IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21978, 13 June 1933, Page 2

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

BIRDS OF THE FOREST. SEEN IN HILL COUNTRY. By J. Drummond. F.L.S.. F.Z.S. While having a meal in an hotel at Lower Hutt, Wellington, 36 years ago, Mr J. H. Lyon saw two huias in an aviary at the end of the dining room. They were lively and sprightly and did not seem to feel ill effects from their imprisonment. He states that huias then were plentiful in Wellington province. His father’s workmen shot and sold them to Wellington taxidermists for 2s 6d each. The last time he saw huias, as far as his memory records, was in the first year of the Boer War, 1899. He then saw four on a dead matai at Ngaurakehu, near Mataroa. Later he heard huias’ notes in the Utiku district, near the Rangitikei River, 65 miles from Wanganui. He believes that if any huias are left they are in inaccessible forests. As they seemed to him to be always on the move, he believes that those which were left would move into a danger zone sooner or later. For this reason, he has no hopes for the survival of the species. Until 25 years ago lie found native crows, kokako, now somewhat rare, very plentiful in forests away back. He often watched them running up trees and jumping in a stilted manner from branch to branch. About 12 years ago, he saw native crows in the house plantation on his farm in Taranaki. He supports observers who detect differences in the notes of tuis in Wellington province and further north. When he was out. with a King Country Maori he asked the name of a bird that uttered a note unfamiliar to him. To his surprise, the Maori said that it was a tui. While bushfelling he noticed that the vigour and ecstacy ot the tuis’ morning song was lacking in the afternoon song, and that about five o'clock the notes changed completely. In plentiful seasons for honey and berries, he found dead tuis, victims of their love of nectar and of their greediness. After partly plucking them, he failed to discover in them any signs of shot or disease. Their bodies were simply round balls of fat. “It can be understood,” he writes, “that in this condition they readily fell a prey to the old-time Maori fowler’s spear,' and that Maoris rigorously protected half-fatted tuis and killed only when the birds were in the pink of condition.”

Amongst Mr Lyon’s forest friends /were “ little green birds, tailless, with a bright white streak over each eye.” They lodged in hollows in trees. South Island diggers in those days called them half-ounces, They are known now as riflemen wrens. Amongst their Maori names are ti-titi-pounamu, pihi-pihi, piripiri, and moutuutu. Mr Lyon states that those Which lived in the snow on Mount Owen were yellow instead of green. This evidently refers to females of the species, whose coats are mostly oliveaceous yellow. The males wear dull green cloaks. Sir waiter Buller watched rifleman wrens running up the boles of large trees, often spirally, prying into every chink and crevice and moving so quickly that it was hard for a collector to have a shot at them. In those days, as Sir Walter Buller implies, the sympathy was with the collector. In these days it is with the pretty little creatures, gentle and shy, sometimes decoyed into the open hand by the rapid twirling of a leaf.

At Christmas time about 44 years ago, while strolling in foothills that border Moko-moko Stream, seven miles from Matthews’s station, at the outlet of Wairarapa Lake, Mr, Ward Baker counted five huias searching for grubs in the bark of a single standing tree-trunk. He did not interfere with them. He lived in Wellington between 1886 and 1890, and often shot pigs and goats on flats between Orongo-orongo and the Moko-moko, but he never saw a huia except on that occasion. Wood pigeons were particularly plentiful. On one Easter excursion, his party shot 200 of them. In his teens, in 1881, Mr Baker knew a taxidermist who bought New Zealand bird-skins, mounted them and sold them, mostly abroad. He discussed with Mr Baker the difficulty of obtaining huia skins. Mr Baker got into touch with a bushman who roamed the hills between Wainui-mata and Wairarapa Lake. He sent to Mr Baker many huia skins which Mr Baker sold to the taxidermist at a good profit. “ There was no bird protection in those days,” Mr Baker writes: “I wish there had been.’

Mr W. C. Kirtlan, Matamata, 122 miles south of Auckland city, writes: "I shall be obliged if you will publish information >about a rare bird that the Maoris call taiko. According to a Maori friend of mine, it is a sea-bird, but it nests high up in bushclad always flying at night and always high. Not many people know that such a bird exists, but I have often heard it at night as it flies overhead. Its only notes -uttered at intervals, are uncanny in the night, when all is quiet.” This is the black petrel. Its strange, unearthly notes are heard on the Little Barrier Island, on islands in Hauraki Gulf, and at places on the coast of Auckland.

Although in evidence mostly at night, on account of its notes, it is a diurnal bird, not a night-bird. Spending the day in the opep sea fishing, it hastens home soon after night has fallen and pushes its way through shrubs and light bush to its home, burrowed in soft, loose soil, perhaps on a mountain peak. The burrow is about two feet six inches long. There is a small chamber at the end, carpeted with a few leaves, absolutely the only furniture used, the troglodytish home contrasting unfavourably with the warm, comfortable, and elaborate homes of many species of land birds. A single egg, white like the eggs of almost all petrels, is laid in the chamber. Early in the morning, black petrels come out of their dark homes and fly away to the sea. With claws, bills, and wings they sometimes climb trees out of the perpendicular, using them as hopping-off places.

A bird has puzzled Donald Nobes, Te Uku, Raglan County. He has seen it near the pigsties and fowl runs eating curds and picking ticks from sheep’s backs and parasitic insects from pigs’ backs. Its brown costume is set off by white bars on its wings, a black cap, and yellow bill and feet. Its note is described as a loud screech. The popular name of this successfully dcelimatised bird is myna, but it is also called mynah, house-mynah, and minor. The species has its original home in India. Mynahs sent from India to Australia flourished and did useful work there. From Australia they were brought to New Zealand. They destroy innumerable insects, doing good in 'that direction: but they are in bad repute with orchardists on account of their fondness for fruit, particularly cherries. Like many other acclimatisation efforts, this one cuts both ways.

Air W. R. B. Oliver, director of the Dominion Museum, Wellington, states that the mynah usually keeps to the towns, or, at, least, to places near human habitations. He adds that when it comes into contact with the starling, to which it is related, it generally has to give way; but it outs sparrows from their breeding places. Mr Oliver describes the mynah’s nest as an untidy structure of straw and feathers or other material, erected in buildings or in holes in trees. One of the most remarkable things that Mr G. M. Thomson noted about the mynah is its increase after its first introduction, and then its decrease, and, in some districts, its complete disappearance. For the disappearance ho blames the starling, whose increase coincided with the mynah’s decrease. Some of the acclimatisation societies introduced the mynah into New Zealand in the early seventies, but most of the early attempts were made by private persons.