ae eee tat shaw hod toa Tees.
ree pote tire
- sal ett Ooh
. Pees 3 =
SSSI Boas SES Ss ats
Nieto nae eae.
etaneeeteree
Fa he
—o0 -
eee Neer
et Se
Sana ete tstata et
>t assole tte,
=
<3
= oi
al Sree a
; a8, Carnet c— 8
oo Pak st 7 =
sae Bene Pere at
2 : b . ~ pes zis
eS or Spore “i eter > nee a be es tS maaeed
en. Gee SEE Su Sa cea esgiecn
wore
Mats
pba ees se reat tts
ee
es
Boe |
aroha woo ra .
ANE Pa) ee ke
ns Meat Mgt
ein Nata
Ht
?
ulledY Lak ae
Bn Wi fi
i
Le ead ae m
BEY":
at
[ay $ ie {
Sa
trees y rg
.
a
i
A,
YY,
oY a
oun * Tel enaa tee Lo COVEM FOU oS 5
oo RE eM
alle NE = ip
Re f
: i a
BIRDS of the
WATER,
WOOD &
WASTE.
H. GUTHRIE-SMITH.
WELLINGTON, CHRISTCHURCH, DUNEDIN, N.Z.;
MELBOURNE AND LONDON
WHITCOMBE & TOMBS LIMITED
1910
eS aTicu al re
cM IMOUN/ 4 A Lin.
CIBRARIES
To G. Mi.’G.-S.
Nt ie AL
REPRO ERNE » RL rity a EA ACN p i nit He Non io
TOS RULE VL RMR ST Nike mat uae a)
a
Nyit yr i HK
ii ys
ay;
My
UA
valk
ay Su
ANE;
ANG K 8
i i Wr a
el
yy AA) hat
)
i } *
ri } . q i 7 1 ‘i i H ,, 1 5 ey PAG 4
ON eter aN nines ie ; i F RY Ma aT Wa 0 OA en hi
oy Bip i j k ;
Mt bt
Thi Nh | ry }
ail ny F Ni ry na) ty
‘ a WRN) a j RIN
‘ va
th)
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface : : il
The Lake ; a
The Scaup ; : Ly
The Mountain Duck : 93
The Grey Duck : 52
The Brown ‘Duck. ©. ; 36
The Kingfisher ; : : 4]
The Weka : 60
The Pukeko : , 67
The Harrier ; , 99
The Falcon , ; Ae OG
The Ground Lark . Ana y yd?)
EIDE CLAESan eS NR aN ee Pe 21
The Waxeye . me brs 5,
The Warbler. OFLA,
The Fern-bird . : ; . 146
The Tui MEM 552,
The Pigeon : i aap Low
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Female Falcon about to cover Young Frontispiece.
Scaup’s Nest in Flax . . Facing 16
Blue Duck in Waikahau River x, 22
Blue Duck’s Nest under clump of
Hill Flax . ; : 24
Blue Duck in Quiet Daal - 26
Blue Duck with Young . yA 30
Grey Duck’s Nest in Fern : 7" 32
River Scene. 5a 34
Brown Duck SERIND in siege id 39
Male and Female Brown Duck . 40
Young Kingfishers—showing Nest in
Sandbank . , i 43
Kingfisher and Tailless favacd a 46
A Kingfisher Quartette . ie 48
Kinefisher carrying Lizard ks 56
Kingfisher with Cicada wi 56
Weka’s Nest with Eggs . i 64
Male Pukeko on Nest * 66
Pukeko’s Nest ie 72
“Budge” drying hirieelfe . 74
“Budge” and Chick. 7 74
‘ Budge” feeding the little ones . by 78
‘ Budge,” “Jill” and “ Quintus” % 80
Male Pukeko sitting . ‘3 88
Male Pukeko coming on to Me a 90
ILLUSTRATIONS
“ Budge”
Pukeko sitting on Higgs
Young Harriers.
Young Harriers aaah
Harrier’s Nest in Raupo Swamp
Falcon creeping on to Young
Hen Falcon Sitting
Falcon’s Nest
Expectant
Feeding Time
Young Falcon
Nest of Ground Lark
Ground Lark Nestlings
Ground Lark about to feed Yous
Fantail’s Nest shewing Tail
Fantail’s Nest in Manuka
Fantail’s Nest
Fantail
Fantail
Fantail
Nest of Miran in putes Buel
Sanitation of Nest
Male and Female Waxeye
Waxeye Feeding Nestlings
Nothing more
Hen Warbler Papresenine Nest
Warblers Feeding Young
Male and Female Warblers
Facing
Vili. ILLUSTRATIONS
Fern-bird’s Nest in clump of “Cutty
Grass ”’
Fern-birds by Neat
Male and Female Fern-bird oy Nest
Fern-bird feeding Young .
Fern-bird entering Nest
Fern-bird about to settle on Nest -
Fern-bird and Young
Fern-bird :
Fern-bird inspecting Nest or Baietion
Tui Feeding Young with Fuchsia hak
Tui’s Nest in Tarata
Pigeon’s Nest as first seen
Hen Pigeon sitting .
‘“ Pidgie”’ and his Mother
Young Pigeon expecting Food
Pigeon very angry
Hen Pigeon and Young .
Young Pigeon being fed .
Preparing to resist
Young dis being Heal
hk ,
Up in arms
“Uncle Harry ” :
‘Uncle Harry” three weeks old
“Uncle Harry ” in his Artificial Nest
“Uncle Harry” and his Mother
NO A teak ; !
“No. 4” at Breakfast
Child feeding Pigeons
PAGE
146
146
148
148
148
150
150
150
150
152
156
160
160
162
166
168
170
172
172
174
176
176
178
182
184
186
191
192
196
Preface.
RICACSAYUTIRA is situated in the
A ASR northern portion of Hawke’s
Bay, and in most maps of
the Dominion the lake, some
— OROEYEZIS = miles in length, may be seen
marked as a tiny speck some distance
inland, and about midway between Napier
and Wairoa. Certainly there is no better
run in Hawke’s Bay, and probably no
sheep station in New Zealand has at this
date its natural advantages of barren and
waste land.
Kast of the lake, and running north
and south, extends a range of limestone
formation, with great spurs branching off
at right angles, and stretching towards the
sea.
The hill slopes of this part of the run
are exceedingly steep, and the several tiers
of ancient ocean floor very conspicuous.
2
2 BIRDS OF THE WATER
On the extreme west, and also running
north and south, rises the Maungahararu,
another and a loftier limestone range.
Betwixt these two—the mountains on the
west and the hills on the east—lies the
bulk of the run, lower in elevation and
chiefly consisting of valley lands and tilted
terraces.
The whole of this great trough has the
rounded contours characteristic of pumaceous
country, and has been probably the bed of
some vast old world river system or great
chain of almost stagnant lakes.
The limestone range east of the lake at
one time grew admirable covert of all sorts,
dense fern, high tutu, koromiko, and a con-
siderable area of ‘‘whitey-wood’’ bush,
kowhai, fuchsia, rama rama, ngaio, kai-
whiria, ete., etc., with pines in the richer
and damper bottoms, and bird life was then
abundant.
Its value, however, during the last score
of years has much depreciated; fires have
swept the hill sides, grasses and clovers
have become established, and except for the
grazing of sheep, large areas have become
WOOD AND WASTE 3
almost worthless. Even here, however, the
destruction has not been complete; still on
the cliffs and alongside the ‘‘under-runners’’
erow many berry-bearing trees, and the flats
along the lake edge, too, are distinctly
useful.
They may in these days indeed be ac-
counted assets of no inconsiderable value,
inasmuch as they are too nearly at lake
level to admit of proper drainage and
ploughing, and their growth of carex,
‘“feutty grass,’’? and raupo provide excellent
harbourage for the smaller rails and other
interesting species.
The great pumaceous region extending
over the centre or trough of the run has
not yet—though scrub-cutting and ploughing
are in progress—been seriously affected.
Everywhere over these lower lands, the
subsoil is a soft clay rock, and throughout
this portion of the run ramify a network
of creeks. These begin as mere narrow
bottomless bogs; as, however, they increase
in water volume and establish a scour, the
sharp pumice grit quickly wears through
the soft rock beneath, and the quagmire
4 BIRDS OF THE WATER
deepens into a gorge. With these advant-
ages, this part. of the run is almost ideal
cattle country, for the beasts that don’t
break their necks reaching for serub on the
cliffs, mostly bog themselves in search of
the rough grasses grown on the quagmires.
No runholder who wishes to get the
utmost out of his property should own eattle.
The damage they do is enormous, spreading
grasses everywhere, opening up the rough
corners of paddocks, and smashing down
the smaller species of scrub so necessary
for covert for birds.
