THE NATURALIST.

Otago Witness, Issue 3101, 20 August 1913, Page 68

THE NATURALIST.

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE.

NOTE 3 ON NATURAL HISTORY IN NEW ZEALAND.

(By James Dedmmond, F.L.3., F.Z.S.) Tlie Rev. W. J. Elliott, of Ashburton, criticises a statement in this column that there is no record of anthills in New Zealand, and that this leads to the conclusion that native ants do not build little hillocks, but make all their nests under logs and stones. He says that while it is true that these insects do not build hillocks here, it is not true that all the nests are made under logs and stones. He has studied native ants since his boyhood days, especially in the Auckland district, in and near Tuakau, Bombay, Harrisvlle, and Pukekohe, where 30 or 40 years ago ant colonies were very plentiful. Sometimes he found the insects under rotting matai wood, as described by Mr W. W. Smith, but only in small numbers. The favourite haunts, however, were elevated patches of dry light-fern land. In those places he has seen hundreds of ants. In their honeycomb chambers he has found grains of wheat, flies, beetles, pieces of potato, and small grains of oats. He has seen an individual haul a load six or eight times its own weight. The ant, in fact, he says, is really the “mighty atom.” Miner ants, with masonic instincts, were very plentiful in the days to which'he refers. He believes that their numbers have greatly decreased, but he is unable to account for the decrease.

“Mr Smith,” Mr Elliott adds, “seems to think that the ants he found under rotting matai were eluggish and torpid. I am not surprised at this statement, because it is in complete accord with my own experience. These carpenter ants seem to be the victims of peculiar disabilities in the matai, where they carve corridors of the most fantastic shapes. In my calm judgment the majority of those I found in this wood and underneath it were stone blind. I satisfied myself by subjecting them to different tests. I am convinced that there is some deleterious property in the matai. or the incessant labour of the ant under such conditions deprives it of sight. The same statement applies to many of the largo whitish grubs found in the matai. I believe that many of them lose their sight at an early stage. There is a poisonous fluid in the wood. If Mr W. W. Smith found evidences of numerous ants in Canterbury, or rather in South Canterbury, the evidences are not very clear to-day. Yon refer to a ‘ glossy black species of ant, found under boulders in the bed of the Ashburton River.’ also to ‘a verv small species of native ant, with a clear brown colour.’ This is a genuine surprise to me, because I have been navigating the bed of the Ashburton River off and on for two years in search of other things, and have not seen a single specimen of ant since I started my ljuest. Indeed, I have not seen an ant

of any kind since I came into Canterbury. Of course, this does not imply that there are no ants here; but, whatever may have existed in the bed of the Ashburton River in days gone by, I doubt the presence of many ants, there now.”

A paragraph published a few weeks ago, defending the harrier from aspersions cast upon it, has brought a somewhat indignant letter from Mr J. Glessing, who lives at Thames, and who writes: “1 must say that I cannot understand a sheep-farmer in Southland, or Sir Walter Buller, or anybody else, asking that the harrier should be protected because it destroys rabbite. A harrier destroys hundreds of birds for every rabbit it kills. I have seen harriers take half-grown chickens from my backyard, and also pheasants, ducks, and pigeons. Partridges would have been a success in the Waikato if these hawks had not reigned supreme there. Every year thousands of useful and beautiful game birds are sacrificed to them. A price should be placed upon their heads. As to harriers attacking only sickly lambs, and leaving sheep alone, some yeans ago, I shot one ot these pests that was just taking the eye out of a full-grown cast sheep. I think that the Southland sheep-farmer and Sir Walter Buller, probably, are the only two persons who agree that harriers should be protected.”

