Junior Along the Track

Forest and Bird, Issue 106, 1 November 1952, Page 15

Junior Along the Track

Invercargill.— During the May holidays I was staying on a farm in South Otago. It was hilly manuka country. Tomtits, grey warblers, bellbirds, hawks and fantails were very abundant. I had spent the morning on the branch of a tree, listening to bellbirds singing, so in the afternoon I walked over the hills to a sunny glade among the manuka, on the side of a hill. I was lying on the ground thinking, when suddenly I looked up, and saw sitting on the branch of a manuka tree, a small male tomtit. For a while it sat perfectly still and I was able to study it carefully. Unfortunately it would not sing to me and after fluttering lazily from branch to branch it slowly flew off into the dark shadows of the manuka. — Judith Chapman, 13 years. Otekaike.— We boys dine in one big room and on Sundays at dinner time the fantail always comes in through the window and flies around the room a few times and then out again and it has been doing that for the last three or four weeks.— Brian Hughes, 18 years. Wellington.— Miramar South School Branch of the Forest and Bird Protection Society which meets every week now has a membership of 30. Lively discussions are held and each member does a project concerning birds, plants, trees and all wild life. On Saturday, 12th July, 27 of our members went to Khandallah Domain for a picnic, and a very pleasant day studying trees and plants was spent by all. — Lois Blatherwick (President). Golden Bay.— When in some very lovely bush, I noticed, on all the birch trees, that the bees were

very interested in the tiny hairs that protruded from the black velvety bark. On a closer examination, I saw tiny dro'ps of nectar on the end of them, which tasted very nice, because we tried some.— Angela Goulter, 12 years. [The “tiny hairs” were thin hair-like tubes sent out by a small insect called a coccid which was sitting there sucking the sap of the tree. The “nectar”, , which is known as “honeydew” is the waste substances, including sugar, which the coccid does not want after it has got its nourishment from the sap. The •velvety substance is a black sooty fungus which feeds on the nectar dropping from these tubes and the coccid is down underneath it poking the tubes up through it. . Bees and birds like this nectar very much.Ed.] Hikurangi.— One day while walking through the bush I suddenly spied a morepork eating a mouse. A hawk high up in the sky suddenly swooping down took the mouse and flew as fast as it could. The morepork seeing the mouse had gone, gave chase but soon gave up. lan Venables, 13 years. Great Barrier Island.— are quite a number of Oystercatchers living on our beach and up a tidal river near my home. One day while I was rambling along the edge of the sandhills I saw what I thought was a baby rabbit dart into an old driftwood box. I ran to the box, poked in my hand and dragged out instead of a rabbit a baby Oystercatcher. It was a fluffy grey speckled ball with long greyish legs and beak. Overhead the parent birds screamed and screeched at me. When I let the baby go, it ran along the sand to the parents which rushed to it with much fuss. Murray Mabey, 10 years.