THE PRICE WE PAY FOR PROGRESS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23507, 18 November 1939, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE PRICE WE PAY FOR PROGRESS

Lovely Dawn-son£s Lost

By KOTARE

I WOKE the other clay to find the East troubled with -morning and the early choirs in full voice flooding the world with their harmony. But of all the chorus only two,' so far as I could judge, were native birds, and one of these was a newly-arrived migrant. ..The English thrush, "the throstle with his note so true," seemed the self-appointed leader. But I am not so sui-e about the note so true that Shakespeare praised. Time and again X -hare heard the cuckoo's distinctive cadence in richer tones than his; never the full song; but snatches of it. He is a forceful personality; j'our cuckoo. He compels the little grey warbler to work overtime bringing up his intrusive family, and. lie has rich songsters in their own right dropping part of their own special songs and adopting his own bold taunting phrases. He must have a way with him. Ho was in fine fettle this morning, apparently monarch of all he surveyed. "Kui, kui, kui, whiti whiti ora" came, ringing triumphant and clear. There is nothing sentimental about his carolling. His note is hard and full of the sense of his superiority. He strives with none for none is worth his strife—that seems his attitude to birddorn in general. The Grey Warbler We cannot blame him. He has crossed the wide leagues of ocean. without mishap. What can these poor stay-at-homes put alongside that proud achievement? Hbme-keeping wits are narrow and dull anyway. He honours them with his company till he takes to the road again. But he expects the deference due to one who has seen the world, and proved himself against space and the elements. ■ As an undertone to his proud selfassertion came the delicate diffident sweetness of the grey warbler's song, to some of us the most significant of all the songs of the bush. There is shyness Here, modest self-depreciation. The plaintive cadence runs through its appointed phrase again and again, exquisite in its curious tuneful 'tuuelessness. The humble lot is accepted as in the order of things. Destined to fill a little place, dragooned into taking over, the thrustful cuckoo's domestic arrangements, it makes no protest. It is a puzzling world and what must be must be. The authorities debate whether there., is any genuine emotion in the songs of the birds. Some say that they simply follow mechanically the native forces within them. Circumstances have really nothing to do with any characteristic quality the ear of man or his imagination may detect there. l am the veriest amateur, but I have heard a raucous startled note from a blackbird in the grip of sudden fear, a note that bore no slightest relation to the rich swelling tones of his usual song. And if a strong emotion produced the distortion of the song it is at least possible that there is some genuine ecstasy in his normal .thrilling performance.

A Lost Glory But as I lie listening to the two native voices among the trees my delight is mingled with regret that for me on this perfect spring morning in my city environment there are but two. Once three-quarters of New Zealand's area was covered with forest. Food supplies and shelter were" there on every hand. There were no natural enemies to check the increase oi: the bird population except a small proportion of predatory birds to maintain something of a balance. The bjish must have been a living mass of birds. The whole countryside must have rung with tumultuous paeans of praise. But we have changed all that. The scarred stumps of the bush-burn give no harbour to a teeming bird life. The native bird has not the power of adaptation given without stint to the vigorous aliens imported from other lands. The weasel and the wild cat fare sumptuously on the defenceless creatures of the wild. Never again shall we know the ecstasy of music that greeted every morning the ears of the early pioneers, and to the accompaniment of which they went forth'each day to conquer the soil.

When Captain Cook lay in Queen Charlotte Sound lie, was moved to a rare burst of poetry as he heard the morning chorus across the water. "The ship lay at a distance of somewhat less than a-quarter of a m9e from the shore (note the navigator's passion for exact nautical data) and in the morning we were awakened by the singinc of the birds; the number was incredible and they seemed to strain "their throats in emulation of each other. The wild melody was infinitely superior to any we had ever heard of the same kind; it seemed to be like small bells exquisitely tuned, and perhaps .the distance and the water might be no small advantage to the sound." Dr. Felix Maynard But the locus classicus on bird music in our literature, is in ."The' Whalers," written by Alexandre Dumas from the notes of the French whaling surgeon, Felix Mavnard, and brilliantly translated by Mr. F. W. Reed v of Whangarei. Maynard is on Banks Peninsula. He hears suddenly, the note of a bell. He assumes from,his French background that it is a goat's bell. "No, it was not a goat's bell, it was the bell of a bird, of that bird which, every night, gives the signal for the magic concert that the plumaged artistes of the austral lands perform before the rising of the sun. The first to interrupt the silvery ringing of this little bell was the tui. It flung into the night and into the midst of tlio silence a fusillade of rapid and continuous notes, like a bouquet of This was the first tenor who. took possession of the stage. Soon came the rosary, bead bv bead, of the kokako (the South Island crow) followed by the brilliant notes of the tieke (the saddleback). ' "Next, a" solo, as though from a crvstal flute, cam? fr6m the piopio (the South Island thrush), singing its nocturnal hymn. The other birds paused tor an instant a? though to listen. Ihen an together once more resumed, like an immense choir, each sustaining its part; the mohoua (the bush canary) embellished the harmonious concert with triple and quadruple quavers; the pigeon with its flow - of. notes j tliß korimako (the bell-bird) with head as blue as heaven, a skilled baritone, passing from the pigeon to the tui, from the bass to the tenor; .finally the pipipi (the brown creeper) in its turn scattered its skilful trills a*iiid this marvellous melody; while the kaka. the cvmbal-player of the. forest, mingled its brazen vibrations with' the sound or tue silver bell."- - 1 ' . . - _, t And I am actuallyS a because I heard at dawn this allc i duet between the pipiwhara the little riro nro.