Honey Birds and Flowers

Southland Times, Issue 22993, 12 September 1936, Page 21 (Supplement)

Honey Birds and Flowers

I have promised myself that if ever I live near a forest and road where the tree fuchsia thrives in the sun I shall make some observations. Throughout several years’ trips I noticed how joyfully the flower birds—nectar-sipping tuis and bell-birds—welcome those earlyflowering fuchsias by the sides of the roads (writes E. G. Turbott in The Auckland Star). For the native fuchsia begins to flower in August, often early in the month, sometimes late. At that time you drive along fuchsia-lined roads, such as the lake highways of Rotorua, to music. The singing is from bellbird and tui, sipping nectar as they dart from flower to flower. They become dusted with the fuchsia’s deep blue pollen. Their autumn fare was of berries, and insects came in after berries were over. Now in spring again they are nectar-lovers, these birds which show, above all others, “keen appreciation of the right strong joy of living.”

My observations will be about the relation between bird and blossom: how much each flower provides, how constant is the tui in his visiting, etc. There will be plenty to do in the midst of this springtime scene. I can recommend the subject to you. Then there is the Christmas plum in flower, if I want something nearer home. The great patrons of the blossoming plum trees are the small silvereyes. “The natural food of the silvereye consists of insects, nectar and soft fruits. . . . When feeding it seems continually to be changing its food, first perhaps feeding on fruit, then searching for insects, and eventually coming back to the fruit,” says Oliver. The last sentence refers to the months when it is not spring or summer. Under the sway of the latter seasons, silvereye turns to flowers, and sips with satisfaction of the nectar which they furnish. The bees also come along and take their share. Then the result is one of those unforgettable pictures, and you gaze delightedly at the flowering plum while the birds share the nectar with the bees.

Australia is the land of the honeyeaters. The majority of the honeybirds there “are bom travellers, or, to be more precise, confirmed wan-derers—happy-go-lucky vagrants, who follow the fluctuations of the flowers from district to district, or State to State, according to the necessities of the day and the hour. “That, of course, is in the cooler months. Later on the birds must needs remain loyal to a particular locality for resting purposes; but from March to July they live in

actual fact the idyllic life of which ‘my dainty Ariel’ sang: Merrily, merrily shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. “Here, again, is evidence of the thoughtfulness of Mother Nature for her children. For is it not in the winter months that the great body of the eucalypts are in blossom? And when the supply of nectar eases off in the springtime are there not many insects upon which baby honey-birds may be fed?”—(Chisholm.) I am not describing fox- you the story in our own country, but warning you that flower time is approaching.