IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18928, 31 July 1923, Page 2

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

BIRDS ON THE LAMMIiKI.AWS. By J. Dbdmmond. F.L.S., F.Z.3. About 1870 Mr A. J. Rutherford, of Moroa, Alfredton. Wellington province, went to keep a summer boundary on the Lnmtnerlaw Range, Otago. Ilis wharo. at the head of (ho Latnmerlaw Swamp, under the Rock, more than 4000 ft above sea-level, v as built long before Housing Commissions were thought of. It was 10 by 12, clay floor, roof thatched with snowgrass, bags for windows and door. The only firing vas peat, and the nearest humans were from 10 to 20 miles away. It was a lonely place for a boy with only his horse, his dogs, r.t.d Nature for company, but he found boundless interest in the natural history of those Otago tundras. In all streams in the Lammorlaw Swamp and Dismal Swamp, blue mountain ducks swam fearlessly until fateful notes of a sparrow-hawk, karewa, drove them to cover. Paradise ducks, grey ducks, teal, plovers, and dotterels nested in the swamps. 'I he air was full of their noises. The harsh notes of seagulls, which nested on (he Rock, hardly ceased during the day. Wekas were present in scores. Two tame ones, bedecked with bine ribbons round their nocks, stood and watched Mr Rutherfurd at his meals,' and caught scraps thrown to them. Rats and mice were conspicuous by their absence us long as the wekas were about. The dogs did not molest the thievish, inquisitive birds, although doubtful in regard to their half-wild families. The white-faced owl, whekau, nested amongst rocks near the source of the Taieri River. Its mocking laugh was heard at times in the night. In the autumn, when the snowberries were ripe and plentiful, hundreds of kakas sometimes left the forests and roamed the ranges. Becoming very fat on the Hiowberries, they made an acceptable change in the but menu. At dawn one day a sparrow-hawk caught a lark under the bag window.’ Jumping out of bunk, Mr Rutlierfnrd caught the hawk in a towel. lie kept it on a chain until it was finite tame. He made a practice of taking it down the long boundary in front of him on the horse, and tried to train it as a falcon with long flax lines, but larks were the only quarry it would strike. He took it down to the homestead in the autumn, and lost it there before it was properly broken in.

“for some years three wild dogs wandered about six or seven Lip sheep stations in tho South Island,” Mr Rutherford writes, m further notes. "We combined, and offered £4O for them dead or alive, and often sent 20 men or more out with guns to try to round them up. They were tame sheep-dogs that had gone wild, and they were much to cunning to he caught or poisoned. They did great damage to sheep and lambs. At lambing times I found as many as 60 lambs with their necks broken, and not one eaten. I used to go out. with a gun and some food and a rug or two and sleep on the ranges, leaving the rugs in the day time under stones to keep them dry. My shepherd and I bad several of those camps, where we could sleep. During three years’ hunting, however, I did not get a single shot at the wild dogs, although I saw them several times far out of range. Two ,of them were shot close to Kurow township, whore they had been worrying sheep.

/'After long hunting I knew when (ho wild dogs were about by the bleating of the ewes. I have seen a ewe run to a rock, got on top, and look around, snuffing and bloating to its lamb with a peculiar note of rage and fear, which I learnt to recognise, and listened for. The sheep had some way of knowing when the wild dogs were near, from the bloating of other sheep, the sense of smell, or hearing distant sounds of sheep running. It took me a long time to learn this unusual bleat, but, once learnt, I never was mistaken. AH sheep near ran together as soon as the bleat was uttered, and got on rocks and hillocks and looked round to see where the trouble was coming from. I got so far in sheep language. If the subject had been sufficiently interesting to me I might have learnt more. It was necessary to go that far in order to protect my flocks, but there was no incentive to go further. Sheep language does not seem an interesting one. Still, sheep undoubtedly have different bleats with different meanings, not easy for us stupid mortals to understand.” Mr Rulherfurd reports that he found largo numbers of mud-fish when ho was making drains in a swamp near Masterton. The swamp had from 3ft to 7ft of peat on it, evidently formed on top of an .old pine forest lying flat on shingle, with many largo streams feeding it. In order to get sufficient fall, he had, in one place. - to make a deep drain right through a piece of old forest, about 6ft below the surfaces the workers had to dam and blast their way through it, using a large quantity of gelignite, which sent splinters of logs high into tho air at each explosion. During the whole of those operations, also when the side drams were being cut, mud-fish were very plentiful. They often were cut with the implements. Mr Rutherford placed 10 faiily large ones in a bucket to have a good look at them.