On the far west Tutira reaches to nearly
3,000 feet above sea level, and the upper
slopes and tops are covered with valuable
woods—timber impossible to get out for
milling purposes, and which even if felled
could not be got to carry a fire. The soil is
indifferent, the climate humid, and in the
natural forest ciearings wineberry at once
springs up. ‘These range tops, perhaps, may
be reckoned as my best country, for they are
well stocked, and carry a good head of rare
native species. They are, moreover, for
long likely to remain intact and unspoiled.
The photographs shown were taken through-
out the seasons of 1908 and 1909. During
WOOD AND WASTE 5
the latter I had Mr. J. OC. Mclean as
assistant for several months, and have to
thank him for help, both in the dark room
and field.
All the prints from which the blocks
have been prepared were done from my
negatives by Mr. G. F. Green. I have
therefore the satisfaction of knowing that
the utmost has been got out of often very
indifferent material. I have also to thank
Mr. Green for the friendly interest taken
in the preparation of this little volume,
and to acknowledge many suggestions in
regard to its outward form and appearance.
t am obliged to Mr. Frank Stopford for
having carefully gone over the proof sheets.
Finally, one word in regard to the illus-
trations themselves.
Many of them, I am perfectly well aware,
are unsatisfactory. [I have, nevertheless,
thought them worth producing, not for
themselves, but as illustrative of some
interesting point in the bird’s life history
or as proof of its perfect domestication.
The photogravures and tone blocks have
been excellently done by Messrs. Hood & Co.,
Middlesbrough, England.
ree
‘dine ed
\
Aa
re,
: De
: ee i
ht Rr iis
KU ea
tM) =
1
Pha
ye ag
ry mM
ww aly
i noe aio
hn Ri
in) 1
+ in) 7
‘ K if eh
i
hay
i ea ee
At ra ie
a Pre ha
PATA
' \ eet y
r i) re Me
nth Se Vi sk
oe ie BO
ie if veh
F
Aeon
Maes BN) Vey
ss aes i
K ie
Te US er ds cian
uke i
ere |
ah ae
Ni
ANT,
pine i
BIRDS OF THE
WATER, WOOD, AND WASTE
The Lake
aaa A) HE lake on Tutira may be
VA tai-\ considered the heart of the
a run. It is the centre of all
the station’s life and energy;
Re 5 all roads, sheep paths, pack
tracks and stock routes lead to it. The
little homestead, the married shepherds’
houses, the men’s quarters look on to it.
On the peninsula, Te-rewa-a-mapoutunoa,
which almost bisects the lake, stands the
woolshed. Every one of us sees the lake
first thing in the morning, clear and shining
ir the sun, or still wan and clay stained
for weeks, and even months, after one of
the torrential rain storms that strike this
part of Hawke’s Bay and bring the hill-
sides down like melting snows off a roof.
We see it last thing at night, the moon
marking its narrow silver path, or in dark,
clear weather the stars reflecting themselves.
8 BIRDS OF THE WATER
The briefest morning glimpse at its surface
serves to inform us what kind of a day is
to come, and when in summer the hills are
browning—an event which happens once in
about ten years—and there are hopes of
grass fires, a glance lets the eager shep-
herds know of that rare event, a good
‘*burning’’ day—a gale from the west and
north-west blowing out of a cloudless sky.
Too often, however, the lake looms out
unpropitious, and we can trace the day’s
disaster on its morning face. At its
southern end rises the Racecourse Top, Te
ahi-titi, as least as reliable as the average
meteorological prognostication. If, when a
change is evidently coming up from the
south, no mist rests on its rounded top, the
change will pass off as a ‘‘dry souther,’”’ a
skiff of big cold drops blown up in fierce
raw gusts; even when rain continues and the
fatal cloud cap remains away, our auguries
are hopeful, and though half an inch or so
may fall, we do not anticipate a ‘‘buster.’’
When the cloud cap settles heavy rain always
follows.
WOOD AND WASTE 9
Then three-quarters of the work done on
the station is accomplished within eyeshot
of the lake, all the fertile hill country where
the ewes run hes round about its edges, all
the smaller paddocks slope to its shores.
On the homestead side winds the public
road; the other side is the main thorough-
fare of shepherds and their sheep, that pass
in mile-long, loose-linked, stringing mobs.
In fact, fair weather or foul, daylight or
dark, at water level or from the range
tops running parellel, the lake is always the
prime feature of the landscape. The name
Tutira signifies a row or file, and there
can be no doubt that ages ago there must
have been three lakes in a line running
north and south, firstly Waikopiro to the
south, in dry weather separate from the
larger lake, then Tutira, and thirdly a
swamp Tauringa-miro-miro, of several hun-
dred acres, now filled up with slips from
the hills on the east, and with pumaceous
deposits and sand brought down from north
and west by the Papakiri stream. This
ancient lake, Tauringa-miro-miro, would
have been nearly cut off from the waters
3
10 BIRDS OF THE WATER
of Tutira by the peninsula Te Puna, on
the east, and on the west by the ridge Te
Korokoro-o-te-hine-rakai.
These three sheets of water might quite
well, therefore, have been considered
separate lakes, and given rise to the name
Tutira. The natives, on the other hand,
declare the word Tutira is taken from a
particular stance assumed during the spear-
ing of eels, and this, I believe, is the more
probable derivation. These sheets of water
were probably pools and backwaters of a
vast old-world river system that at one time
flowed rapidly, and at a later period oozed
in chains of lakes at the base of the
western mountains behind the present
Maungahararu range, and which have left
the conglomerate deposits that everywhere
crop up throughout the centre of the run.
Then at a later geological period the lakes
must have drained themselves directly
towards the ocean from the southern end,
and not as at present from the nor’-west
corner. It is impossible to fully enter into
this subject here, but a bit of corroborative
evidence may be considered—the evidence
WOOD AND WASTE 11
of the eels. During floods these creatures
assemble in multitudes at the extreme
southern end of the lake, and can be there
heard splashing and flopping, or seen noseing
along the shores. Apparently they are
gathered in obedience to ancestral habit,
acquired perhaps during scores of centuries
and which still compel this attempt on a
long-closed route.*
The depth of Tutira is some eighty feet,
and its original star shape must have been
very beautiful, the rays then running deep
into the hills and the whole country under
dense forest. |
Notr.—A few miles distant from Tutira there is a big
coastal lagoon, shut off in fine weather from the ocean by a
shingle ridge, and here I have often watched the natives take
advantage of the eels’ migratory instinet. When, after rain,
the lagoon has become very full, and is about to break out,
whole pafuls of Maoris arrive, and, scooping out narrow
trenches of seven or nine feet long in the beach, allow the
lagoon water to flow seawards. The eels, waiting in thousands
for the anticipated bursting of the ridge, feel the draw of the
escaping water, and enter the narrow trenches. As they are
seen to pass the watcher at the lagoon’s edge blocks for a
moment the seaward flowing stream. Instantly it percolates
into the shingle and leaves the unlucky eel wriggling in the
trough of the dry channel. In this manner thousands are
taken in a night, the victims, entering the shingle, are sccoped
out not only singly, but often in pairs; this continuing hour
after hour.
12 BIRDS OF THE WATER
These arms or branches are now, however,
and have been for ages, filled up with land
slips, and each century adds to the rounded
appearance of the lake. Even in my time
the hundreds of thousands of tons of slips
and silt brought down in floods have notice-
ably filled up the bays Kaiteratahi and
‘Kaihekanui. This process of filling up,
though slow, is nevertheless more rapid than
during the past ¢enturies, for then forest and
serub, tall raupo and flax, blocked the bulk
of the silt. The destruction of much of
this indigenous vegetation now allows this
mud to reach the lake more rapidly and
more directly. This process must always
continue, and the lake is destined ultimately
to contract itself into a narrow, crooked
creek flowing on the west edge of its present
formation, for on the west the hill slopes
are less steep and the slips washed down
enormously less in volume.
Even this, however, would not be the
last change in the area now filled with
water and called Tutira lake.
In imagination we have seen its waters
eone and its basin completely filled with
WOOD AND WASTE 13
washings from the hills, but peering even
further into the future, we shall find not
only the lake gone, but its very base vanished,
and the alluvium collected for centuries
onee more displaced and carried direct to
the sea.
Through the centre of the lake will
then run a long, deep valley, with arms
extending up each of the branch flats, every
one of which will have again become a
gorge.
At present, as has already been mentioned,
Tutira is drained from its nor’-west corner
by the Papakiri, which stream after a
tortuous course of half a mile through level
flax swamp, reaches the old native crossing.
Immediately below this crossing begin a
series of overfalls and waterfalls, culmin-
ating in a leap of over a hundred feet.
This fall may be some sixty chains from
the lake, and the ledge over which it rushes
is to some extent eroded year by year. I
imagine that the fall has receded lake-
wards some two feet since the eighties, but
exact accuracy is impossible as the land-
marks, by which I have tried to gauge the
14 BIRDS OF THE WATER
wear and tear, have themselves moved.