A bright and graphic description of an incident in bird-life at Whitianga has been forwarded bv Mr R. Henderson, postmaster at that place. On Saturday, July 12, he was watching from the window of the post office the approach of a hail and thunder storm, and his attention was suddenly centred in a seagull, which alighted, on. the beach about 30 paces away. “L closely watched this lovely creature,” Mr Henderson says,' “in order to see how it would protect itself. Hail, driven by a heavy south-west squall, fell thick and fast. The bird squared itself up and breasted the tempest. Its head was thrown well back, the bill pointing upward and inclined towards the rear. Its wings were thrust hard down on the sand, supplying a brace to the body and a protection to the delicate legs. It stood there, quite rigid, for eight or nine minutes, with the pellets pounding on its snowy white breast, until the hail ceased. It then recovered, shook its plumage, and flew r off, quite unharmed. I feel that the incident is worthy of record. No doubt admirers of these birds ’will be delighted to see the same sight, if fortune favours them as it favoured me.”

A few weeks ago Mr M. Crispe, of Te Mauku, accused eels of stealing ducks’ eggs and killing young ducks, and now My L. A. Caldwell cnarges them with killing trout. He writes from Te Punga, and states that every season, about the month of September, when trout are coming up the river, he has found specimens, from 41b to 51b in weight, lying dead in the deep water. When he examined the bodies he found that there was always a mark at the back of the head, like the mark of a bite. While walking along the banks one day, when the water was very clear, he saw a trout which weighed about 21b at the bottom of the river repeatedly turning over. As he stood watching it a large eel, about 101 b in weight, came out of some willow roots, swam on the top of the water above the trout, then darted down, caught the trout just behind the head, and made o.ff with it. Mr Caldwell pursued the eel, headroped the trout, pulled it out of the river, and found that on the back of its head there was the same mark which had puzzled him on the bodies of other trout, and which he accepts as conclusive evidence against the eels.

In Mr Caldwell’s letter there are a few notes dealing with an old friend, the longtailed cuckoo. He first became acquainted with it in 1859, when he was working on the Collingwood diggings. In August of the following year he was with his father at Rockhampton, on the Fitzroy River, in Northern Querusland, working as a shepherd at a place called Bonnie Boon Creek, and about noon one very hot day, when resting under some trees at the side of the creek, he was surprised to see a longtailed cuckoo fly close to him. He shot it and took it into the camp, and his father confirmed his belief that it was the same species as the New Zealand bird. Later on, he saw many specimens in the same district, but, although he travelled 400 miles farther north, he saw none more than about 100 miles from the coast. The shining cuckoo is fairly well known in different parts of Eastern Australia and Tasmania, but the long-tailed species is not mentioned in recent works on Australian birds. Messrs Lucas and Le Souef, in “The Birds of Australia.” mention another cuckoo, commonly called the koel, with its habitat in Quensland and other northern States, and probably it is the female of this bird that Mr Caldwell saw. It is known that the long-tailed cuckoo has a fairly wide range outside the boundaries of the North and South Islands of New Zealand and smaller islands in these waters. It has been reported from the Solomon Islands, the Society Islands, the Ellice Islands, the Kermadecs, and New Caledonia, and Major Large has reported it in this column from the Cook Islands, where, apparently, it is not uncommon. Mi’ A. F. Basset Hull, of Sydney, who visited Norfolk Island a few years ago, reported that this bird was ’“very common” on the island during the sprint and summer months., and that its shrill erv was heard frequently about dusk. Residents of the island believe that it is a bird of prey, because it steals the eggs and young of the small native birds, and they call it by the “sparrow hawk.” They are influenced, also, prnbablv. by the strange resemblance of its head to the head of a hawk. Ffty-six years ago descendants of tho Bounty mutineers on Pitcairn Island were tr/yisferred to Norfolk Island, and some cf the “Pitcairners.” as they a.re called, know the long-tailed cuckoo a.s tho

‘"home owl.” a name given to it because they say they knew it in the old home

on Pitcairn Island, which evidently is the eastern boundary of its habitat. The eggs of the long-tailed cuckoo have not been recorded from Norfolk Island, but Mr Hull expresses an opinion that they will be found in the nest of a small native bird related to the New Zealand grey warbler, which is the most frequent victim in this country of the cuckoo's parasitical habits.