COVER PICTURE (From a Water-Colour by the late Miss L. A. Daff) Bellbird (Korimako)

Forest and Bird, Issue 105, 1 August 1952, Page 4

COVER PICTURE (From a Water-Colour by the late Miss L. A. Daff) Bellbird (Korimako)

Ant ho mis melanura

THE bellbird rapidly decreased before the onset of civilisation, until by 1890 in mo, places it was very rare. Within the last thirty years, especially in parts of the South Island, it has so increased even in settled and urban districts that it seems that the bird has adapted itself to the new conditions sufficiently to ensure its perpetuation. One factor in this is undoubtedly the variety of its tastes as regards food. In the winter it feeds largely on insects found on the furrowed trunks of broadleaf, under the papery bark of fuchsia and native holly, or on the branches of all kinds of introduced trees. Berries are also eaten, especially those of coprosma, fuchsia, cabbage-tree, and mistletoe. The native ivy tree, New Zealand flax, ratas, Australian banksias, acacias, and eucalypts, tree lucerne, and redhot pokers, all have flowers bearing nectar accessible to a bird with a brush tongue. But it is when feeding on fuchsia or kowhai

that the birds give most pleasure, adding acrobatics to their other charms as they hang down in all sorts of grotesque attitudes in their efforts to insert their bills into the drooping' flowers. Their fondness for nectar enables us to attract bellbirds to our homes by exposing coloured tins of sweetened water. The song of the bellbird has much in common with that of the tui, even to the whisper songs, jangles, sneezes, gutturals, and chuckles. It is comparatively silent during the noontide heat, unless some few individuals meet on a tree or shrub that offers a tempting show of honey-bearing blossoms. A note or two is briefly sounded, the numbers rapidly increase, and after much noisy fluttering of wings a gush of clanging melody bursts forth from a score of quivering throats forming a concert of unharmonious yet most pleasing sounds. Towards dusk bellbirds utter a succession of notes like the tolling of some distant bell.