A RICH SANCTUARY

Southland Times, Issue 19345, 10 September 1924, Page 6

A RICH SANCTUARY

BEAUTIFUL STEWART ISLAND A. GLOWING TRIBUTE If matters were allowed to take their course on Stewart Island, the deer which have been liberated will eventually destroy the wonderful scenic beaut.es of the island (states the Bulletin of the Native Birds Protection Society). The birds will also be vastly decreased, and some species will be altogether eliminated, leaving an eyesore in place of what is now a joy and a pleasure to all who behold it. With reference to the suitability of the island as a sanctuary, that accurate observer and ornithologist, H. Guthrie Smith, writes: “It is sufficient to say that, with the exception of a small portion about Half Moon Bay, this beautiful island is worthless for material purposes. Its rainfall is great, and its peats and sands are impossible to till or grass. As to the islets and island groups, most of them still remain the property of the nation, but it is a property terribly neglected and grossly mismanaged.” Referring to an evening spent on Herekopere, a nesting island (for sea birds), off Stewart Island, the same writer remarks: “About 7, the earliest of the kuaka began to arrive, at first here a bird and there a bird, then almost at once it began to hail kuaka, then to sleet kuaka, and astly to snow kuaka. They reached the island in dozens, scores, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands, and I verily believe perhaps in millions. At first they hurtled themselves in like hailstones, then later fell with some degree of regard to their safety, and lastly lit softly as snow, and with hardly a rustle. Although standing in a conspicuous spot on a rise in open ground and guarding my head and face, I was struck by kuaka eight times in a few minutes. Each morning we might have gathered them in as the Israelites from the wilderness their quail. Every empty box contained birds. They fell down the chimney, they floated in our water cask.” Such is a description of ope small adjoining island. On the main island pigeons, tuis, bell birds, kakas, kiwi, robins, tomtits, wekas, cuckoos, fernbirds, parakeets, etc., are plentiful, and the surrounding islets have been the meeting place for ages past of mutton birds, petrel, parara, Skua gulls, penguins, shags, etc. Stewart Island is well known for its picturesqueness and the charm of its coast line, and is almost useless for purposes other than an avifauna and flora sanctuary.