IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18515, 28 March 1922, Page 2

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

BIRDS AND FLOWERS AT LAKE TAUTO. Bt J. Drummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S. Yellow kowhais, Mr C. A. Semadeni, Paiee Avenue. Mount Eden, rojrorts, are plentiful around Lake Taupo. Many beaches are fringed with them. They are spaced as regularly, almost, as if they had been planted by dfsign. On most beaches where streams enter tho lake (he forget-me-not has established itself. It there has small leaves and flowers, and the flowers do not seem to bo as bright as forget-me-nots in gardens. There are many pohulukawas on cliffs on the northern shores. One lofty cliff is covered with those trees from base to summit, A fbirly large number of pohutukawas still were in bloom in January, when Mr Semadeni and members of a party with him pulled rojmd moat of the shoreline of the lake. They found that tuis were the most plentiful birds on the shores. At almost every camp they were entertained by those birds’ notes. At two camps only one call was heard; it was repeated by bird after bird near and far, as if each knew at the exact time when its turn came. When tho single call was hoard first there were three note;,, beautifully sweet and flute-like. This call, although simple, was the most entrenching the visitors heard. One the second occasion tho single call consisted of two notes, which ■were repeated by each bird from once to six times, but usually four times. The most notable call, a wild and thrilling one. was at a lovely place. Hspua Bay, where the party camped for two days. The first six notes of that call were clear, staccato, and belllike; the others were like the notes of a flute. The last note was soft and trilled, ami slightly flattened; it always was preceded by a croak. In addition to tuis, fantails, grey warblers, robins, ground larks, and shags were plentiful. The visitors heard a bell-bird once, but did not see it, and heard a shining cuckoo twice. Song thrushes were rare, and were seen only near civilisation. Only one starling was seen. Kiwis were neither seen nor heard. “I have collected more than 90 species of fungi,’’ Miss M. Wilkinson wrote from Tahora, near Stratford, “and have made studies of them in colour. They range from all shades of greys to browns, heliotrope, yellows, orange, pink, red, white, black, and a beautiful beetroot shade. This season I found my first blue fungus. I thought at first that it was a flower. It rivalled any bush flower I have seen. It is a deep hydrangea blue, and under tho gills there is a wonderful shot effect of purple and violet. I tried to make a rough sketch of it, but it was so beautiful that a brush never could do it justice. The following morning the gills were covered with chocolate brown spores. On their being gently rubbed off they showed a glorious deep cobalt, or, rather, perhaps more of the shade of the deep blue delphinium.” Mr J. B. Armstrong states that the fungus, probably, is Hygrophorua cyancns. which ■is not common, and which, he adds, was found first in the Nelson Province. A belief that the daylight chorus that delighted early colonists is not heard in this utilitarian work-a-day age is dispelled by Mr •C. B. Thacker, who often is awakened by the famous performance at his residence on a gentle elope of Okain’s Bay Valley, Banks Peninsula. A few totara trees and stumps, and a few ngaios and yellow kowhais, are almost the only representatives of the magnificent mixed forest that mantled the valley when Mr Thacker's parents first made their home there more than 60 years ago, but macrocarpas, poplars, and many fruit trees grow near the homestead, and from them tuis and bellbirds welcome the light as it comes up the valley from the bay, which looks northcast across the ocean. A song-thrush, from the masthead of a slender pine near a bedroom window, sometimes sings hia lovesong, immeasurably outstripping the efforts of any other single songster. Old leafy pear trees, planted on the floor of the valley in the early days, seem to be tho principal attraction to the birds at present. Mr Thacker has no feeling against them because they lake a large share of ripe pears, apples, and peaches. He thinks that they are blamed for more harm than they do in the orchard. In any case, he would lose the fruit sooner than miss the companionship of Die birds. Fossil bones;' found near lava flows, show that the cattle upon a thousand hills m and near Okain’s Bav were preceded by flocks of moos. The flow came down from Okain’s Peak, 1880 ft high, at the head of the valley. It is one of tho peaks of the crater-ring of a cauldron-shaped volcano in Akaron Harbour, which geologists state was not of great antiquity, geological,y, not earlier than the latter part of the Tertiary Era. Its activities died down before man appeared in any part of the world. The bay, unlike most of the inlets on Banks Peninsula, slopes towards the sea very gradually, and has a beautiful sandy beach. The Maoris’ name for it dedicated it to the flounder, which doubtless they caught there in large numbers. A collection of ornaments, tools, fish-hooks, and implements is evidence that the bay was a favourite esorl of the previous occupiers. The handsome New Zealand snail. Paryphanta, probably the largest snail in the world, lived in the forests. Karaka trees that, ornament Mr Thacker’s garden are not natives of tho bay. He gathered several of the damson-shaped, orange-coloured fruit from an adjacent bay, where Maoris had established a karaka plantation, and he planted them successfully. Karakas might be grown more generally in southern The North Island, Marlborough, and Nelson almost have a monopd.y of the planet at present. There are groves of it at Kaikoura, and Mr R. M. Laing gives its southern limit as Long-look-out Point, a few miles west of Okain’s Bay, but. it must have been introduced to the point by Maori voyagers from Kaikoura. Their interest in the tree mainlv was a practical one; they used the fruit for food, after removing the poison from the kernel, which is fairly powerful. The bitter principle of the fruit has been isolated in beautiful radiating needleshaped crystals, and is said to be similar to digitaline, the drug produced from the root of the foxglove. A drawing sent by Mr F. T. Wylde, Wainiana. Bay of Plenty, represents one of the largest caterpillars in New Zealand. It is between two and three inches long, and bright green, and is equipped or ornamented with a horn at one end. Mr Wylde found (ho specimen in a place greatly favoured by all caterpillars of (ho species—namely. on n’ convolvulus plant. They usually bury themselves in the ground in the middle or end of February. In their subterranean hiding places they are transformed into chrysalides—pupae in entomological language—and they remain in that stage of life Until the summer, when another transformation changes them into largo, handsome moths. They usually appear in their winged state, equipped for a short but glorious aerial life, sipping nectar from flowers in November and December. In tho dusk of the evening, all summer, in parts of the country they frequent, they may be seen flying with amazing rapidity. They sometimes poise themselves in tho air above flowers, and extract tho neetar with their long probostdes. The evening primroses which grow wild in many North Island districts, blooming in the summer and opening their yellow flowers after the heat of the day, arc favourites of those moths, which, with quivering wings, dart from plant to plant. The species. Sphinx Convolvuli, is very plentful in northern parts of the North Island. It lias been reunited from Nelson, but apparently from only one place further south. That place, strangely, is Invercargill. Mr IT. Kinloch. from the Three Kings Quay, in the north, reports (hat he _ has pppti a young cuckoo fed hv small birds, probably grey warblers. The foster parents were busy all day catching moths and butterflies' on some scrub for the young cuckoo.