There is, however, growing on the stream’s
edge, immediately above the fall, a certain
kowhai tree, whose bole is, I believe, a foot
or two nearer the chasm’s rim than twenty-
five years ago. At all events, there can be
no doubt that the action of the water is
slowlv tending lakewards, and although this
is at present almost imperceptible, vet there
are reasons to suppose that under certain
possible circumstances it might become rapid,
and that thus the alluvial deposits of the
lake basin, accumulated during centuries,
might be washed away in weeks. At any
rate, because there has been almost no
movement for years, it does not necessarily
follow that such conditions will continue,
and many instances of sudden erosion have
occurred on Tutira even in my time. One
will suffice. After years of quiescence the
ditch, three feet deep and two feet wide,
draining Kaihekanui flat, became in a single
flood and in a few hours, a chasm. one
hundred and forty feet wide, fifteen feet
deep, and three hundred feet long. ‘The
water had at last, after thirty years, got
WOOD AND WASTE 15
into softer strata and gutted out in a few
hours this great weight of soil. Some
such catastrophe might likewise happen in
the far future to the big waterfall. Already
there is a cavern extending far beneath the
ledge over which the water flows, and
proving thereby the existence of a softer
rock beneath.
Should, therefore, the hard upper crust
give way or wear out—as must eventually
happen—and should the stream’s course
continue to tap a soft material, the progress
lakeward of this deep rift would be relatively
rapid.
The lake basin itself in time would be
reached, and its contents of soft alluvium
very quickly washed out. Each little rill
and brook draining the branch flats would
eut out into a gorge; the flats would dis-
appear, and the foothills resting on them
would in their turn begin to move, until in
a short time a steep valley similar in all
respects to others in the district would be
formed. The lake, in fact, is no more a
permanency than are the great conglomerate
cliffs of our pumaceous lands, whose every
16 BIRDS OF THE WATER
pebble, aeons ago, has been frost fractured
on the heights of old world hills and
rounded in old world streams. Now again
they are crumbling into modern river gorges
to be carried down to modern seas and
ground to grains of sand. ‘‘The thing that
‘‘hath been, it is that which shall be; and that
‘‘which is done is that which shall be done:
‘Cand there is no new thing under the sun.’’
This account of the lake may not perhaps
be thought too lengthy when its bird life
is considered, for besides three species of
rail, the White Heron, two kinds of Shag,
Bittern, Grebe, and many species of ocean
straggler, every mainland Duck except the
Wood Duck has been, during the last
twenty-seven years, identified on its surface,
the Grey Duck, the Mountain Duck, the
Scaup, the Brown Teal, the White-eyed
Duck, the Paradise Duck, and the Shoveller.
PEATE. V-
Flax
in
aup’s Nest
oc
The Scaup
SHE SCAUP, the Grey Duck,
~\ the Mountain Duck, and the
Brown Duck breed on the
run. Although much reduced
x) in numbers during the last
einer century, there still winter with
us one or two. considerable flocks of
the first-mentioned species, perhaps in all
180 or 200 birds. About mid-August
the majority of these Scaup leave the
run, the remainder staying on the lake
and breeding round its shores. Nowhere
else on the run do they nest, and during
my stay at Tutira I have never seen at
any time of the year Scaup either in the
open river beds or in the deep creeks.
This year, on September 10th, the largest
flock still with us numbered 48 birds, and there
may have been another 20 birds scattered
about the different bays.
4
18 BIRDS OF THE WATER
The Scaup’s breeding season extends over
many months, the first lot of little ducklings
appearing last year on November 27th, and
within a few days, several other broods,
also just hatched, were noticed on the lake.
The last lot observed were a day or two
old on March 7th, and on March 12th a
pair were known to be sitting.
In early autumn they begin to reassemble
from all quarters and reunite in one or two
large flocks, spending the hours of daylight
in deep water, and far from shore, and
only at nightfall venturing into the shallows
and raupo beds.
Four nests were obtained during last
season, and from the first discovered, when
deserted by the old birds, the eggs were
taken, placed under a hen and duly hatched
on November 27th.
The eggs, of a brownish olive green
colour, and considerably polished, are large
for the size of the duck, as big, in fact,
as those of a Buff Orpington hen. They
are slightly flattened at the blunt end, and
average 1107 grains.
WOOD AND WASTE 19
A second nest when found contained two
addled eggs, and had just been vacated, the
parents taking off with them seven young
ducklings.
Within a couple of yards of this nest
was built another holding eight fresh eggs.
The fourth, taken on 4th of January, con-
tained three addled eggs. The birds had
just left it, their brood still hanging about
the raupo in its immediate vicinity.
Although comparatively easy to locate the
whereabouts of a Scaup’s nest, its actual
espial is by no means a simple matter.
Indeed, the bird almost seems to disdain
concealment of herself, so much does she
rely on the difficulties of the discovery of
her nest. Often she can be seen openly
leaving the lake edge and swimming straight
out from shore. You may be sure she has
just quitted her eggs, and after a few trials
be almost equally sure of your failure to
find them. The nest is buried among flax
roots and fallen blades half supporting
layers and layers of rubbish of ten, fifteen,
and twenty years’ accumulation.
20 BIRDS OF THE WATER
Often the bird sits entirely covered, deep
in this dark mat of rotting fibre, and with
barely room to raise her head. The bolt
holes are so narrow and perpendicular, and
the runs so tortuous that no rabbit would
ever willingly take refuge in a thicket so
liable to be blocked. The Scaup sits, more-
over, with extraordinary nerve. Before I
spotted the third nest of the four found
this season I had burrowed—corkscrewed—
deep into years’ accumulation of old flax,
and had actually got my nose within a foot
of the sitting Scaup. It was, indeed, the
smooth shining horn of the bill that first
drew my attention to the bird, motionless in
the gloom beneath these mats of shredded
fibre.
This duck allowed me to gently remove
much of this half-rotten stuff, indeed, her
head had become visible, and I was roughly
focussing the position with a white hand-
kerchief when at last she scrambled up her
bolt hole, hustled along her narrow run,
and presently splashed into the water.
Another nest I found by microscopically
eareful examination of the lake edge, at
WOOD AND WASTE 21
first discovering a very indistinct trail from
water to flax, then in the dark shade of masses
of fallen blades, a fairly distinct passage
free of all cobweb, winding beneath the
dead stuff. I became more sure again, noting
the traffic route, and especially where the
birds had squeezed between a fork of manuka
and an exposed flax root.
The discovery of an infinitesimal shred of
brown down that could only have come
from the covering of the eggs made me
certain, and presently the glimpse of eggs
was my reward. When the nest has been
carefully covered by the Scaup before going
off, discovery is even more difficult, as the
brown down admirably matches the flax
waste.
The proper gear for this kind of bird
nesting is pickaxe, spade and lantern, the
oldest possible rig-out, and a hat that can
be glued to the skull like a cowl.
The little Scaup hatched out by our hens
were tiny brown creatures with dispropor-
tionate feet, enormous for their body’s size,
and reminding one of children wearing
their father’s fishing brogues. They were
22 BIRDS OF THE WATER
not particularly wild in the sense of being
timid, but rather only perfectly indifferent
to their foster hen, deliberately leaving her
when the netting was removed, and not
attempting to return, or even evincing any
sense of being lost. None of them survived.
Next year I intend to place among any
young Scaup hatched a ducklmg of domesti-
cated breed.. The wild birds might thus be
induced to more quickly take to the strange
food offered them, and would also, I think,
more readily accept the alien mother.
y) : YZ VE atc ;
Zee ees “92 Sy UNMET
The Mountain Duck
Tutira conglomerate and
limestone superposed on
‘‘papa’’—is well suited to
ORAS > ‘the. “Blue,” or 4° Mountain
Duck.”? Throughout. ‘the: centuries: our
streams have chafed through the harder
lmestone and deeply eaten into the soft
clay rock. The more open and_ larger
streams are full of immense limestone
boulders borne down on land slips, the
narrower gorges quite precipitous are mostly
pebble paved, their little tumbling streams
completely over-arched in parts with tutu,
koromiko, and fern.
In many of these latter every stretch of
three or four miles supports a pair of
Blue Ducks, whilst in our largest stream,
the Waikahau, there is a far larger carry-
ing capacity, and several pair breed there
S35
24 BIRDS OF THE WATER
on a mile or two of water. This species
lays early, and there must be many nests
in August.
This season our first lot of ducklings
were marked on September 27th—a _ brood
of three or four—the young being then
about a fortnight old. On October Ist
another brood was seen about the same
place. On October 8th some miles up the
river I watched for long a family of four
—ten days old, I daresay, the ducklings
showing much white about front of throat
and breast and side of face.
