IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

Otago Witness, Issue 3755, 2 March 1926, Page 7

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

THE PARASITICAL CUCKOO.

By

J. DRUMMOND. F.L.S., F.Z.S.

The interesting discovery oi a grey warbler’s nest, containing eggs of the little owners and occupiers, and also the egg of a parasitical cuckoo, deposited in the nest for the grey warblers to hatch, is reported by Mr T. A. Jensen, of Ahititi, near Waitara, Taranaki. He discovered the nest on January 18 last, when he was clearing blackberry in a piece of native bush. The nest, in the style of architecture favoured by grey warblers, but not always followed if the site is unsuitable that style, was hanging from the branch of a punga tree-fern. He thought at first that it was merely a lump of moss and small twigs. Inspection showed that it was a nest, composed of moss, hair, small twigs, and dried leaves, all bound together neatly. It was cosily lined inside with down and soft feathers.

Mr Jensen was sufficiently methodical to take the nest’s dimensions. It was Sin long and 3Jin wide. Its round.entrance on one side was about lin in diameter, 3in from the top. The' part by which it was suspended to the branch was directly above the entrance. This gave the nest a humped appearance. Four of the eggs, five-eighths of an inch long and half an inch wide, were creamy white, with small brownish-red spots. These were the eggs of the grey warblers, the victims of a cuckoo’s attentions. _ The larger fifth egg, three-quarers of an inch long, and slightly more than half an inch wide, dull brownish-green in colour, belonged to a shining cuckoo or a long-tailed cuckoo, probably a shining cuckoo. Mr Jensen has been associated with the bush for years, but this is the first time he has discovered evidence of one of the most inexplicable instances of parasitism in the animal kingdom, of an amazing instinct to shirk parently responsibility, and of an equally amazing willingness to be victimised by the most unnatural parents. Another phase of the cuckoo’s practice and of the grey warbler’s accommodating nature is recorded by Mrs F. S. Page, Harwood street, Hamilton. In the last week of January her attention was attracted by a loud and persistent chirping at the foot of her garden. She saw a young shining cuckoo sitting on a branch, and a grey warbler trying frantically to pacify it. The quantity of food provided by the anxious little fosterparent seemed to be quite out of proportion to the young cuckoo’s prodigious appetite. It was long before the greedy cuckoo was satisfied.

Blackbirds and song-thrushes in the orchard, starlings nesting in hundreds in the gigi, quail starting the morning chorus, kingfishers coming close to the house on the approach of rain and sharing the title of “rain-bird” with several other species, the sparrow and its companion the yellow-hammer, plentiful in crops, the shining cuckoo whistling at 11 o’clock at night, sparrowhawks nesting in cliffs, and tuis making bursts of melody in the bush, are described by Mrs M. Brien, Private Bay, Onewhero, 43 miles south of Auckland City. Grey warblers, skylarks, native larks, or pipits, longtailed cuckoos, fern-birds, heard but not seen, chaffinches, white-eyes, fantails, and pheasants are on Mrs Brien’s list. Every morning, usually at 5 o’clock, from two to 16 sulphur-crested cuckoos fiy from the Waikato River towards bush near the coast. Pheasants are plentiful, and so bold that they go within 20 yards of the house.

Dr Gordon Macdonald (Dunedin) reports that starlings which he watches, and whose habits he has noted, roost in high sea-cliffs behind St. Clair slightly south of Dunedin. When the breeding season is over, he states, they desert their old haunts and live in great colonies in suitable places. Late in December or early in Januarv they may be seen in great flocks soon after dawn, as if moving to their feeding grounds. They return to their roost in the evening in single file. If unmolested they return to the same nest year after year. A pair nested in the roof of Dr Macdonald’s house for three succesfive seasons. “They got to know us, and we knew thorn, so we lived on the best of terms,” Dr Macdonald explains. Further notes by him show that starlings, which live in isolated pairs iu the breeding season, and nest mostly in

houses or rocks, eat almost anything, from fish and flesh to grain and fruit. As apples and pears ripen n March and April, starlings do not hesitate to take their share, and they select the ripest and sweetest varieties.

An amusing incident in which a tui and a song-thrusli took part is recorded by Mr H. li \ Chaffey, Upper Takaka, Nelson. He first saw the pair coming down the hill at the back of his cottage at top speed. The song-thrush, leading by a small margin, made for thick manuka bushes and dived into them. The tui, evidently more skilful in manoeuvring, pounced on the song-thrush and made its feathers fly. There was some quick in-and-out work amongst the manuka. The song-thrush, by desperate efforts, eluded the tui, made another dash down the hill, and disappeared. “Tuis, it seems to me,” Mr Chaffey adds, “do not like any strange bird near their nesfs, and as they are very late in nesting, this year particularly, the male tui, and, perhaps, the female, have set to work to get rid of intruders. Slightly more than a week ago there were five song-thrusnes here, helping themselves to our strawberries as dessert after earthworms. Now there are none. The moral is: If you wish to ive a strawberry patch engage a uair of tuis to police it.” The song-thrushes and the blackbirds at Mr Chaffey’s hatched out in the middle of September, amid frost and snow. Tuis were sitting on their eggs when lie wrote, on Jahuary 23.

When Mr A. Allan, Napier road, Havelock North, was a boy at Little River, near Lake Forsyth, Canterbury, it was the custom of Maoris of the district to camp every year on the Ninety-mile Beach, at the outlet of the lake, in order to obtain supplies of young cels, which went from the sea to the lake at night. Mr Allan writes: “ The younger generation of Maoris probably do not observe this custom. In those days, 40 years ago, they made an annual visit to the beach, as the ee*s were regarded as a great delicacy. I do not know when the old eels left the lake to breed in the sen, but the Maoris trapped cels on their way to the sea as well as cols that went from the sea to the lake.”

A beetle than can leap like a flea has been under the observation of Mr J. H. Kidd, of Grey town. It is a little bronzy beetle, very interesting entomologicallv as a mere insect, but Mr Kidd’s observations have been made from the economical point of view. As a matter of fact, the bronzebeetle is an orchard pest which needs control, but has succeeded in evading it up to the present time. As Mr D. Miller, Government Entomologist, has joined in the attack on the bronze beetle, it may be compelled to moderate its transports in the orchards.

Although it is primarily a foliagefeeder, eating shot-like holes in leaves, most of the bronze beetle’s damage is done by eating apples and other fruit, its taste ranging to pears, plums, peaches, and even gooseberries, black currants, raspberries, and blackberries. Sometimes it attacks singly, but often bronze beetles act in concert at one place on an apple, damaging irregulai areas on the skin. The wounds may take the form of scab-like patches. The bronze beetle, according to Mr Miller’s observations, is usually active during November and December. In its grub stage it lives in the ground, feeding on the roots of plants. Female bronze beetles have laid their eggs in soil in Mr Miller’s laboratory. In the field bronze beetles drop from trees and bury themselves beneath patches of soil, but the actual laying of eggs i the field has not been observed. Many of the insects may be found in their tombs at the bases of trees they had infested. The bronze beetle may yield to the control measures taken against it, and in the meantime something should be disclosed of its interesting life history.