IN TOUCH WITH NATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2934, 8 June 1910, Page 109

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE.

NOTES ON NATURAL HISTORY IN NEW ZEALAND.

(Br James Drummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S.)

Omaui is the name of an islet at the entrance to. the New River Estuary, the approach to the port of Invercargill. The part of the island which faces the ocean and Stewart Island is comparatively flat, and is entirely in the possession of seagulls. The part which faces the north and Invercargill is high, and is covered with veronicas, mosses, lichens, and small tussock. This is the home of countless thousands of terns. They breed on the highest part, on the Riverton side, a,nd their breeding-place, according to the account supplied by a recent visitor, is a sight that is worth seeing. He sa?s that when he visited the crags and picked his way amongst the eggs, he had the utmost difficulty in avoiding tramoling upon them. It is hardly correct to say that there are nests, as the egg is nearly always laid on a fiat rock, under a tussock or in a crevice of the rock. It is often not more than three inches from the edge of a crag, and it is surprising that the eggs should escape being blown away in rough weather. When the birds are disturbed they rise almost simultaneously, with a •continuous shrill call, and make a circuit in the air, presenting an extraordinarily regular and drilled appearance. As they fly over' the visitor's head, he seems to be looking through a wonderful transparency of snowy-white wings and reddish legs, relieved by shining black heads. "It is hardly possible," the correspondent writes, " to imagine a more strikingly beautiful sight."

| Soon they all come back again, in I the same remarkable order. Each member ; of the flock alights daintily a few inches from its egg, then trots forward and settjes down to do a little hatching. When two birds claim the same egg, a humorous sidelight is thrown on family ; life on the. island. It may. be a father ; wishing to show what a good-natured fellow he is by taking a turn at the work, or a young lady friend who would like to display her generosity; but tjvJ rightful owner, gently and firmly, ami with a quaintly coquettish maniner, ; always rejects these offers, and does the J work herself. After the birds have sat j for a few minutes, they rise again with I the same military precision. From the 1 mouth of the estuary towards the Bluh* there are beautiful beaches, with endless varieties of shapes and colours of ; pebbles, and there the terns are in their i thousands, a fitting setting to the general i effect of the scene. \ Mr P. J. O'Regan writes: " If anyone i wishes to realise the vast change "that ;. has come over the West Coast of the \ South Island as far as the native birds j and fish are 'concerned he should read Mr i Thomas Brun.ner's journal of his exploraiohs there during the years 1846 to 1848. j Early in December, 1846, Mr Brunner, j accompanied by four Maoris, left Nelson j on a tour of exploration. He followed ; the Buller from its sources to the sea, • keeping to the northern-bank all the way ,' from Matakitaki. From the mouth of j the Buller he proceeded along the coast to Mawhera, or the mouth of the Grey, and thence he went south, passing Okar- | ito, to the Titahia headland beyond the j Paringa River. Returning to Mawhera, he ascended by canoe to "Lake Brunner, and. going to the main stream, went on to: Mawhera-iti. Following that branch of. the Mawhera or Grey, he crossed the saddle near the present site of Reefton, and came to the Inangahua, and then followed that river to its confluence with the Kawatiri or Buller, arriving at Nelson in April. 1848. He was in the wilds for 18 months, during which time he never saw a white man's face. His diet consisted solely of the products of the bush and the stream. His vegetable food was fern root, supplemented by potatoes, while at the pas at Kawatiri and Mawhera, and 1 his fish were eels and upokororo or grayling, while wekas and pigeons were his staple food. He tells us that while at Matakitaki, on the way down the. Kawatiri. the Natives made a kupanga, or net. of flax fibre, 50ft long and 4ft broad, and in one instance he mentions the netting of 150 upokororo. Wekas were plentiful everywhere, especially in the Inangahua | Valley. The valley, indeed, was known to the Natives as Oweka, or the country of the weka. One entry, while following the Inangahua, shows that Ekehu, one of j the Natives, captured 27 wekas, ' all \ within sight of the camp.' Brunner • casually records the presence of the crow, i the thrush, the whio, or blue duck, the white heron, and many other birds. He never once complains of his fare, and appears to have enjoyed the dishes prepared by his Maori companions, especially the fern root. It is impossible to read Bmnner's interesting diary of hie wanderings in the wilderness of the West 4 Coast over 60 years ago, Mr O'Regan

adds, without realising tb.Si extent t* wfcich the native £a«?A has been decimal, and, permit ii« to add, unnecessarily

Mr S. of Titoki, Mangakahia, north of Auckland, has written to Mr R. Mair, of Whatigarei, stating that in the first week of January tens of thousands of little eels were seen climbing the rocky face of the Wairua Falls, 16 miles from Whangarei. On one evening the eels were reported to be present in millions. The falls are 44ft high.

