A SAD LITTLE TALE

Forest and Bird, Issue 139, 1 February 1961, Page 18

A SAD LITTLE TALE

You must often have wondered how and why some of our native birds are dying out.

In his Bird Life on Island and Shore Mr. Guthrie-Smith tells how, while he and a friend were visiting Little Barrier Island, they watched two North Island robins for some weeks.

The robins began courting early in October and Mr. Robin could be seen offering his lady a choice worm or a juicy caterpillar, which she would accept with a grateful flutter of wings.

Then began nest building. This was a process which needed much care in the choice of materials, and Mrs. Robin would carefully test each aerial root before pulling it from the treefern trunk.

Nothing but the best and strongest would do for her precious nest. She was a marvel of skill as she gathered the needed material. A cobwebby tangle of twigs always appealed to her, and she even managed to pull towards her nest a yard-long train of twigs, leaves and cobweb, cleverly steering it through the undergrowth.

To shape the nest, at times she would get inside and, after weaving the material with her beak, she would press with her body to get the right shape, turning in a half-circle first to one side and then to the other. Finally she would spread her wings and beat them down on the rim of the nest to give it a neat finish.

Her little husband, meanwhile, gathered food for both of them, and would call her a short distance from the nest and offer her grubs and caterpillars.

By 19th October some eggs had been laid, though Mr. Guthrie-Smith says he did not go near the nest for fear of disturbing the birds. One day this nest was destroyed by rats.

A second nest was soon built by the robins, but rats ate those eggs too.

On 23rd November a third nest was found and the eggs were hatched, but this time fate was even more unkind because the gentle, hard-working little mother was killed by the rats and the babies taken.

Mr. Guthrie-Smith describes how for weeks afterwards he used to see the lonely little male bird still near the same spot, as though unable to tear himself away.