NATURE NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19892, 10 March 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

NATURE NOTES.

BIRDS AND THEIR SONGS.

BJf 3. DEUMMOND, F.L.S,, P.Z.S.

The question why the bellbird sings has been asked. It sings, apparently, because it likes to sing, because it cannot help singing. There is music in its soul, and this must find expression in song. An easier task is to explain how it sings. Like every other bird,. whether songster, screecher, or chirper, it has an elaborate musical-box, placed at the bottom of the windpipe, where it meets the bronchial tubes. Neither the windpipe nor the tongue takes any part in the production of a bird's voice. It is all done by the musi-cal-box, the syrinx, possessed by birds alone. In parrots taught to speak, the tongue helps in distinctness of articulation, but not in producing sound.

The musical instrument is played upon by tiny muscles. Musical talents depend upon the presence, tenseness and strength of muscles which govern a drum-like mem* brance in the syrinx and set that membrance quivering in vocalisation. Some birds have no effective voice-muscies. The rook's syrinx is as highly specialised as the nightingale's, but the rook's voice muscles are defective. It has not sufficient musical ability to take advantage of its opportunities. The ostrich, with its simple syrinx, can only roar. The moa, which was a member of the ostrich family, probably was deficient to the same degree. The kiwi, another member of that family, can only utter notes that are unmusical. Different species of kiwis seem to have different notes. Mr. Allan Cunningham, an Australian botanist, who visited New Zealand almost ninety years ago, and listened at night to the notes of the brown kiwi of the North Island, described them as like those made by a boy whistling with his fingers in his mouth. The big kiwi of the South Island, the rowi or roa roa, has a harsh note written "cr-r-r-ruck, cr-r-r-ruck." The notes of the handsome grey kiwi of the South Island, still fairly plentiful in unfrequented places in Nelson Province, is given as like "kvee, kvee, kvee," repeated sometimes twenty times in succession, with moderate haste, and replied to by a mate by "kurr, kurr, kurr."

In lonely places in the wildest parts of Nelson and the West Coast a person listening at night may be startled by a loud, resounding, rattling boom, coming from the recesses of a mountain forest, or from the banks of a stream. This is the cry of the great spotted kiwi. The notes cannot be represented by words or letters, or reproduced on any instrument. B's, k's, t's and ch's, modified by m's and n's and softer letters seem to come forth in a jumble, making an indescribable sound, more like the roar of a mammal than a bird's sweet music. Although the extinction of the kiwi often is predicted, those strange nocturnal notes may be heard in wild places after the night has completely settled over mountains, valleys and downs, sometimes booming out of the mists, but sometimes in the moonlight. There is no resemblance in them to a song. The kiwi is not a songster. It lacks two of Nature's greatest gifts, song and flight. On this account, it should be pitied,.

Many efforts have been made to describe the bellbird's notes. All differ. None is adequate; none can hope to be adequate. The best is Mr. T. H. Potts: "It may be said to sing matins and vespers for the warblers of the woods, as it is at the grey break of dawn and in the still hour that closes in the'day 'that iis chimes strike clearest On the ear. It is comparatively silent during the noontide heat, unless some few individuals meet on a tree or shrub that offers a tempting show of honey-bearing blossoms. A note or two is briefly sounded; the n* rubers rapidly increase; after much noisy fluttering of wings, a gush of clanging melody bursts forth from a score of quivering throats, forming a chorus of inharmonious yet most pleasing sounds. Nor is the car alone gratified. The actions and postures of the melodists are extremely quaint and droll during this performance, which seems to be undertaken by only the males. It is usually begun by two that perch opposite each other. With swelling throat and puffed-out feathers they deliver note for note with curious precision of. time and swaying action."

With an unusual appreciation of bird songs, Mr. Potts heard more in them than is heard by most people. Living close to the : beach in a sheltered nook at Governor's Bay, Lyttelton Harbour, he was attentive to the wandering voices. He imagined that they affected the air-waves. He supposed the presence of an undisturbed mass- of air, and figures described in it by birds' notes. The sharp, jarring scream *of the quail-hawk would be represented by a figure like a barbed lance; the shining cuckoo's notes would be in gentle sweeping curves; the weka's scream would be an acute angle.. Abandoning figurative descriptions, he heard the oys-ter-catchers piping, the stilts yelping, the terns screamsng and wailing, the harrierhawks barking or breaking into -thickvoiced mocking laughter, the kaka grunting, and the paradise duck "kowonking."

The way of a wasp with a spider has been watched with interest by Mr. J. Mitchell, of Mosgiel. He saw the wasp drag a large spider, alive, across the road. The wasp evidently had a fixed idea as to where it wished to go. Mr. Mitchell several times turned it round, but it always resumed its original direction. The wasp, probably, was one of a common species in New Zealand, Salius inonachus, an active little creature, skilful, determined and ruthless as far as spiders are concerned. The Hon. G. M. Thomson, M.L.C., Dunedin, has often seen one of these wasps standing on the ground or on a stone as if to survey for game. When it sees a spider, he states, it immediately attacks. Springing on the spider's back, and curling up its abdomen, it stings the spider in the middle of the thorax. The spider is not killed. It is merely completely paralysed. In that condition it is dragged to the wasp's bnrrow in. the ground or in a log. This is the part of the operation Mr. Mitchell saw. Several paralysed spiders are pushed into the burrow, When it is sufficiently provisioned the wasp lays her eggs in it. The young wasp, in the grub stage, cats tha spiders. When it has eaten them all it probably is ready to emerge and to begin hunting for spiders on its own account. Mr. Thomson states that spiders have an instinctive dread of these wasps. Even the big trap-door spiders, big enough, and strong enough to smash the wasps with one blow of their powerful claws, seem to "throw up the sponge" afc the mere sight of their enemy. They-become weakkneed and limp, and run in a helpless way until the wasp pounces and quickly gives a stroke, the first, the last.

Little grey owls, brown owls, or German owls, introduced into Canterbury and Otago to check the small birds, seem to have done better in the southern province than in the more northern one. Mr. Iverson for some years kept several caged among rocks near his home on the Upper Clutha. His grandson, Mr. C. Iverson, a post-graduate student at the Agricultural College at Lincoln, heard the characteristic notes of this owl from trees at Ladbrooks, North Canterbury, last year. One evening, at the end of last month, Dr. F. W. Hilgendorf saw a pair on the road near Halswell, near Christchurch, in the glare of the headlights ot his car. The owl, which is smaller than the morepork, evidently has established itself in both provinces*