NEW ZEALAND BIRDS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18467, 4 August 1934, Page 16

NEW ZEALAND BIRDS

GIANTS OF PAST PERIODS An interesting address on New Zealand birds was given to the Wanganui Rotary Club by Mr. H. J. Duigan, president of the Wanganui Acclimatisation Society. He traced how New Zealand during the chalk period consisted of a number of small islands which gave place to a continent when the floor of the sea rose. This reached to New Guinea, and birds of the Northern Hemisphere migrated south and mated in the new land. At a later period the floor of the sea sank and the islands of New Zealand remained to evolve its own fauna and avifauna. Within a comparatively short time the country was tenanted with large numbers of gigantic wingless birds. They had since disappeared, but their diminutive representatives—the kiwi and weka- —still existed. The speaker told of how natural enemies had played havoc with the birds which had not had cause to fly and went on to describe the habits of various interesting Now Zealand birds 1 ,, such as the shining cuckoo, tui, grey warbler, waxeye, native crow, long-tailed cuckoo, godwit, grey duck, native pigeon.