Different Songs.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20556, 6 March 1935, Page 6

Different Songs.

Nature Notes

By

James Drummond,

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

uttered by grey warblers in Canterbury are different from the notes of grey warblers on the West Coast. The songs on both sides of the Southern Alps have sufficient in common to leave no doubt as to the identity of the songsters. All have the same subdued tenderness and plaintiveness, with a slight quavering, and a faint melancholy strain, but the difference in the way the notes are uttered is surprising. The Rev Oscar Blundell learnt the notes of grey warblers in magnificent forests near Pahiatua, Wellington Province. He heard grey warblers in different places for thirty-five years afterwards, but never heard the same notes as he recorded at Pahiatua. He heard grey warblers in New Plymouth sing the same song all the year round. Grey warblers on Mount Egmont had a distinctly different song. There were differences again in songs he heard at Mahurangi River, at Taranga Island, and at Gannet Island. “ There is the same kind of song in all districts,” he wrote, “ but the notes which make the actual song vary." Songs of tuis and of bellbirds also differ in different districts. Two Christchurch residents went into five acres of native forest, reserved and fenced off. in Pigeon Bay, Banks Peninsula. They called a bellbird down from the tree-tops. It went trustfully within a few feet of them, satisfied its curiosity, and retired into the foliage. In a few seconds it began to utter its notes, three or four at a time. They had the genuine silver bell tune, but they were unlike the notes of bellbirds on the West Coast in regard to number and tone.

This bellbird obviously was pleased to give the strangers an “at home.” They whistled its notes imitatively, and it replied with note for note. After they left the reserve, and as they walked away along the road, they turned at every few yards and whistled again. Farewell notes always rang out of a tree, from which the bellbird watched them depart.