NATURE NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21100, 6 February 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

NATURE NOTES.

BY J. DEtriniOND, F.L.S., F.Z.S.

THE FAR NORTH.

The prettiest sight Mr. E. T. Frost saw when motoring for sixty miles along the Ninety-Mile Beach was thousands of white-fronted terns, dressed in pearly grey and wearing black caps drawn down ever the back of the neck. They stood in regular formation like soldiers on parade. A fresh breeze blew over the beach, and they stood en a stretch of dry sand, all facing the wind, their long tapering wings extended above their bodies. " A remarkable and beautiful sight " is Mr. Frost's description of their spectacular demonstration. His greatest admiration was claimed by two gannets in tranquil Spirits' Bay, at the extreme north. He watched them drop out of the air, dive into the water and come up almost immediately with a small fish. Sitting on a high cliff that overlooks the sea, he was above the gannets. As the sea was calm and surprisingly clear, he could see fish among kelp on the reefs, and he understood how the famous divers, having inherited the faculty through generations of training, have become some of the world's greatest experts. Gannets in the tropics are called boobies by sailors. They certainly are not boobies as far as making their living is concerned, as many a shallow-water fish knows. In any case, they are not called boobies in Nev Zealand, nor yet Solan goose, one of the titles of the Old Country's gannet, used by R. L. Stevenson in a vivid chapter on the Baas Rock in " Catriona." " Takapu," the Maoris'" name, has been dropped, largely by educated Maoris themselves. In New Zealand the gannet is the gannet and nothing else. It favours the northern parts of the Dominion, but visits other parts as far south as Stewart Island, Chalky Sound, Puysegur Point, and even the Solander Islands. Always it is a coastal bird, powerful and not ungraceful on the wing, but ungainly and on land, like the albatross. Apart from the Maoris' natural history, the first record of New Zealand's gannet is associated with a merry old-time Christmas dinner. On December 24, one hundred and sixty-two years ago, Captain Cook's Endeavour, after leaving the Bay of Islands and sailing north, sighted several small islands, probably the Three Kingsi Sir Joseph Banks, naturalist on board, wrote in his diary: " December 24—From a boat they killed several gannets or Solan geese, so like European ones that they are hardly distinguishable from them. As it was the humour of the ship to keep Christmas in the oldfashioned way, "it was resolved to make a goose-pie for to-morrow's dinner. 25th, Christmas Day—Our goose-nie was .eaten with great approbation; ana in the evening all hands were as drunk as cur forefathers used to be upon like occasions." The most conspicuous bird during Mr. Frost's drive on the long beach was the large black-backed gall, sometimes called the Dominican gull, its costume resembling the black and white habits of the . Dominican friars. These seabirds hardly deigned to move out of the way of the speeding; car. They were present in large numbers. As huge Pacific rollers swept up the beach, they often waded into the shallow water and took unwary toheroas that showed themselves above the sand. The shellfishes were quickly seized, carried up into the air, dropped on the hard sand, cracked open and eaten, a. performance that perhaps rivals the gannets' feats of diving. The gull that won the prize in the first place often was robbed of it by another gull that happened to be closer to the ground when the toheroa fell. Smaller red-billed gulls flew about continually and swooped in when they saw an opening while people dug for toheroas in the sand. These gulls know if anybody is digging with spade or hands. A flock soon gathers and goesi within a yard or two of the digger. Mr. Frost states that they seem to Lave a sort of wireless, and that news that something is doing is broadcasted up and down the beach._ The godwit—kuaka in Maori —famous migrant to and from Siberia, graces the beach in large flocks; tut as godwits are shot from motor-cars, a practice that should be condemned and stopped, they are wary, and are not easily approached. Mr. Frost reports that on stormy days they seem disinclined to take wing. They are slaughtered then in large numbers. Here and there a solitary blue heron was seen, flying low. Blue herons are less plentiful on the west coast than on the east coast. They may be seen in greater numbers on the shores of Doubtless Bay, on the east coast of the peninsula. They can wade in calm waters there, and offshore there are rocky islets on which they can find suitable nesting places. This species, evidently, is also called the reefheron, known to Maoris aa matukumoana, dark slaty grey, a frequenter of sheltered rocky coasts, sometimes visiting harbours and inland lakes. A pair for many years has visited, the Sumner Estuary. Mr. W. R. B. Oliver, director of, the Dominion Museum, states that the nest usually i 3 in a cave on the seacoast or on an islet. It is three or four feet wide, and is made of sticks. The hollow in which the delicate pale greenishblue eggs are laid is about fifteen inches in diameter. Dotterels, decked in their nuptial costumes and looking smart in their reddish vests, were fairiv plentiful on both coasts of the peninsula. Mr. Frost, saw a young dotterel that could just fly.. He found that some dotterels go a fair dis- j tance inland to make their nests in hollows in the sand or earth. He writes: " Their nests have been found in a paddock where cows grazed. They do not seem to mind the presence of human beings, coming quite close." On Pandora Beach, on the western end of Spirits' Bay, several lanky white- | headed stilts strode the sand. Evidently : there was a nest close to where Mr. Frost stood on a shingle bed, but he had no time to search for it. The stilts at times became excited. They flew close to the stranger, making short darts and quick turns "and uttering sharp barking notes, like the bark of a small dog. B'inally Mr. Frost refersi to the large, handsome Caspian tern, a solitary bird, often, on the Ninety-Mile Beach, seen on the skirts of a flock of the smaller terns. It is present on almost every New Zealand coast, but not in large numbers. All beaches on that northern peninsula are its home. The species is widely distributed, ranging from paris of Europe and Asia to North America from slightly beyond the Arctic Circle as far south as "California and Florida, and to Africa, the Malay Archipelago, Australia and New Zealand. Mr. J. Peers, Mount Maunganui, Bay Of Plenty, reports that while playing on the harbour beach at low tide some children found a giant jellyfish three feet in diameter and from nine inches to tweive inches thick. It had mauve and orange tints, and when touched expelled a thick orange fluid. On the beach were many other jellyfish, from very small ones to ones anout six inches in diameter. Some jellyfishes measure four feet or more across their discs. The dominant colour is milky blue, but exquisite tints of blue, green, red, purple, brown, yellow and orange are seen in some.