The glassy, cool, translucent stream en-
abled me to easily follow these little divers
to its pebbly depths, their white mark-
ings showing very distinct as they explored
the river floor or rose with a plop to the
surface. Above water, too, they were equally
active, skimming after flies on the surface
and scrambling half out of water after
insects on the damp cliffs. Again and again
at a pool’s tail I was sure the strong water-
draw would suck them down, but they
would cross it safely above the very break.
Every now and again from the parents
‘XPLy [HH jo dwmjo sapun jsayy syonq ang
WAS ALV Id
Se wo Sen I ee Seen. Svinawceted
WOOD AND WASTE 25
would come the rattling note or the sibilant
‘*whio,’’ ‘‘whio,’’ one of the most delightful
sounds of wild nature in New Zealand.
The two old birds, while the ducklings
played and dived and fed, floated motion-
less, or paddled slowly about the calm,
unruffled surface, every now and then one
of them in play making hostile feints at
the other.
Above the great rock where I lay, a
shining Cuckoo hawked for flies, a Warbler
trilled at intervals in the tall manuka, and
the shadows of great white clouds darkened
in patches the whole country side.
On October 13th I got a nest just
vacated. There was still one whole egg—
addled—and a dead duckling half out of
the shell, quite undecayed, and not even
flyblown; the nest must have been tenanted
within two or three hours of my discovery.
It was situated close to the Waikahau
stream, and hidden under an immense
rush bush on the very edge of a sandy
cliff. There, cosy, warm, and dry, beneath
this natural thatch, was the hollow contain-
ing the nest.
5
26 BIRDS OF THE WATER
On the upper side of this ancient rush
bush passed an almost imperceptible trail,
which doubtless the duck would follow
when entering her nest. Along it she would
steal in the dim lights of morn and eve,
and just opposite the nest fade herself away
and disappear on to the beloved eggs.
On the river side, and just overhanging
the cliff was the flight hole from the felted
growths of rush. The duck would reach
her eggs as I have suggested, by the trail,
and leave them on the wing, dropping quietly
into the pool below.
Round these eggs there was rather less
down than is usually found about the eggs
of the Scaup or Grey Duck.
The nest hollow was shallower, too, and
elose by it was another similar cavity,
suggesting that possibly the male had spent
part of the period of incubation in close
proximity to his mate. Their cliff was of
flood sand, built up in past years by the
stream, and now again in process of
demolition, and its composition just such as
the Kingfisher also loves, velvet soft and
warm. These Mountain Duck may use the
PLATE. VII-
Blue Duck in Quiet Pool.
WOOD AND WASTE 27
same nest in recurring years, for on the
river brim, and directly beneath the nesting
site, the tiny bits of broken eggshell that
first drew my notice were of last year’s
eggs.
Immediately after leaving the nest, the
young are very carefully hidden by day,
and in our streams chance only discovers
them.
In these boulder cumbered creeks there
are endless harbours and refuges, ceilings of
limestone, with only room for the birds to
crouch on the water floor, potholes scooped
by the action of sand and grit, hollows and
arches gouged by the current’s force, and
everywhere along the banks thickets of water
erowth and hanging fern.
On October 15th a second Blue Duck’s
nest was got, and this one also was placed
just about though not above high-level flood
mark. Certain types of this river silt are
apparently so great an attraction that the
Mountain Duck will risk abnormal floods
for its advantages.
These birds had chosen for cover a bush
of mountain flax, and beneath old dead
28 BIRDS OF THE WATER
blades and on the warm, sweet, moist river
drift were deposited the four nearly fresh
eggs.
The down about these eggs was largely
mixed with particles of soft bark and fibre,
perhaps inadvertently picked up in the daily
uncoverings of the nest, or perhaps to eke
out the rather scanty quantity of down.
This nest was deserted, the duck having
been badly frightened by the rabbiter’s dog
that flushed her.
After photography, however, the nest was
left undisturbed for twenty-four hours, in
the hope that the birds might yet return.
The colour of Mountain Duck’s eggs is pale
brownish cream, and their average weight
1088 grains.
On October 29th I find in my diary
another entry of Blue Duck marked on the
same river reach as the three already
mentioned.
This brood consisted of five birds almost
full fledged. Four is about the average,
perhaps, but three years ago on a forest
stream some miles from the homestead there
was one brood of six and another of nine.
ge ag ort en Sag te
WOOD AND WASTE 29
On November 2nd we experienced for
about the seventieth time seven how many a
slip there is between cup and lip in this
kind of photographic work.
Often and often have I gently driven
for amusement or to show to friends some
family of Mountain Ducks up or down
stream to some convenient crossing or open
reach. We did this on the 2nd, quite easily
driving them down the creek and sweeping
them from pool to pool till the selected spot
was reached. Then, while the camera was
being adjusted, an eye was kept on the
parent birds, and we were satisfied from
time to time with glimpses of them half
hidden in the bastard flax that drooped into
the stream. Alas! however, when all was
complete, the young were gone, vanished!
We never again saw them, and the parents
only hung about the spot till they knew
their brood was perfectly safe, when they,
too, decamped.
Later, an examination of the opposite
river bank, where we had foreed the ducks to
pause, proved that they had been blocked
by il luck exactly at one of their bank
30 BIRDS OF THE WATER
refuges. The edges were quite paddled with
trampling, and no doubt the young had
escaped by some well-known run up the.
rough cliffs, and dropped again quietly into
the stream above or below us.
A similar catastrophe all but occurred
again a few days later. Another brood had
been marked and gently drifted down stream
to the chosen pool, yet even while the
camera was being unpacked and fixed, the
birds were gone. After long search, how-
ever, I found the two youngsters hidden
between great limestone rocks, a_ strong
stream breaking over them, and only their
heads visible. It was not until my hands
were upon them that any movement was
made, then they splashed off, diving like
frightened trout.
After their reappearance, however, there
was no further attempt at concealment.
They never again tried to escape by flight
or by diving, and quietly allowed us to
photograph them.
Although thus plentiful on the run, only
twice, and each time after heavy southerly
gales with rain, have Blue Ducks been
IX.
PLATE
centre)
J in
young
Duck (two
Blue
WOOD AND WASTE 31
seen on the lake. They never, in fact,
willingly leave the haunts peculiarly their
own: the rushing shadowed creeks half
blind with fern and koromiko. Dipping in
summer’s heat from the fern clad downs
and terraces of pumice grit, often have I
enjoved the cool damp of his fern-hung
gorge, and have paused long to watch him
in his solitudes. The little waterfalls dash
into diamonds on his slate blue plumes.
He is thoroughly at home on the bubbling
champagne pools. Where the swift stream
shows each polished pebble clear he can
paddle and steer with ease. When not
thus occupied in getting his daily bread he
and his mate will climb on to some rock
islet, feet above the water, and there stand
for hours on alternate legs, preening their
feathers, stretching out their necks, and
generally enjoying their otiwm cum digni-
tate. The Blue Duck’s startled, sibilant
whistle belongs to our New Zealand wilds
as peculiarly as the Curlew’s call to the
moor and wasteland of the Old Country.
On lands like Tutira, cut up into innumer-
able inaccessible gorges, the Mountain Duek
is certain to survive.
The Grey Duck
eet the compara-
: tively large area of water
on Tutira, the run breeds a
; very small number of Grey
wee 7 Duck. Even in winter only
small parties stop for any length of time.
Large mobs resting on the lake, when shoot-
ing is going on elsewhere, invariably leave
after a few days. No doubt the food supply
of this breed is scanty, owing to the absence
of shallows in the lake.
During the breeding season, perhaps 19
or 20 couples haunt its edges, though their
nests may be often at great distances from
water. Besides these, a few clutches are
hatched each season in the open riverbeds.
When, however, the whole number breed-
ing on the place are counted, the result
works out to a duck to each five hundred
acres. As, moreover, a quarter of the run 1s
PLATE XI
Grey Duck’s Nest in Fern.
WOOD AND WASTE 33
waste land, the chances are heavily against
the discovery of many nests. Now and
again, however, they are dropped upon.
One nest found in January, 1909, not
very far from the lake edge, and just off
an open grassy ride between flax and fern,
contained ten eggs of a dull yellowish green,
much the hue of those of her domesticated
cousins, except that the greenish tinge 1s
more faint in the wild bird’s eggs. In
size the eggs of this Grey Duck were about
two-thirds as large.
Unfortunately, I came on the bird very
suddenly, and she flew off, badly scared,
and without any time for concealment of
her eggs.
From the great depth of this nest—fully
six inches—when sitting she must have
been completely hidden from all sides, and
only her back and head visible from above.
The six-inch sides were walls of down
tightly compressed into a thick felt.
