NATURE NOTES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21763, 31 March 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

NATURE NOTES

BY T. BBUMMOXD, F.L.S., F.Z.S

WEKAS IN GAMP

For many years wild life in the Karamea mining district, in the north-west corner of the South Island, was almost undisturbed. Conditions were not unlike those that early prospectors and explorers knew. The Government mining scheme, with its weekly subsidy, has added a human population to the place, but more enlightened views are held of the older inhabitants' rights. Birds at least are not molested with the thoughtlessness of days when there were no protective laws. Writing from the Parapara River, Collingwood, Mr. F. Eyre announces that wekas, which the law strictly protects, are very plentiful in the district. They are more than holding their own against all the enemies that come against them. Flightlessness is a disability. In the wekas' case it has not proved disastrous. They prosper in spite of their ability to use their wings for fighting only, not for flight. If their wings functioned in the ordinary way, New Zealand hardly would be able to hold them all.

They enliven the mining camps. There, as elsewhere, they are the most popular birds. They are looked upon as camp-followers, bright and cheerful, sometimes mischievous, but well loved for their happy and friendly dispositions. Stoats and weasels are their worst enemies, but they are not always defeated by these cunnnig and savage creatures. Mr. Eyre saw a fight between a weka and a fully-grown weasel. It was long and bitter and the result was in doubt at times, but it ended by the weka slaying the weasel. It was incidents of this nature that led Mr. H. Guthrie-Smith to pay a splendid compliment to •wekas as forest rangers. " Their presence," he wrote, "is an unmixed blessing to wood-robins, tomtits, yellowheads, whiteheads, tuis, bellbirds," wood-pigeons, parrakeets and other native birds, which owe their lives to the wekas' ceaseless vigilance, to their policing of the forests, to their patrol by day and night. If any serious interest comes to be taken in our native birds the most efficient method of preserving the smaller, tree-nesting species is in the propagation of wekas. Of all birds that deserve our care they come first. Assistance withheld from them is help denied to half the indigenous birds of New Zealand."

The usual complaint against South Island wekas is that they are too forward and familiar. Mr. Evre records an instance of this. A weka played fast and loose with a miner's belongings. The crisis came when the miner's safety razor disappeared. The weka was convicted on circumstantial evidence. The angry miner was contemplating punishment when Mr. Eyre met him. Instead, he calmly made a hole in the ground an inch deep and an inch wide close to the door of his tent. Into the hole he poured quicksilver. Again and again the vreka pecked the glittering globule and tried to take it up. When, finally, it turned tail on the elusive button, the miner told Mr. Eyre that in -the weka's dis comfitu're he had got a little of his own* back. Mr. Eyre sees a characteristic love of home in adult wekas' difficulty in getting rid of their fully-grown young ones. In his garden, when he wrote, there was a battle-royal between an adult female and three young ones she wished to send out into the world. The female raised a single brood this season. Previously it raised two in a season. It made a practice of following Mr. Eyre along an onion row and pulling out the plants as fast as they were put in, glancing up at Mr. Eyre, not at the plants.

One of the most familiar species of birds in Mr. Eyre's garden is the yel-low-breasted tomtit. He has to stand for only about a minute with hoe and spade to see a tomtit alight on a twig hard by, and to listen to its "peeppeep " * until the ground is broken. Tomtits will not touch an earthworm, but a white grub will tempt them under the moving spade. Tuis and bellbirds are plentiful and feed within arm's reach. Bellbirds are quarrelsome. They hunt smaller birds until they are exhausted, apparently only for sport. Wood-robins do not visit the garden, although in former years they swarmed in that part. To find them plentiful it is necessary to go back into rougher country. The shining cuckoo and the' long-tailed cuckooe' were plentiful this season. White-eyes are the usual foster-parent for young cuckoos. Hawks are conspicuous by their absence. Mr. Eyre has seen only one in three years.

No camp on the field is without its friendly pipit, or ground-lark. Only one is attached to each camp. Mr. Ey re's is one-legged, devoid of any signs of ever having had two legs. He watched a pied fantail descend on a bluebottle and take it in its claws. The fantail, using its claws, fastened the bluebottle to a twig and dismembered it. This incident is accepted by Mr. Eyre as evidence that midges and sandflies are not fantails' only food. Every night a pair of kiwis come to feed at a creek near the hut, taking earthworms and grubs let loose by the day's sluicing. Bird-life at Farewell Spit was verv interesting to Mr. Eyre. The open nature of the spit makes approach difficult and supplies an excellent sanctuary for swans, geese and waders.

A scone not unfamiliar in New Zealand, but always strange and interesting, attracted Miss M. Hall, Arapopae Road, Levin, in the last, week of February. Going into the garden about noon, she heard unusual cheeping notes. She looked around, and was surprised to see a young shining cuckoo sitting on a twig* and calling lustily. A little grey warbler, acting as foster-mother, flitted to and fro searching for insects to satisfy the cuckoo's robust appetite. As the well-dressed cuckoo sat there loudly proclaiming its hunger, its striped vest shone brightly in the mid-day sun. The grey warbler from time to time flew to feed the cuckoo. After receiving an insect, it demanded more with renewed vigour. The grey warbler was about the same size as the cuckoo's somewhat big head, and the sight was very amusing. Thev came every day at noon for about a 'week. For several days afterwards the cuckoo came alone. When Miss Hall wrote on March 17 it had finally disappeared.

Miss Hall points out that the cuckoo was hatched unusually late in the season. Watching a grey warbler's nest that contained a cuckoo's egg, Mr. W. W. Smith, New Plymouth, noted that the young cuckoo was hatched on September 26. Bv September 30, having grown rapidly, it was almost large enough to fill the nest. By November 2 there were signs of feathers on its neck and wings. On November 5 it was in sole possession of the nest, four young grey warblers haying one, if not more, of starvation. Mr. Smith took the nest and the cuckoo home. The cuckoo seemed to thrive on small earthworms, crabs, flies, spiders and very small pieces of lean meat. It came out of the nest on November 15. It took three hearty meals a day, rapidly increased in size, but became sickly, and died on November 21.