NATURE—AND MAN

Southland Times, Issue 22215, 6 January 1934, Page 9

NATURE—AND MAN

WAYS OF BIRDS.

SOME INTIMATE STUDIES.

(Edited by Leo Fanning.)

When Mr H. Guthrie-Smith was in and about Stewart Island, twenty years ago, getting facts and impressions for his book, "Mutton-Birds and Other Birds,” he was keenly interested in the nesting habits of shags—on a rock, two or three acres in area, about eight miles from Halfmoon Bay. “The area occupied by the breeders,” he wrote, "may be one hundred and eighty feet by eighty, and probably maintains four or five hundred nests. Each nest is a squat, compact pillar,— the base probably years old and formed of consolidated sea-wrack and guano. The top of each pillar is slightly concave, and there, on a bed of fouled seaweed, lie the eggs or young. The nests are equidistant and tend to form rows, just as in planting trees at regular distances, straight lines develop themselves. Automatically there lanes have been formed—alleys along which the centremost birds have to venture when about to leave their breeding quarters.” After mentioning that any bird ambling down one of these lanes is always subject to jeers and peckings, the writer remarks:—“ln its conjunction of trepidation and shame, the mein of a cowed shag, thus passing down one of these terrible lanes, can be compared only to that of a nervous person threading the aisle of a great church, alone, with creaking boots, the parson stopping his discourse the better to emphasise his displeasure, and every individual of the congregation rising to yell opprobrious remarks, whilst those at the pew doors hurl hymn books, kick, and attempt to trip him; or, to that of a man in a nightmare, conscious more of ignominy than of fear, condemned to pass, companionless in his shame through a ballroom without his trousers, and with the further consciousness of thick ankles, negro heels, mis-shaped calves, and that he has not washed his legs for a fortnight and two days. "Such are the agonies that shags can inflict on their fellow-shags; and it must not be thought that these comparisons are merely fanciful. Expression of the emotions in birds is as distinct, and interpretable, to those who have watched, as is the expression of his emotions in man’s best friend, his dog. Man, dog, or bird, each has been digged from the same pit, moulded from the same clay. Although developed on divergent lines, each has been modelled on a common plan, and there still exists, diluted to tenuity and strained through time incalculable, an essential sympathy. The pain and pleasure of the beasts of the field and fowls of the air, can never appeal in a foreign tongue to man. His frame is theirs and it is by this corporeal kinship, that he can read expression as well as comprehend emotion.” A Bird Triangle. A contributor to "Bird Lore” mentions a drama of the bird world. "I came upon a robin nest under construction in which three robins were interested—two females and a male,” he says. "The nest was about onethird done, and was located in a willow tree about 18 feet above the ground, in Schenley Park. The intruding female tried her utmost to prevent the other from building. So, whenever the rightful one came in with nesting material, a battle would ensue and she would be forced to retire with her nesting material, await the intruder’s absence, fly in and place the material, and retreat before the intruder returned. Her mate only occasionally gave feeble assistance in battle, and no assistance at all in the building. The game, faithful female worked on amid these difficulties of envy and battle, and within four days of my coming on the scene, the nest was finished.

"Now the tables were turned. Trying to take possession and lay eggs was seemingly the jealous one’s intent, but it didn’t work. Both robins now pounced upon her and fierce battles followed that day. They battled in mid-air, through trees and bushes and on the ground. Not until late afternoon did the battle end. Then the trespasser appeared no more. The next day, while walking with a friend, a crippled robin was seen not very far from the nest; plainly, certainly, circumstantial evidence pointed strongly toward her guild. Three young robins came from this nest.”

Many countries have mocking-birds —and, of course each country may believe that its own mocking-birds are more wonderful than those of other lands. Here is a pleasant tribute to the American mocking-bird by Archibald Rutledge:—“l remember one night in October, during the time of the full moon, I was listening to the ecstatic singing of a mocking-bird—now on the tiny green spire of a red cedar, and now on the wind in the moonlit sky above it. For curiosity I was trying to identify each of his imitations, given with delirious abandon yet with precise certainly. The night was very still. During a lull in the concert of the mocking-bird, I heard another voice, very high in the heavens; only two notes I heard from the distant voyageur—an upland plover en route from the clover fields of Pennsylvania to the pampas of the Argentine; only two liquid notes, haunting, human, mysterious. Then silence reigned. But a moment later the minstrel of the cedar tree had taken the air again, and was repeating, with the perfect intonation of an artistic mimic, the mournful and musical call of the Bartramian sandpiper, by that time far out over the wastes of the Atlantic. There was a charm about this performance that had in it the spirit of elfland: the lonely plover on his epic journey, the master musician capturing with delight those dewy tones, and repeating them to solace the lyric hunger of his heart.” Hunting Skill of the Fantail. A passage from Mr Edgar Stead’s book, “The Life Histories of New Zealand Birds”:—“Often one sees house sparrows trying to catch flying moths, a common variety of which has a peculiarly jerky, erratic flight. This completely baffles the sparrow, which makes zig-zag flights in pursuit, and desperate snaps with its bill at a quarry that eludes it by a timely twist in its flight. A fantail catches similar moths quite certainly, usually at the first swoop, and apparently with little effort. This indicates the great perfection of the bird’s adaptation to its particular mode of feeding; and when fantails are feeding young, they are able to seize elusive insects in flight, while holding in their bills a number of previous captures.

“When feeding, the birds usually take up a position on the edge of a clearing, making short flights into the open to catch their prey. Although they do not feed particularly early in the morning, they are among the latest of our diurnal birds to be abroad at night. As the sun sets they work up to the tops of the highest trees in the neighbourhood, whence they pursue the insects that come out in the evening, and swarm above the bush. In such circumstances, fantails will continue to feed at dusk, a habit that, I fear, may cause them to fall victims of the introduced little owl” (also known as the German owl).