Hoping to photograph the bird herself,
I set up that afternoon a rough prelimin-
ary screen, and as the eggs were much in-
6
34 BIRDS OF THE WATER
cubated and as I was fearful of losing my
chance. I may have erected it in too close
proximity to the nest. At any rate next
morning, when revisiting the spot, I found
that the eggs had been thrown out of the
nest on all sides, and its edges trampled
and flat. The blunt breaks on the ruined
eggs, and the presence of the whole clutch
uneaten in any degree pointed to this
destruction as having been the work of the
duek herself.
No hawk, or rat, or weasel would have
thus wantonly destroyed them. Had vermin
been at work, most of the eggs would have
been devoured, and one or two probably
missing. The holes, also, would have been
of different shapes and sizes.
During this past season another Grey
Duck’s nest was got, found accidentally by
one of a party of serubeutters. It was placed
among fern nearly half a mile from the
nearest water, and as the bird had returned
after being put off, I had hopes of getting
a picture of her sitting. To effect this it
was necessary to clear away a good deal
of fern in the foreground, and our work
PEATE. VII.
River Scene with Blue Duck.
WOOD AND WASTE 30
must have attracted the attention of a pair
of Harriers in the neighbourhood. Anyway,
when returning a couple of days later we
found the clutch tumbled and devoured,
the shells lying about and two eggs alto-
gether gone. During the last twenty-eight
vears I do not think the Grey Duck has
either increased or decreased on Tutira.
The Brown Duck
Sy ea species of duck
under the camera this year
has been the Brown Duck.
Of it one: or’ two fairly
successful studies have been
got, the birds caught in characteristic
attitudes on half submerged logs in deep
shade. But although this tame little duck
is far from uncommon on the run, his
breeding habits are still quite unknown
to me. On_ several occasions I have
chanced on their broods, but when they
nest and where they nest is still a mystery.
Often during the past season have McLean
and myself lain hidden at night about
their feeding grounds, and heard the birds
fly in to others already lurking there; we
have never yet, however, found the nests.
The Brown Duck’s flight is strong and
rapid, yet these very birds, a few minutes
ee
=~!
WOOD AND WASTE 3
after alighting, would suffer us to. get
within three feet, bending over them in
the dark as they lay in some tiny pool off
the roadside. We could slowly follow them,
too, as they moved a few feet ahead in
single file across the dewy pasture.
The female is an excellent mother and
can hardly be scared into desertion of her
young. More than once I have caught the
hen on some little pool, hidden in tall
swamp growths, one, perhaps, of a chain
of waterholes half overarched with carex,
raupo, and flax.
The Brown Duck’s note is extremely
distinct and quite unlike that of any other
breed.
When quietly floating in shaded waters
and many of the birds together, the Brown
Duck has a curious habit of sometimes
striking the water violently. This appar-
ently is done with its foot, and does not
seem to be a signal of any sort, for after
the considerable splash thus caused no
excitement or suspicion was noticeable
among the other members of the flock.
This season my acquaintance with the
38 BIRDS OF THE WATER
Brown Duck began on October 13th.
Returning late that night from watching
for Blue Ducks, and riding past a marshy
spot on the road, I noticed something
skulking in front along the watertable.
Flushed, it proved to be a Brown Duck,
and had scarcely relit a few yards distant,
when, with a great quacking another bird
—one of three—flew down and joined com-
pany.
It was evident from their mutual excite-
ment and interchange of greetings, that
they were mates, and after waiting a little
I rode home, arguing that there must be a
nest in the vicinitv, that the flushed bird
must have been sitting, and that she had
temporarily left a not very distant nest to
feed.
Next day, however, systematic search
revealed nothing, and twice later we were
equally unsuccessful.
Each night we lay out, Brown Ducks,
just after dark, could be heard coming to
the marsh, but each night, also, other
Brown Ducks were there before - our
arrival.
“apeyg ul SULSoy YOu UMOIG
xX aL Td
WOOD AND WASTE 39
Once or twice, searching for Rail’s nests, I
have fancied I heard Brown Ducks in the
tall, wet raupo beds, and these birds may
have had young with them. On the other
hand, on January Ist, and weeks after that
date, there were sixteen Brown Ducks,
male and female, in mature plumage on
the southern portion of Tutira lake. Of
these a couple of pair seemed to be keeping
to some extent apart, but the remainder
flew together and swam together, as though
flocked for the winter.
Each of these four kinds of duck has its
own peculiar haunts and habits.
The Blue Duck will be found in the
deep, cool gorges and rushing, bouldered
streams, and nowhere else. The Brown
Duck breeds probably near the little blind
creeks that percolate rather than flow
through the marsh lands. There during the
daytime he quietly rests, or if on larger
sheets of water, lurks until dusk in deep
shadow and almost motionless. The Scaup
seems to breed only on the lake’s very
edge, during the winter months to con-
gregate in great flocks, to lie in deep
40 BIRDS OF THE WATER
water during the daytime, and under no
circumstances to visit the river beds. The
Grey Duck’s nesting sites are more diffuse:
by lake edge, river brim, and far from
water, even not very rarely on trees their
eggs may be discovered. During the day
they often rest on flat shore lands, or
swim close along the raupo edge. No one
of these breeds interferes with the other,
nor do their nesting places overlap.
PLATE XII
Male and Female Brown Duck.
The Kingfisher
MLTHOUGH in parts of the
Y run distant from the policies
three or four pairs of King-
fishers have always bred, it
seh) is only of late that they have
begun in any numbers to frequent the
homestead and house paddocks. In_ the
earlier days of the station, the birds
would arrive in late autumn and remain
during the winter, all of them, however,
until two years ago leaving us in spring
time for various scattered breeding: sites.
In 1908, however, one pair remained after
the usual date of departure.
During early October we could see them
flashing from tree to tree in the sunshine,
or in the dewy mornings perched on the
Stevenson screen and the raingauge, ap-
parently deep in meteorological calculations
and scientific reflections, but really quite
alive to mundane promptings and _ not
~J
42 BIRDS OF THE WATER
missing one chance in competition with
Thrush and Blackbird for the early worm.
Later in the month, as they were still
with us, I became certain they would nest,
and watched the various banks and euttings
for the circular hole where claw marks on
the lower edge denote the Kingfisher’s
breeding chamber. On this occasion, how-
ever, the choice of a nesting site fell on
a half rotten willow knot, and _ presently
their secret betrayed itself by the little
vellow skee or slip of tunnelled wood-grain
piled up against the knot’s base.
This gnarled willow snag lay on the
narrow strip of turf betwixt the lake shore
and the public road, which here winds
along its western edge, but neither riders,
waggons, coaches, nor mobs of travelling
stock seemed at all to scare the birds.
It is doubtful, indeed, if they were even
noticed by the wayfaring public, and the
precautions taken by the birds—the low
warning note sounded upon the approach
of riders and the care taken to lure them
away along the road by short decoy flights
—were probably quite unnecessary.
ee et ot ee ;
li
PLATE
Young Kingfishers—shewing Nest in Sandbank.
WOOD AND WASTE 43
Sitting birds may easily be scared from
their nests, so it was not until the eggs
were hatched that I ventured upon closer
inspection; in fact, my first assurance that
the smooth, very round, white eggs had
changed into naked nestlings was gained by
happening suddenly on one of the parents
bearing a small inanga (I think) in its
bill, We were scarcely five feet apart—
for an instant face to face—the next the
inanga was gone and the bird was regarding
me with the brazen innocence of the school-
child detected and who has swallowed his
sweetie.
It was only upon a deeper knowledge of
his worth that I could forgive the bird
for the deceit thus attempted on a friend,
and mentally afford him the more honour-
able similitude of the faithful pursuivant,
who, rather than betray his sovereign’s
trust, swallows the incriminating document.
J may say here that these Kingfishers
were my first attempt at bird photography,
and that in addition to inexperience I had
to contend with a shutter altogether too
noisy.
44 BIRDS OF THE WATER
I knew something of the habits of birds,
but nothing of the camera’s. For me the
perfect instrument is not yet in the mar-
ket, the camera that will give good results
through cap, closed shutter and undrawn
slide.
To this day a glow of joy pervades my
frame, when, in the developing dish, the
first faint image dawns upon the plate.
Humbly I thank Heaven for its appearance
there, and plume myself on not being such
a very great idiot after all.
After the completing of a hiding place,
it was my custom in the morning to walk
down to this shelter with a companion,
enter it quietly while he retired whistling
ostentatiously, and otherwise taking eare
that the birds should notice his retirement.
Birds apparently cannot count, and this
simple ruse was successful, but though it
was easy enough to deceive the Kingfishers’
sight, their sense of hearing could not
tolerate the burr and click of the machine
—one whole morning, indeed, was spent
winding up and_ freeing the garrulous
shutter to accustom them to the sound.
WOOD AND WASTE 45
Finally I broke the birds in so _thor-
oughly to the shutter, that it was accepted
as normal, as one of the sounds of nature,
the rustling of grasses, the patter of leaves,
the lapping of water.