When I was with the mutton-birders on Tia Island some time ago I was told of an ingenious method on one of the other islands, on the opposite side of Stewart Island, to save the labour of carrying the bundles of birds to the place where they are plucked. Mr G. Thomas, of St. Asaph street, Christchurch, has supplied a fuller description of this contrivance. He writes : V During the last two or three seasons a somewhat novel labour-saving device has been made use of by the southern Natives during their annual visits to the mutton bird islands off the south-west coast of Stewart Island. Most of the islands are rugged and precipitous, and one in particular, Evening Island, is shaped somewhat like a saucer, with high ground running right round its seaboard, but levelling off on its eastern side, where the tauraka (landing) and camp are situated. On the high ground the mutton bird makes its home, and the work of carrying the captured birds to the camp is considerable. What has now been done is that an ordinary galvanised wire has been put up to connect the camp with the hunting grounds. One end of the wire is made fast to the trunk of a stout tree near the camp and the other end is attached to a windlass on the hill-top, and the wire is drawn fairly tight, according to the slope of the ground. The birds are tied in bundles of 10, hooked on the wire with an ordinary pot hook, and away they go down to the camp, where one of the party is waiting to take them off as they arrive. Hundreds are thus sent down in a very short time. In order to prevent the birds being bruised, bag's of feathers or grass are attached to the lower end of the wire to act as buffers. Firewood is brought to the camp iu the same way, and this method is used in despatching the bags of mutton birds to the landinar when the season's catch is being taken off by the steamer.

" Ypur interesting article in the Otago Daily Times on the mutton-birding industry, as carried on bv the southern Natives of New Zealand," Mr Thomas adds, " brings to mind a.n implement associated with this industry, but otherwise rarely heard of in connection with the Maori people. This imnlerrent is called a kahiru, and was used by the early Natives in sinking on the mutton bird where the hole was deep or the bird beyond reach. The modern mutton-birder uses an adze for this work, but the Maori of former days was always ready to meet an emergency, and necessity in this instance produced the kahiru, one of which I have bv me as I write. It is made of wood, and measures about 2ft 6i.n in length, the upper half forming the handle and the lower half the blade. The handle is round, with a diameter of ab»ut threequarters of an inch, and gradually increases in thickness as it merges into the blade. The blade is flat, and at its widest point measures an inch and a-half across, and takers to a point. The blade is also slightly curved. The advantage of this is at once apparent when the implement is broughtJnto use. as it eives the user great leverap-e power. When at work the m-atton-birder of old pressed his kahiru into the ground three or four times in the form of a circle, and then levered out the piece of soil,.thus forcing a.n entrance into the burrow of the bird and extracting the occupant."

A Southland correspondent sends a note which will interest many botanists. She writes: "In the underbrush on the hanks of the Waihopai River, I noticed that a certain bush, which appeared to be a kind of ' mikimiki.' was covered with pear-shaped knobs about a-quarter of an inch lons and one-eighth of an inch broad at the broadest part. The tree was dead, and the knobs were hard and brown, but each had a small hole down the centre. I believe that this bush grows a kind of berry, but the knobs did not look like fruit. T found them on live trees next, only there they were soft and green, and of a fleshy nature, with a tuft of leaves at the apex, hut the hole was present there in each. Some months later T found the scrub again at Otatara, and I have never since noticed it without the tufted growth. On observing the knobs closely. I was astonished to find a small white grub lvin<? snugly right down at the heart. I have since then examined many knobs, and have invariably found in them, when in the green stage, a grub, a chrysalis, or a fly in various stages of development. I have not examined any very tiny specimens of the growth. I have never found more than one insect in any knob, and have come to the conclusion that these growths are special nurseries provided for this tinv black fly; but how it gets there I have not had an opportunity of studying. As I am keenly interested in the phenomenon, as it appears to me. I should be srlad if you could enlighten me further about it through your column. Last week T found the fly in three stages on one tree—namely, grub, chrysalis, and nartiallv formed fly. The knob, together with its branchlet, appears to die after it is vacated."