THE SHINING CUCKOO

Southland Times, Issue 22159, 30 October 1933, Page 9

THE SHINING CUCKOO

AN INTERESTING VISITOR ARRIVAL AT STEWART ISLAND. (From Our Correspondent.) The loud, clear whistle of the shining cuckoo was heard at Maori Beach about a week ago and again in the township on the morning of October 23. This interesting bird appears to be a native of New Guinea and migrates annually to New Zealand for breeding purposes. They generally arrive in the northern parts towards the end of September, but the migration is not completed until Stewart Island receives its quota about the middle of October. The shining cuckoo was first described and named by Forster in 1772, who called it cuculus nitens, but this name was later changed to Chalcococcyx lucidus. It has a variety of common names such as bronze, bronzewinged, glistening, golden-winged, short-tailed, green, and smaller cuckoo while to the Maoris it was known as pipiwharauroa (bronze cuckoo) and poupouarouro (glistening cuckoo). Hutton and Drummond give the following description: “Above, metallic bronzy green; below, white, barred with bronzy brown. Outer tail feather barred with white, the second with rufus. Forehead freckled with white. Eye black. The sexes are alike.” In size the shining cuckoo resembles the thrush with which bird it is likely to be confused when viewed from a distance, but a closer inspection reveals the characteristic barred or banded breast of the visitor. In “Te Ika a Maui” published in 1870 by Ilev. Mr Taylor, the following appears: “The piwarauroa (chrysococcyx lucidus) is the other cuckoo, which is also a bird of passage. Its breast is white, the feathers being fringed with green and gold; the back is green, gold and bronze; the feathers under the tail are white, spotted with brown. It has a very peculiar shrill note, but when first heard in August its cry is feeble. There is a saying that if it continues to cry “kui, kui,” it will be a cold summer; but if it sings ‘witi, witi, ora’ it will be a warm season.” The Maoris were quick to notice the difference in the call of this bird and used the information so gained in their planting operations. For the first week or two after arrival the call of the shining cuckoo is generally short, being confined to “kui, kui, kui,” but as the breeding season advances “whiti, whiti, ora” is added together with a concluding trill. Dr. Fulton points out the shining cuckoo is one of the most notable of the New Zealand birds, and has a real historical and geographical value, for it was by observing the habits of the bird that naturalists found that New Zealand participated in the great southern migrations. When Mr Colenso stated in 1842 that this bird was migratory, the' furthest distance across the sea that migratory birds had been known to fly was from Norway to Scotland and across the eastern Mediterranean Sea from Egypt to the Greek Islands—in each case a distance of about three hundred miles, involving about eleven hours’ continuous flying. When it was asserted that the shining cuckoo traversed more than three times that distance of ocean from New Caledonia to New Zealand and the Chatham Islands—it was thought that naturalists here had made a mistake. It is now fully acknowledged, however, that these birds do migrate and that they are among the most notable migratory birds in the world.

Richard Kearton, the well known writer on birds states that the performances of our “ocean greyhounds” which have unlimited coal and water, are paltry in the extreme when compared with those of a bird which could easily fly from London to New York during the light of a single day, on a mere thimbleful of gnats, or one that can take its breakfast in Canada and its supper in Brazil. Such performances, it is asserted, could be accomplished by cither the common swift or the Virginian plover. The migratory instinct which enables the cuckoo to visit New Zealand annually almost to a fixed schedule appears to us most wonderful and baffling. Still more so, however, is the case of the young birds which make the journey from New Zealand to New Guinea unguided by their parents. The old birds leave the south for the north early in January, the young ones remaining behind until full grown. At the proper time, which may be as late as April, these birds gather together and wing their way to their winter home in the tropics unguided and unaided!

Benjamin Kidd tells of a young cuckoo, kept in a state of captivity, and prevented from migrating at the proper season, entranced, as it were, in an instinct of migrating, keeping up for hours an apparent flight over a trackless ocean. He says: “Some years ago I had the good fortune to rear from the beginning a specimen of the young of the common cuckoo. As my young cuckoo became full grown it was gradually attuned by nature for its wonderful migratory flight. In this case there is no room for thinking that the young birds find their way as the result of any teaching from the older birds of the kind .... As the season waned and the time for the migration of my young cuckoo approached and passed, its behaviour grew interesting. The bird always became very restless in the evening. Being much attached to me, it generally settled at last so as to be near me in a stationary case on the table on which I was writing . . . Here as the hours wore on, the same thing happened every night. After a short interval the muscles of the wings began to quiver, this action being to all appearance involuntary. The movement gradually increased, the bird otherwise remaining still, until it grew to a noiseless fanning motion of the kind that one sees in a moth when drying its wings on emerging from the chrysalsis. This movement tended to grow both in degree and intensity and it generally lasted as long as I sat up during the night. In the early stages of this mood the bird responded when I spoke to it, but in time it ceased to do so, and became lost in a kind of trance, with eyes open and wings ceaselessly moving. Brain, muscles, nervous system and will all seemed to be inhibited by the stimulus that excited it. The bird became as it were locked in the passion of that sense by which the movement of flying was thus stimulated. It was one of the strangest sights I had ever witnessed—this young migratory creature of the air, which had never been out of my house, and which had never known any of its kind, sitting beside me in the gloom of our northern winter- and in the dim lamplight, by a kind of inherited imagination, yet

which was not imagination in our sense, flying thus through the night league-long over lands and oceans it had never seen.” The migratory instinct in young birds is further exemplified by the common mutton bird. At the close of the breeding season and just before the young birds are able to fly the old birds depart for the north and leave their offspring to the tender mercies of the Maoris. Those that escape appear to be able to follow their parents to their northern home.. An instance is on record of a “ringed” mutton bird being liberated in New Zealand and later captured off the coast of California! Do the young birds accomplish the remarkable feat of traversing a good part of two hemispheres with nothing to guide them but instinct? Many similar curious facts in ornithology could be adequately explained if such a thing as “bird wireless” existed and if this should prove to be the case the wonders of our wireless would pale into insignificance.