IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

Otago Witness, Issue 3802, 25 January 1927, Page 6

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

By

THE GODWITS.

J. Drummond.

F.L.S., F.Z.S,

Tlie arrival and departure of godwits, their flights along the sea coast, and their pretty ways have been watched by the' Hon G. J. Garland, M.L.C., for these 50 years. .With his own -eyes as witnesses and with evidence collected from other observers, he, like Mr W. Rose, of Awanui, refuses to accept a theory that all godwits in New Zealand assemble at Spirits Bay, near North Cape, to leave for their other home in Siberia. He has seen them coming to New Zealand in October and early in November. He has seen them leave m the same order in March, April, and. May. He has often seen flocks 500 or 600 feet tfbove sea-level flying north-north-weet outward bound. He has never seen them making their homeward \ flight in bad weather. The weather always was calm or settled; the hours of departure were between 10 a.m. and noon. Many godwits, failing to join in the general flight, stay in New Zealand through the winter. These, Mr Garland states, are old birds that cvjinot undertake the long journey. Stragglers he shot were poor in condition, and tough. Godwits shot by ■-him in March and April were plump and fat. and excellent eating. Their flesh is not fishy. An his opinion it is as goo’d as the wild track’s, but more delicate. As totheir arrival, he states that they do not come together, or within a few days of each •vther. Their arrival is spread over five

or six weeks, from late September to the middle of November. One vear, he saw a flock come from the north-west on No vember 21. The article that gave' a world-wide impression that godwits make Spirits Bay their only jumping-off ground from New Zealand was published in the English Illustrated Magazine many years ago. It is fair to the writer to explain that he did not describe Spirits Bay as the -only place of assembly, but he does not refer to any other places, and a wrong impression was given. He certainly'seems to have believed that the Maoris’ sacred bay was the only place. He made a toilsome journey to it for the sole purpose' of seeing the flight. His article ; was well and graphically written: stumbled across the belt of sandhills which fringed the shore, a strange sound that half oppressed and half soothed the ear became fitfully audible; a sound which, when, a little later, a gust of wind caught it and brought it to me in greater volume, drowned for a moment the moaning of the sea. I knew it -to be a chorus of querolous cries proceeding from intmmberable little throats; and, racing up the last ridge of sand that lay between me and the bay, I stood looking at the sight I had come far to sec.” With lowering clouds, a wild and stormy ocean, the low mournful sound drawn by the wind from the thin, wiry grass, and a swarm of birds like grey billows in convulsion, the sight seemed to the curious stranger to be unnatural. He' watched flocks of godwits, in the afternoon, pour into the bay, each fresh lot adding to the mad unrest. Godwits often rose with a mighty'rustle of beating wings. As the

sun was dipping into the sea an old male godwit uttered a strident call, clarion clear, end shot straight into the air. It was followed by a multitude. The great host i cse higher, and higher until it was merely .«» stain in the sky. -In a moment, it seemed, the leader shaped his course due north, and the stain melted into the night. The writer of the article gives the godwits their Maori name, kuaka, a name Mr Garland and other early colonists prefer. Another name, curlew, is used occasionally, but wrongly.

Dr R. J. Tillyard is a man of science, not a litterateur. If literature was his profession, he might have presented his ‘‘lnsects , of Australia and New Zealand” in a different form and style. It is severely matter of fact, a mass of bare facts behind which readers are justified in seeing romance, drama, arid" lessons that should” be taken to heart. Perhaps the most important item in these tightly-packed . 550 pages is a statistical insect census. This shows that the world has 470,090 known species of insects. Many of the species are cosmopolitan. Many are in battle array The armies are more, formidable than persons. to whom these litUe people seem insignificant, realise. They are splendidly organised.. In organisation in industry,'in adaptability, and in self-effacemefit of the individual, they are greater than men. Man has subdued all large animals that threatened him. The insects he has not subdued. Even in Australia, which has 37.080 species of its own, and New Zealand, which has--only 8150, the insects, are a menace that is always increasing. In some countries insects take or damage more than half the apple crop. In the United States, they damage.the cotton crop

to the extent of £10,000,000 a year. It is feared that they may ruin cotton-growing there. In the United Kingdom they cause a loss on hides alone up to £7,000,000 a year. In human dwellings all over the world they cause a loss that cannot be estimated Until recently the human deathrate caused in a single year by mosquitoes alone was appalling. For these reasons, Dr Tillyard’s book has an importance that does not appear on its surface. Its importance', when ho shows how useful insects are. encouraged. to war against injurious insects—carrying war into the enemy’s camp—is very great. Ladybirds have been introduced into New Zealand to check scale-insects on trees. Dr Tillyard has introduced a. tiny wasp, to chc«k the oak-scale on British oaks in Christchurch and Nelson. He contemplates introducing parasitic flies to check the European . earwig’ in ..this Dominion, in order that it may no longer be a burden in the land.

Some insects are injurious, some are beneficent, some are neither one thing nor the other. It is not surprising that th‘e world’s highest authorities on dragonflies should, in his-book, pay a tribute to these insects’ beauty, of form and colouring, to their extraordinary skill in flight, and to their good services: “They are to be reckoned as wholly beneficial, on account of the immense number of noxious insects, sueh as flies and mosquitoes, they destroy in both their young and adult stages. As Dr Tillyard is giving much time to fossil insects at present, his essay on the fossil record is particularly interesting. New Zealand’s fossil insect record is a complete blank, but these 15 pages have a personal interest to new Zealanders, as

they discuss the origin and relationship of this Dominion’s insect 1 fauna. The first insect fauna received by Australia- belonged to an ancient continent, Gondwanaland, which has almost completely disappeared. New Zealand, apparently, was the foreshore of that ancient continent, but it had lit'/e ok no access to the Gondwanaland faunas that first populated Australia, ..and it did not have a land' connection with the north sufficiently late to receive the mass of representatives of the highest groups of insects that poured into Australia. Still, New Zealand’s insect fauna is regarded as belonging to the insect fauna of the Australian region. Australia’s rich fauna of butterflies, most of the higher families of moths, most of the higher hymenoptera, and many beetles, cicadas, and dragonflies that found their way to Australia were shut out of New Zealand when, in the Tertiary Era, New Zealand was finally severed from the main Australian land-mass. One of the most surprising facts in regard to this book is that Dr Tillyard, who is chief of the biological department of the Cawthron Institute, Nelson, should have time to produce it, especially as, when he had it in hand, he suffered from very poor healtft. Only a man of his resolution could do the work he has done in recent years. In a single volume, in the able way all who know. him expected, he has dealt with all the known insects in the Commonwealth and the Dominion. Structure, life histories from the cradle to the grave, distribution, economics, fossil histories, and classification come into the scope of “The Insects of Australia and New- Zealand.” They are keys to groups, an insect census, a glossary, references, and valuable directions on collecting, preserving, and studying insects. The volume has many plates in black-and-white, and Mrs Tillyard has provided drawings for eight plates in colour. Messrs Angus and Robertson, Sydney, are the publishers.