A heavy indictment has been made by Colonel G. A. Ward, Tauranga, against a small native New Zealand ant, . whose crimes, strangely, seem to have attracted slight attention. Its official title is CtJoterrnes bvoundi, meaning the beautiful white ant of the late Captain T. Broun, one of the most industrious entoifiologists New Zealand has possessed. Colonel Ward frankly condemns this little insect as “one of the most insidious destroyers of any structure in which timber forms an important pari.” The harm it does is wrought when it is in its grub state, before it has grown wings and has come forth to live sunlit days. When a grub it is from a quarter of an inch to three-quarters of an inch long, about as thick as the lead in a pencil, six-legged, and slow-moving. The grubs live in colonies in timber. They eat out chambers of different shapes and sizes, joined by short tunnels, sufficient to allow one grub to pass a i a time. These are ancestral homes. After they have been occupied by generation after veneration, partitions are removed, and the chambers are enlarged.

There comes a time when the ugly, greedy grubs are transformed into beautiful winged insects, about three-eighths of an inch - long overall, slender, with long, narrow wings, which are a warm, dark brown. Colonel Ward surprised a colony at that interesting lime in an old heart-of-kauri post. He found that, in ordcf to come out into the light, a tunnel is drilled from one of th'e inner chambers to the surface. It admits tho passage of only one insect at a time. This fact hides the danger of the insects’ presence, and gives them ample protection. The one small exit for countless thousands of insects gives no warning that the limber is hollow within. Tho whole of the inside of a piece may be chambered, leaving a shell no thicker than a visiting-card, and reducing or-completcly destroying the strength of the limber: and the only sign on the surface is a pinhole that, a grain of sand or a speck of dirt may obliterate.

Casually placing one hand against a dado in the old kauri Government Buildings at Tauranga, destroyed by fire in 1903. Colonel Ward was surprised to find that his thumb broke through a thin veneer left by the grubs over a large chamber. In a bridgetruss, with a span of 60ft, he found a largo and active colony at work on the bottom chord of the truss, almost at the vital point of the whole structure. He was engaged to report on the foundations of a large two-storey wooden hotel, built on puriri blocks, many of which stood 4ft or sft up from the ground. Some had crumbled to dust under the attention of the grubs, which had spread to plates and joists. One block, which, apparently, had been the bole of a small puriri tree, bad been left with its bark on. By the light, of a lantern, it seemed to bo doing its duly still. A testing blow with the head of a tomahawk sent, it flying, and it was revealed as an empty,pipe of bark, the grubs having removed every vestige, of timber. Ho has observed the grubs mainly in kauri and puriri, but has seen them also in live and dead bluegums, totara, Finns pinaster, a gumtree.s known as “Hobart Town,” the tea-tree, and other timbers. This white ant does not seem to ho carrying on its destruction in the South Island, but Colonel Ward is satisfied that “(here is practically no building timber it -will not take to when opportunity offers.”

Although Mr F. Maynard Mason has only a small section, tour acres in area, at Hciidorson. Waikato, he has many visitors. Amongst them are pied fantails, grey warblers, or riroriros, white-eyes, or tauhous, for which ho supplies another Maori name, taramoris, ground larks, or pipits, kingfishers, Californian and Australian quail, song-thrushes, blackbirds, chaffinches, goldfinches, yellow-hammers, house sparrows, pheasants, one, and a bird ho believes is the Australian rosella parrot. The shining cuckoo pays his annual visit, hut Mr Mason saw it only once, as it usually ar-

rives hv night. Its notes are unmistakable. When fencing for a neighbour a few years ago, he saw an albino kingfisher, absolutely white from bill to tail. On another farm he saw a rabbit with fur of the same bluish colour as the pukoko’s plumage.