NATURE NOTES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21456, 1 April 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

NATURE NOTES

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

KAKAS AS PETS

Appreciating kindness, showing affection, ready to respond to playful advances, sometimes full of mischief, kakas are perhaps the best bird-pets in New Zealand, except the highly-intelli-gent Australian magpies. In the old days every pa or Maori village of municipal standing had its tame kaka, as institutional as the town ball in these civilised times. With remarkable accuracy of tone it mimicked Maori words, phrases and sayings. It welcomed strangers, farewelled visitors, whistled beautifully and danced in the sunshihe to its owner's admiring glances. More seriously it was a decoy, a mokai, calling fellow kakas in the forests to their doom. It was valued more as a decoy than as a pet. Sixty years ago a North Island Maori refused to take £lO for his well-trained mokai. Although old and ragged, it was worth more than £lO to him.

A young kaka taken from a hollow kauri tree by Mr. E. T. Frost became so tame that he gave it complete freedom. Whenever he called, it came from a small bash near the house. At meal times it sat on a chair and took as much butter as it desired. If it chanced to enter the house and saw butter, it immediately went to the favourite food. It hated cats. Its heart thrilled as it swooped down on the house cat when the cat crossed the yard or l<ay stretched out lazily in the sun. A Bcreech and a flutter sent the cat scurrying under the house. The delighted kaka then walked the clothes line upside down and usually was given a spoonful of butter- A neighbour's dog one day got it under the house and it was killed in the scuffle.

A pretty and remarkable sight is described by Mr. Frost. In the spring of 1910 he had some men working for him on flats near the Northern Wairoa River. There was an exceptionally heavy crop of flax sticks, each stalk crowded with flowers filled with nectar. Going out one morning to the place where the men were cutting the leaves Mr. Frost was astonished to see hundreds of kakas on the wing or alighting on the stalks and sipping the nectar by thrusting their brushy tongues into the flowers. He walked quietly into the dense growth of flax and watched the kakas. As some went within a few yards of him he noted and admired ijteijr skill in balancing, sometimes upside down, in order more easily to get the pleasant liquid. They screeched and whistled continually and seemed to enjoy the . honey-sweet meal; and the early morning sun played upon their scarlet and blood-red feathers. Mr. Frost is puzzled to account for the kakas' presence, as no large areas of forest had been left in the district. A small bush of white pine close to the ilax would not attract forest birds at that season. The nearest large area of forest was thirty or forty miles away. After spending several days sipping nectar the kakas disappeared.

Maoris who lived on the peninsula between Manukau Harbour and the sea told Mr. Frost that formerly, at definite seasons, large flocks of kakas flew south. They seemed to come from forests on the Waitakere Ranges. Crossing Manukau Harbour near the Heads they went toward forest country south of the Waikato River. Most parts of the peninsula were densely wooded, and many kakes broke their journey there. Knowing places in the forest specially favoured, Maoris went out and snared kakas in hundreds. The migration, apparently, was annual. Maoris in the district looked forward to it as a means of adding to their stores of food.

On the rolling, tussock/ Gouland Downs, south of Collingwocd, there are patches of forest in which kakas may be seen searching among moss and lichens on the trees, tearing off large pieces and dropping them to the ground. In these operations they search for their meat diet, in the form of insects that live in or under the bark. Nectar, taken from flax flowers, from the rata's crimson flowers, and from other flowers, is only one. item at a kaka's feast. In the autumn, forest berries a,re taken until the kakas' crops are filled with them. There was some prejudice against kakas once on account of their habit of stripping pieces of bark from trees. Mr. T. H. Potts, a charming naturalist of the Gilbert White school, reinstated kakas in popular esteem by pointing out that they attacked only unsound trees, doomed by the presence of countless insects that found food and refuge in the wood.

The stripping of the bark, Mr. Potts explained, hastens the fall of decaying trees, exposes the wood to rain ana moisture, invites the attention of fungi, opens the door to decay, and hastens the sad fate of many a noble tree j but in the scheme of things even this is not an evil to the plant community, whatever it may be to the individual. The falling branches admit light and air to saplings and check the spread of lichens and of other lowly plants; " and when an old stem falls, tottering down from its very rottenness, its place is supplied by vigorous successors."

Miss Mary A. Caldwell, Kaikohe, reports a fresh and interesting observation of the habits of shining cuckoos. She states that she heard a pair of adults teaching a young shining cuckoo to whistle. Every evening, about six o'clock, they went to a gum tree in Miss Caldwell's garden, about 30 feet from the house, and gave the lesson. They began by teaching a little turn at the end of the long whistle. When the young cuckoo had mastered it they began to teach the proper whistle. In about a week the young cuckoo gave the complete call, but with not such a full tone in the notes as the adults gavo.

Miss Caldwell writes: " I think this is very interesting, as it shows that, although a shining cuckoo is hatched by a foster-mother, the parents are not far away. I am sure that this young cuckoo was reared in my garden, but I could not find any signs of a nest. Many grey warblers are always about. These, no doubt, had nests in the gum trees and in the wattles, and the shining cuckoo probably was hatched in oiio of them." When Miss Caldwell left her home for a holiday on December 17 there were at least five or six shining cuckoos always in the gum trees in her garden. Last year she saw a half-grown one in the garden, but this year she neither heard nor saw a single individual since she returned from her holiday on January 31. On January 23 last she heard one at Anakiwa Bay, Queen Charlotte Sound. That is the last time she heard the pleasing melodious notes this year.) j