When our acquaintance began, the lizard
season was at its height—the first brood
being almost entirely reared on_ them.
Later, lizards were practically ‘‘off’’ the
bill of fare, and dragon flies ‘‘on’’—lizards,
say, during December; dragon flies during
February. At any rate, lizards during the
former month would supply the piece de
resistance, and during the latter, dragon
fly.
Cicada and locust were also served up
from time to time, but rarely.
While the parent birds were still shy of
my shelter, I used to notice that after one
or two attempts at the nest—they would
balk just like boys ‘‘funking’”’ at high
jump—the particular lizard carried during
these unlucky attempts would be got rid
of and another substituted. This, I could
tell by the differing sizes of the little
beasties. It was pathetic, indeed, to watch
46 BIRDS OF THE WATER
these poor reptiles held always by the
seruff of the neck—if scientifically lizards
have necks—and with their toes—if they
are toes—clearly defined against the light.
They were very, very limp, too, for it is
Kingfisher fashion to beat and batter his
prey before presentation to the nestlings.
The Kingfisher’s vocabulary does not
seen. to be voluminous—a jarring screech,
not translatable into human speiling, al-
ways greeted my appearance from _ the
tepee, and well expressed terror and rage.
Cli-cli-cli, several times repeated, signified
‘‘safe now,’ and always immediately after
this note one of the parents would light
on the knot, momentarily pause, and then,
with a quick little run, enter the hole with
supphes for the hungry garrison.
Then there was the low note of warning
already mentioned, and another cry similar
to that of rage, only lower in pitch and
less harsh. It expressed caution, ‘‘All
right I think,’’ from the male perched high
on the broken cabbage tree; ‘‘All right?
All right?’’ from the hen to encourage her-
self. Then the male would eall again,
‘plezZi] ssoaypie] pure seysysury
EN AW Sid
WOOD AND WASTE 47
‘All right! All right! But, you try first’’
(just like a man!) and the hen would
pitch within a yard of my head right on
the log, hesitate, and her heart fail, perhaps,
at the last moment, or perhaps she would
successfully run the blockade, an action,
when you came to consider it, really ap-
palling to her imagination for as these King-
fishers always backed out tail foremost,
there was the dreadful chance of being
caught defenceless by the rump.
Then there were, besides, long, low-toned,
earnest guttural conversations of ‘‘klue-e,
klue-e, klue-e,’’ repeated or exchanged
again and again and again.
Jn emerging from the screen, my sudden
reappearance must have been an amaze-
ment to the birds beyond any amazement
experienced by Kingfishers since the world
began, and no doubt when, as racial eustom
ordains, and the birds repair to winter
quarters, these two will secandalise’ the
respectable community with their tales,
They will relate how a leafy cocoon grew
up in two days near their willow snag,
how their nest was investigated, vet spared,
48 BIRDS OF THE WATER
how for hours a single unwinking Cyclopean
eye would glare at their front door, how
the four nestlings were taken out of their
troglodytic home and placed in a row
before the magic optic, how the strongest
youngster, resenting the uncanny rite, flew
fully thirty yards on his first flight, fell
into the lake, and was rescued by a_ boat,
how on two oeeasions their nesting hole
was blocked at dusk, and other stories so
much stranger than truth as to be in-
dubitably false.
With a reverence for science—almost a
passion it might be said for the sereen and
raingauge—it is sad to have to relate the
Kinegfisher’s neglect of the elementary
duties and decencies of life. The birds
know neither how to keep a cleanly house
or rear a mannerly family; in fact, the
schoolboy’s condensation of some work on
savage life—manners none and _ customs
beastly—would be strictly apposite to their
housekeeping. ‘The nest swarms with gentles,
and from it there emanates a really noisome
stench, the young sometimes sitting amongst
‘aHalIeENe) Joysysury Vy
DIP aly ad
WOOD AND WASTE 49)
food unconsumed and in the last stage of
corruption.
Jt may here be added that owing to the
tumultuous sanitary habits of the nestlings,
close inspection of a Kingfisher’s burrow
is a highly adventurous method of learning
wisdom.
Then the young birds quarrel without
cessation from daylight to dark, hour by
hour, girning like bad-tempered children,
the squabble alternately dying to a drone
and heightening to a twangling chorus of
treble shrieks. The nestlings might be
Jews’ harps, loosely strung, and perpetually
twanged. I imagine that in their dark
chamber, when the bickerings have sunk to
a sleepless drone, the least movement of a
single bird awakens the savage circle again
to recrimination. The young literally never
stop quarrelling, girning when on _ their
best behaviour, and screaming in sibilant
chorus when at their worst. My experience
with these wild Kingfishers bears out a
friend’s statement that they make the most
ereedy and most fierce of pets, fighting
Q
50 BIRDS OF THE -WATER
incessantly, and even chewing off each
others tail feathers.
At night neither parent stops in the
breeding chamber. After dark, if their
snag was jarred or shaken, the indignant
nestlings used to twangle and hiss and
shriek their loudest. If, however, the
jarring continued, they would lapse into
dead utter silence.
The winter habits of Kingfishers here at
Tutira depend on weather conditions; cold
spells will drive them coastwards, and they
will return with warmer airs. Twice during
the present winter this has occurred. Up to
mid-June the whole ten seemed to be about
the orchards and lawn, then on the night
of the 13th the thermometer dropped to 31
degrees in the screen, and next morning
apparently every bird was gone.
I was able to obtain several medium
photographs from this nest, of the parents
carrying in lizards and later in the season
cicadas, and also one of the four full-
fledged nestlings seated in a row on a wil-
low stick.
WOOD AND WASTE. 5]
AS) have said), this’. parr. and) them
numerous offspring hung about the policies
during the winter, but as spring came on
again, disappeared one by one, until at
length, in September, only the origina!
pair remained. On the fourth of the
month they began to work on the old
willow snag, their nesting site of the
previous year.
It was now that I again and again re-
gretted having tampered with the hole in
order for purposes of photography to get
out the four young nestlings.
The part removed, though carefully re-
placed and apparently secure, had during
the winter shrunk and curled up, and the
chamber itself was dank and damp, good
enough still, perhaps, for vulgar Starlings
and Minahs, but quite unfit for the fas-
tidious Kingfisher.
The pair, now again thinking of nesting,
were, I am convinced, identical with the
birds of the previous season.
Readers will be convinced, too, when
they hear of the sites attempted, sites no
birds would have thought of not thoroughly
wT |
r
bo
BIRDS OF THE WATER
accustomed to man and broken to belief in
him.
On September 4th, then, these Kingfishers
were at work at the old original site. This
was almost at once abandoned, and the
birds then tunnelled in the same snag two
other bores, each, alas, terminating in the
old breeding chamber. There is practically
no rotten timber on this part of the run,
but I did get, after some trouble, a dry
willow block at about the proper stage of
decay, also two other logs, which, though
rather waterlogged, I hoped might do. The
first of these was securely wedged into a
living willow’s fork some five feet above
the ground and within twenty vards of the
original site in the willow snag. <A narrow
augur hole, slightly sloping upwards, was
made, and the ejected wood grain allowed
to be noticeably visible. About the same
date one of the remaining logs was erected
in a suitable position on the lawn, and the
third was planted in a dry bank distant
some half-mile across the lake.
Thereabouts, too, in the more suitable
cliffs, augur holes were bored. ‘These were,
WOOD AND ‘WASTE 53
however, left severely alone, the sand not
being of the proper kind, not the velvet-
soft, cool, vet not dry, powdery, yet not too
free, flood drift of river banks.
The log wedged in the living willow’s
fork, however, proved suitable, and in a
few days the birds had excavated a_ fine
tunnel, judged by the amount of wood
grain thrown out.
I now thought all was well, and gave
little more thought to the matter, until I
noticed Starlings in the vicinity.
Upon inspection, it was found that these
aliens had dispossessed the Kingfishers of
their new bore, and also seized upon the
original site, the poor Kingfishers having,
I found, humbly attempted still a third
bore beneath the Starlings’ nest in the
latter. Both chambers were full of horrid
willow twigs and vulgar feathers of the tame
villatic fowl.
They were promptly pulled out, and for
a day or two either myself or McLean
lay hidden in the flax, and each Starling
arriving was duly shot.
D4 BIRDS OF THE WATER
The Kingfishers, however, would not re-
turn to their new made hole, but almost
at once again attempted the original snag,
and again gave it up in despair.
My notes give the date of first work as
September 4th. On the 15th they were
tunnelling in the new log set up for them.
On September 30th they were dispossessed
by Starlings. On October 9th and 10th
they attempted the log set up on the edge
of the lawn.
