NATURE—AND MAN.

Southland Times, Issue 22011, 10 May 1933, Page 12

NATURE—AND MAN.

RARE BIRDS IN PERIL. WHITNEY EXPEDITION SIGHTED. (Edited by Leo Fanning.) Here comes another worry for the Native Bird Protection Society—which means another worry for New Zealand, as the society works wholly and solely for New Zealand. Information . has reached the Dominion that the Whitney Bird-Collecting Expedition’s ship is again in the Pacific, and it Is feared that the American vessel will make another raid on these islands. The society has sad memories of the American collectors’ call here in 1926 when they exterminated the parrakeet of Antipodes Islands, and deplorably reduced the remnant of rare birds in other outlying islands of the Dominion. The Whitney Expedition—financed by rich Americans —is collecting birds for the Natural History Museum, . New York. The more rare is a species of bird, the more eager is such a museum to obtain specimens. That attitude was indicated in the following warning received by the Native Bird Protection Society some years ago from a wellwisher in U.S.A.: —“At the big Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard they have the customary belief, held very strongly, that all the indigenous birds of New Zealand are doomed, and that all attempts should be made to collect more while there is yet time. It is extraordinary how . strong this feeling is. Personally I think we shall yet be in time to conserve all the species that now remain.” The Raids of 1926. Before the Whitney Expedition received its extensive permit to kill “protected” birds of New Zealand it began its raiding in the Kermadecs and other outlying islands of the Dominion. When the ship reached the mainland the collectors, with the assistance of the American Consul and the Director of the Dominion Museum, were granted a warrant by the Department of Internal Affairs to take a total of 846 birds. This arrangement was made secretly (the society states) and the damage was done before the society or any other body interested in nativebird welfare had an opportunity to prevent it or lessen it. The society tried in vain to induce the department to take the commonsense precaution of sending an official representative with the expedition to ensure that the terms of the warrant would be strictly observed. Rare birds which the Americans were authorized to kill included bellbirds, ducks, snipe and tomtits of the Auckland Islands; bell-birds, fembirds, robins, tomtits, warblers and snipe of the Chatham Islands; fembirds, robins and snipe of the Snares; sandplover, wrybill, southern merganser and black-stilt plover. Will that black chapter of history repeat itself? When the expedition left New Zealand waters the members mentioned that their work was not complete. It is gravely feared that the Americans hope to add more of the Dominion’s rare birds to their collection. The general public should strongly protest against the issue of another permit. Indeed every possible precaution should be taken by the authorities to give absolute protection to the remaining birds. When a species is known to be rare no collector, for any purpose whatever, should be allowed to take one. Already specimens of New Zealand birds are sufficiently numerous in several big museums overseas, and accurate scientific descriptions of them are readily available in books written in the principal modem languages and in Latin. There is no excuse whatever for any further thinning of rare species by collectors. On the contrary it is surely the national duty of the Department of Internal Affairs to do its best to promote an increase—not a decrease —of threatened species. When Mr Stead was writing his book, “The Life Histories of New Zealand Birds,” he had two tame moreporks in his garden—“ Horace” and “Oswald”—which gave him much entertainment. Here is a passage about

those birds:—“Horace was always rather timid, the result of his having been frightened by some children before he could fly; but Oswald is delightfully tame, and when whistled to, comes to me out of the night and sra on my hand to be stroked and fed; or follows me around the garden making a curious clucking cry all the. time. He does not object to electric light, and, indeed, when the light on the drive is switched on at night, frequents the trees near it and hawks the moths and other insects which are attracted by the glare. For the most part he catches flying insects in his talons, but I think that occasionally he takes them in his bill. Ground prey he catches in his feet. If it is small, he stands on one foot, holding the other up while he eats food from it, after the manner of a parrot; but if tho food is large, then he stands on it with both feet, and tears it in the same way that a hawk would do." Bell-Birds’ Community Singing. Numerous writers have mentioned the early morning chorus of bell-birds and tuis. “Later in the day,” remarks Mr Stead, “particularly in the nesting season, several cock bell-birds will gather together and indulge in 'community singing’—a genuine chorus—apparently from pure joy of living. Once I was sitting quietly, watching a family of saddlebacks, the two parents and two young, as they travelled through the tree-tops, feeding as they went. In adracophyllum near by, a cock bell-bird was busily extracting the honey from the lily-of-the-valley-like flowers, when another flew into the same tree. According to custom the first bird flew at the second, chasing it with noisy flight for a few seconds, then suddenly stopping, and pouring forth a voluble song. Immediately the other bird answered with a wonderful cadence of six notes, the last low one repeated several times. Two others joined them, and then a forth, and they settled down to a son? that can surely have few equals in the bird world. They sat, a yard or so apart, with tails slightly spread, the feathers of the breast and back erected to make the body appear twice its normal size; the head held forward and the bill down; moving the body from side to side as if in ecstasy, while they poured forth their melody. Each one sang for a short period, then paused for about the same length of time, so that there were always two or more singing together. The richness of the notes was amazing, each bird seeming to vie with the others in the production of music, until the bush echoed with the sound. For perhaps five minutes they continued thus, not moving from the stands they had originally taken up. Then one of them flew to a bunch of flowers and began to feed, and after a few more bars, the others, one by one, dispersed.”

Would you think that a weka (woodhen) could swallow a mouse? Well, it can (on the word of Sir Walter Buller and other observers). He was amazed by the huge appetites of some wekas which he kept captive. “Not only were my captives omniverous,” he wrote, “devouring fish, flesh, and fowl, whether cooked or raw, boiled potato and other vegetables, green fruit, and, in short, everything within the digestive power of the gizzard, but they also had a most inordinate and voracious appetite. As a proof of this, I may state, by reference, to my notebook, that a single bird in the course of two months consumed nearly a hundredweight of potatoes!”