A Big Meal.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 494, 1 July 1932, Page 6

A Big Meal.

Nature Notes.

By

James Drummond,

F.L.S., F.Z.S.

QX THE OTAKI BEACH, West Coast of

Wellington Province, a black shag tried to swallow a kahawai. The fish was a large one, but the shag made determined efforts to get it down, always unsuccessfully, the fish sticking in the shag’s throat. In this case gluttony received the severest punishment. Spines on the fish’s back prevented its ejection. It would go neither up nor down. When the pair were found on the beach, both were dead.

The fish was pulled out of the shag’s throat and measured. It was seventeen inches long and four inches deep at its deepest part. Black shags once had several homes inland from Otaki, on the banks of lagoons and rivers. The felling of the forests laid their habitations waste, and most of them left for other parts. Further back, in the ranges, blue ducks, sometimes called mountain ducks, known to the Maoris as whio, may be seen in the streams. These native ducks, wearing drab costumes of lead-blue picked out on the breast with dull reddish spots, often may be seen standing on a stone or a boulder amongst the eddies, or in a foaming champagne pool. At other times they dive into rapids in search of food, using their wings like hands to cling to stones in order to resist the rushing water.