This, it will be remembered, was another
of the snags artifically established some
weeks previously. On the afternoon of the
10th the pair were very busy taking turns
at their work, the bird not occupied seated
on a low bough close to the log, while the
other tunnelled hard and scraped out with
its little feet the refuse wood. A couple
of minutes was about the duration of each
spell of work. Ruberoid had been wrapped
partly round the block, but in spite of this
—perhaps because of original damp _ not
properly evaporated, or perhaps because of
insufficient decay, the birds ceased work.
or |
WOOD AND WASTE D:
On October 15th I find noted in my
diary, “\Kingfishers 1m fowl run.’ In: this
most unromantic spot stood an old dead
pine bole. On it the Kingfishers now started
their bores, tearing off great sheets of its
outer bark in their eager efforts to pene-
trate the rotten layer beneath. Here, in
spite of the hen house door being five feet
distant, in spite of the daily feeding of
fowls and collection of eggs—the latter in
itself surely an outrage on a wild bird’s
feelings—regardless, too, of the cow bail
also within a few yards, the work of
boring proceeded. Alas! here again condi-
tions were unpropitious, the several tunnels
all striking a hard inner rind of sound
timber.
On November lst my diary records,
‘‘Kinefishers still hanging about.’’ The poor
birds were restless and unsatisfied, evidently
seeking everywhere for a suitable site and
visiting, sometimes one and sometimes an-
other of the discarded holes.
On November 16th they ‘‘left the home-
stead,’’ moving some hundred yards away
to the vicinity of the woolshed. Here in
56 BIRDS OF THE WATER
turn they attempted one after another of
the willows, some of these the oldest on the
run and full of holes, though not the holes
that Kingfishers would select unless hard
pressed indeed.
On November 23rd I note, ‘‘ Kingfishers
again at original willow snag.’’ On No-
vember 25th, ‘‘Boring again in fowl run.”’
On December 7th great flving to and fro
and exultant screaming announced the fact
that in the fowl run the old pine bole had
fallen in the previous night’s gale. The
birds were evidently hopeful that all this
splintered timber on the ground must surely
mean a suitable yard or two of rotten
wood.
On December 18th they were still about
the homestead, still loath to desert the scene
of their former successful incubations.
On January 10th and for some days
afterwards both birds were again about the
homestead. ‘They were evidently not sit-
ting. In early February they were still
about the place. I believe, in fact, they
did not breed during the season of 1909-
1910. The seizure, therefore, of their
Kingfisher carrying Lizard.
Kingfisher with Cicada.
PLATES
Ul.
WOOD AND WASTE ot
nesting site by the Starlings cost us locally
eight young Kingfishers, for this strong,
well-fed pair would have certainly again
reared two broods of four. This ousting of
the Kingfishers from their nesting site is
just an instance of one of the minor perils
our natives have now to adventure. An-
other is that they are driven by the
pressure of foreign birds to sites not per-
fectly safe. Allusion has been made to the
destruction by wind of the tree in the
fowl yard. Another pair of Kingfishers
this season in another part of the run
suffered from a similar mishap, the birds
themselves escaping, but the great pine bole
selected for their breeding chamber being
levelled with the ground. Though miles
from any homestead, there, too, Minahs,
Starlings, and Sparrows were in full
possession of the best sites. I notice,
furthermore, that during the last few
seasons Minahs hereabouts at any rate have
taken to eating dragon flies.
Like other native breeds, the Kingfisher
has now to face a competition unknown
before. On the other hand, I believe that
anybody in the country who has a garden
frequented in winter by Kingfishers, could
g
58 BIRDS OF THE WATER
easily induce the birds to remain to breed.
He would be well repaid by their beauty,
the interest of the tunnelling operations,
the varying calls of the birds, and the
working of their commissariat department.
As has been told, each of the two arti-
ficial log sections placed in the vicinity of
the original nest was attempted, each was
explored and bored. The third block, too,
was burrowed into, and almost certainly by
another pair of birds.
These sites, I am convinced, were only
not completely utilised because they were
not exactly suitable, but next season, ‘‘if
its de las’ act,’’ as Uncle Remus says, my
Kingfishers shall have everything they
require, blocks suitably decayed, three feet
long by two in diameter, placed five or six
feet above the ground, and sloped sufficiently
to run off the rain. The logs shall, more-
over, be augured three inches or so slightly
upwards, and as a further precaution,
capped and wrapped with ruberoid.*
Note.—Neither of the timber yards in Napier hold any
stock of suitably decayed blocks of white pine, nor can they
be had at the country sawmills. Sometimes in the Colonies
the most necessary articles are not easily procurable.
WOOD AND WASTE 99
Sites selected should be quite. open and
some three feet from the orifice of each
and on a lower plane should be a_ stout
perch, on which the birds can rest alter-
nately during their burrowing operations.
It will be serviceable, too, at a later period,
when the parents are carrying in food, for
the birds like to rest there a moment near
the nest, before bidding daylight farewell
and taking their plunge into darkness.
During the past season one other King-
fisher’s nest was got, but too near the public
road and at too great a distance from the
homestead to admit of putting up a screen.
It was built in a sandbank, and in it two
nestlings were reared.
The Weka
¥N the wet, undrained lands
round about the lake are to be
the Marsh Rail, both species
> quite rare, but noticed now
and again, especially after heavy floods,
when the birds are drowned out of their
seclusion. The Banded Rail is also a
rare bird with us, and is only very
occasionally flushed among the manuka
and fern growth of dryer situations. Our
fourth member of the Rail family, the
Weka, is common, and as he, too, is pro-
tected, many pair stop about the homestead.
In our garden during the winter months
often there are two or more couples, and
last year one particular bird would come
up for worms thrown to him, and _ take
quite a lively interest in gardening opera-
WOOD AND WASTE 61
tions. Sometimes a pair will breed very
near the homestead, but it is exceptional,
and nearly all these semi-domesticated
woodhens draw off about end of July to
their wilds.
Then, also, the birds on the run begin
to leave the flats where, during winter, an
easier food supply has been obtainable,
and to think of building about the heads
of gullies and glades and open valleys.
About April we begin to see them again
“in the garden and orchard, and ‘the
approach of spring is once more the signal
of retreat to higher ground and _ denser
covert.
Wekas breed very early—or very late—
it is hard to say which, when the birds
are sitting in mid-June. One such nest
was built near a bushman’s camp and not
long after the pitching of the tent a Weka
appeared.
The premises having been reconnoitred
and the scraps of potato and cold meat
thrown out having been sampled, the bird
disappeared for three days, returning then
62 BIRDS OF THE WATER
with two others—no doubt hens. A_ nest
was made in a clump of hill fern and
eight eggs laid.
These, my friend declared, were all laid
by one bird. Probably, however, he failed
to distinguish the females, and the eggs
were really a joint contribution to the treble
partnership. This is the more likely as
the Weka’s relative, the Pukeko, often
acts thus; moreover, eight is an improbable
number of eggs for a single hen to lay
even though stimulated by scraps of meat,
potato, and the refuse of a camp.
On August 22nd another Weka’s nest
was dropped on by a contractor felling
manuka. This nest, though substantially
built, was unprotected above, save for the
poor shade of spindly manuka.
On October 7th I had the luck to find
two nests, neither of them, however, show-
ing any character in their construction; one
was on the edge of a patch of low white
manuka, and from it one or two _ photo-
graphs were got. They show the three
eggs, with their ground colour of dirty
WOOD AND WASTE 63
white, blotched with large, faint, washed-out
brown-purple markings.
The other nest found on October 7th
was sheltered and hidden by old dead
bracken, above which there was a growth of
tall manuka. It also contained three eggs.
Belheving that we should get more inter-
esting nests later in the year, I did not
attempt to photograph the birds, but ‘‘he
‘that will not when he may, when he
‘‘will he shall have ‘nay,’’’ and this we
xperienced with the Weka, obtaining no
late nests in use.
Certainly five very characteristic nests
were got afterwards, but only egg chips
remained in them. One was on a dry
limestone shelf sheltered by a huge pro-
jecting peak of the same rock. On this
inner ledge the nest lay dry and warm,
the egg chips half filtered through the soft,
dry grasses. There the Weka must have
sat secure, and in partial gloom, caused by
the veil of pendent ferns on the outer rock.
Three other nests were built beneath ancient
clumps of hill rush and sheltered with a
natural thatch of many inches depth and
64 BIRDS OF THE WATER
of many years’ accumulation. The fifth
also was impervious to all weather, hol-
lowed out against the very stem of a fern
tree, whose dead, drooping fronds, slightly
projecting and overlapping one another,
hung to the very ground. By them the
bird was protected from every drop of
rain, and as effectually as by a shingle
roof the rooms beneath.
The hill-rush nests had three exits to
each; the nest built on the limestone shelf
was less well off for escape, but was so
perfectly hidden that perhaps the _ birds
deemed a back door superfluous. They
could moreover, if pressed, have leapt over
the low edge.
