night. They fished not only in the day, but also ~t night, discovering a fish by the phosphorescent streak it left in the water, and diving down on to the fish unerringly. The nests extended for miles along the shore, only a foot or two apart, each nest with one or two eggs. The sailors, when sitting on deck watching the divers, saw a few black specks in the sky above. One of the specks, with amazing speed, descended, and made a straight dart at a diver that was rising from the water with a fish in its bill. Terrified by the onslaught of a big frigate bird the* diver dropped its fish, which the frigate bird adroitly caught before the fish fell to the surface. On that occasion Captain Schulze found a frigate bird on its nest, which was on a rude platform of sticks in a, scrubby tree, about sft. from the ground. He states that the tropic bird puts up some kind of noisy defence, but the'frigate bird, when disturbed, is passive and mute.

A plant which in the United States boars the significant title king-devil is reported by Mi'- H. H. Allen to flourish in recesses of the, gorges of streams at Mount Peel and Orari Gorge, South Canterbury. From those hiding places it has invaded upper pasture lands and roadsides of the plains in that part of the Dominion, and has appeared north of the Ashburton River. He describes it as bearing long blue-green, somewhat hairy leaves in rosettes, and as sending up wellbranching heads of dandelion-like flowers, which produce seeds that are spread easily by the wind. From its base it sends long arching runners which bend down and root in the soil and, growing vigorously. produce strong now rosettes. Mr. Allen does not hold out much hope of eradicating the king-devil and he suggests that it should be. watched closely, as, like many other undesirable plant immigrants, it may become a serious pest. In Canada it is refused by stock, spreads easily, and when established is tenacious and aggressive. With even a more evil Canadian reputation than the king-devil is a relative, the mouse-eared hawkweed, which has established itself in some pastures near the Hinds River, Canterbury. Another member of the family, the orange hawkweed, has been recorded from Waiau, North Canterbury.