Junior Along the Track

Forest and Bird, Issue 104, 1 May 1952, Page 15

Junior Along the Track

(3/- will be paid for each item published 'in “Junior Along the Track”. ll’e would like you to give your ages when you write.) Auckland.— am always entertained by the various devices employed by our neighbours to keep birds from feeding on their young lettuce and other plants. We never have any trouble; our plants grow unmolested. Every morning Mum throws out a handful of soaked bread and my feathered friends are on the spot with a rush. We receive no song of thanksgiving, but they repay us by keeping our garden free of pests. —Michael Porter, 16 years. Plimmerton.— l watched a wax-eye on Tuesday. He was eating some food. When a starling came along and took the food away the wax-eye chased the starling. David Atkinson, 12 years. Winton. — One dark winter’s night the people in our cottage thought someone had shot a gun at them. They were sitting by the fire. It was a mallard duck that went crashing through the window pane and fell on the floor. It was badly hurt so they killed it. The other day I was on my pony and I saw a skylark’s nest in the grass on the roadside. It had tiny little skylarks in it; they were brownish and fluffy. Joanna Dunlop, 8 years.

Auckland. On a nature trail to Le Roy’s Bush and Kauri Glen Park I saw something which I thought other readers might like to hear. We were looking among the trees at a certain tree when one of the group noticed a nest. It was a fantail’s nest containing about three small birds and standing on the edge of the nest was the mother feeding the younger ones insects. Although it was only 10 to 12 feet away the bird did not move and all the rest of the people with us were talking and it still did not move. —Shelagh Dyson, 15 years.

New Plymouth.— Every night for three weeks I have had some animal visitors outside my window. On a chestnut tree a morepork sits and calls out to another morepork across the road, and they exchange their daily news in gruff and squeaky tones for several hours through the night. Sometimes they are serenaded by the snuffling of a hedgehog. The other night I failed to hear any of them and I felt as if I was quite missing something. Cathryn Silson, 13 years.

Motueka. — Last year I saw a bittern down in a swamp. I saw him about three times every week. During November I did not see him at all, and we think he must have been nesting because he is back again now. I also saw a black shag; he had just eaten a trout out of our creek; he could not fly for nearly an hour while he was digesting it. He just sat opening and shutting his mouth all the time. Roger Glyiian, 10 years.