The whereabouts of the Weka’s nest is
largely determined by the food supply of
the vicinity, and in springtime, if a_ beast
has been bogged or a fat sheep got trapped
in an ‘‘under runner,’’ it is quite worth
searching for a nest in the neighbourhood.
Even after the flesh is no longer fit to
eat, a great supply of maggots, beetles and
grubs, attracted by the carrion, provide for
Wekas an ample food supply.
pynuryy diy \\ ul ‘sédo 291} YAN ‘ISONT S,PYOAA
"AIX ALVTd
WOOD AND WASTE 69
Weka chicks are very attractive little
creatures, and in early life quite black.
Like young Pukeko, they reach maturity
very slowly, and probably it is only the
earlier nesting birds that rear a_ second
brood.
In his Birds of New Zealand Buller treats
of the Weka at considerable length for the
benefit of naturalists of a future day, who
will, he says, ‘‘seek in vain for the birds
themselves, and to whom, as we can readily
imagine, every recorded particular will
possess the same interest that now attaches
to Leguat’s rude account of the Didine
bird of Rodriquez.’’
-This lament, however, was certainly pre-
mature, if not altogether uncalled for, and
a species so remarkable in the possession
of ample wings which yet are incapable of
flight from long disuse, is lkely long to
gratify the moralist.*
*Note.—The New Zealand Year Book of 1909 supplies the
following figures in regard to the members of the many religious
bodies in the Dominion:—Church of England, 368,065; Presby-
terians, 203,597 ; Roman Catholics, 126,995, etc., ete. The pride oi
place in the first-mentioned Church may well be in part ascribed
10
66 BIRDS OF THE WATER
On Tutira the numbers of the Weka
fluctuate very considerably, and I _ have
elsewhere described the two irruptions that
have occurred on the run during my occu-
pation. The species has, however, more
than held its own during the last quarter
century.
to the Weka. In theory, at any rate, he is the best-known bird
of the Dominion; everybody has at least read of him, and the
Anglican Church has peculiarly taken him to her bosom. None
of her many imported curates can withstand him. He never
fails to draw and to awaken, and no newly-arrived young
Church of England divine’s sermon can be considered quite
complete without him. As surely as texts of a certain character
are given out, we listen eagerly for the coming allusion. The
bird is never, of course, named, but allowed to steal upon us
perhaps as ‘fa small brown bird, my brethren, whom all of us
know,’’ or, ‘‘my friends, one of our deeply interesting flightless
species.’’ The poor bird is then made to fulfil one, no doubt,
of his purposes in the scheme of Nature, and is castigated as
a decadent, and held up as an awful warning to the con-
gregation. It is pleasant to believe that while Tutira, and
no doubt other runs preserve, the honourable, numerical posi-
tion of the Church of England is assured.
The Pukeko
like that of the Weka, ex-
tends over many months,
from August to March at
> pS least—and probably longer,
for the cock birds may be seen sometimes
in mid-April treading the hens. I have
got eggs in August, and eggs this year
were found on March 14th, while a newly-
built nest was obtained in mid-June.
The earliest nest of the past season was
found on August 30th, the bird still at
work on its construction. On September
24th a pair had hatched their eggs, and on
the 25th we got two birds sitting. After
that no further note was taken of nests,
for there are hundreds of Pukeko on the
place, the result of years of protection.
Roughly speaking, their typical nesting
positions may be classified into three lots:
68 BIRDS OF THE WATER
Firstly, there is the top of a niggerhead or
huge rush bush, entirely open to the sky;
secondly there is the type of nest placed
at the base of flax clumps, niggerhead, or
any suitable growth, and to some degree
sheltered by overhanging greenery; and
thirdly, there is the nest deep in the tall
raupo growing on the edge and on the
shallow promontories of the lake, and
where for years no fires have burnt the
mass of sere, brown, hollow-chambered
blades. One nest in quite a unique posi-
tion, built on a willow tree some two feet
above the water was found by me in
February of this year, but in all my ex-
perience of hundreds of Pukeko nests, I
have seen no other, not placed in deep
raupo, or on the very top of a niggerhead,
or, lastly, at the base of a flax clump or
rush bush. The construction of the nest
is simple, and the material used such as
can be most easily collected, dried or green
erasses, raupo, carex, ete, shaped and
rounded to the requirements of the birds.
It is easily found, for after a few days’
incubation of the eggs, the adjacent vegeta-
WOOD AND WASTE 69
tion is trampled into runs, especially if
several birds share a nest. After incubation
is over and while the young are still
returning nightly to the nest, it is impossible
for the most unobservant to pass the spot.
The tussocks are flattened down for yards
around, empty pipi shells are strewed
about, and often there is a large heap of
droppings where the birds have been in the
habit of doing sentinel duty.
Sometimes a new nest, or rather plat-
form, on a flattened niggerhead summit, is
specially built for the nestlings, though this
may, and probably does, only happen in
a partnership nest, when, as the eggs hatch,
each hen takes away her share of the
chicks.
Possibly these are from her own eggs,
for the first lot laid would be first hatched
out and the earliest layer of the two or
three hens would be least inclined to con-
tinue sitting. She would, therefore, by a
sort of automatic process secure her own
proper brood, unless, indeed the hens were
laying simultaneously, which, however does
not seem to usually happen from the time
70 BIRDS OF THE WATER
elapsing between the chipping of the early
and late eggs.
Where there are many eggs in a nest
they can be readily sorted into two or three
sets, each type no doubt marking the
different hen.
Days elapse before all the eggs are gone,
and not infrequently a bird will wait patiently
on an addled egg, and I have sometimes,
wondered, in a case of this sort, if the
older hens had palmed off this last remain-
ing egg on their guileless mate, a young
bird may be, sitting for the first time,
encouraging her to stick to it for a bit
longer, while they divided her share of the
chicks.
I have known a Pukeko return to her
rain-sodden nest and cold eggs after thirty-
six hours’ desertion. She had forsaken
because of a screen put up too close, but
after its removal had returned and again
taken to the nest.
Contrary to what might have been ex-
pected, a big proportion of birds choosing
the quite open type of nest, that built on
the summits of niggerheads, bring out their
WOOD AND WASTE a
eggs. Most of these nests, no doubt, are part-
nership businesses, and one at least, if not
more, of the firm are constantly prowling
round, flicking their tails and_ uttering
warnings to all whom it may concern. The
more a Pukeko, especially a male is agi-
tated, the more violent the tail action
becomes, and as the excitement subsides, so
does the signalling cease. The height of
these nests, too, is some protection against
marauders like rats or Wekas, and the
prowling Harrier Hawks are repulsed and
baffled.*
On one occasion I had been watching a
cock Pukeko keeping watch and ward, as
males do, and through my glasses trying
to discover the whereabouts of his sitting
mate. Just then a Harrier, flying low to
the ground, dropped, or rather tumbled, so
sudden was his action, on to the hen.
Notre.—Weasels are very rare on Tutira, and this im-
munity may be accounted for by the very heavy storms that
from time to time sweep the northern part of Hawke’s Bay.
Many of the aliens cannot stand these long-continued torrents,
and during storms such as that of March-April (1910) when
a total of 16.83 incbes fell in three sequent days, Sparrows,
Minahs, Quail and Hares are killed wholesale.
72 BIRDS OF THE WATER
As suddenly, however, he was driven off,
for while the hen defended herself, the
plucky cock rushed to the rescue, and I
could see a confusion of blue and brown.
Then, again, the Harrier passed along,
pretending he didn’t care, and doubtless
calling out as he flapped off, ‘‘I didn’t.
want your old nest,’’ trying to save his
face, for ever so many little eyes were
watching the scene, and birds hate disgrace
and failure just as much as does mankind.
Visiting the spot afterwards I found none
of the eggs broken, though the many feathers
scattered around attested the hard fought
field.
Reverting, however, to the different types
of nesting site, the second, built on or near
the ground, and to some extent sheltered
by greenery, is the most common on Tutira.
Quite a small minority of the _ birds
patronise the dense raupo fringing the
lake.
The most interesting details of Pukeko
family life are, of course, gathered from
nests under observation for photography,
and during the past two seasons I have
Pukeko’s Nest.
PLATE
XV.
WOOD AND WASTE 73
had up many permanent screens for this
purpose.
One nest watched last year was built in .
one of the wettest parts of a wet swamp,
just where several springs oozed forth,
and where even in the height of summer
no horse or cattle beast could venture.
Indeed, the surface would hardly bear a
man, and to prevent their subsidence the
camera legs had to be placed on boards.
This particular nest for photographic
purposes was really in too secluded a place,
and the birds, though quite broken to the
actual erection in front of their eggs, were
timid of mankind.
Nests should be, if possible, selected,
where the roar of traffic—or perhaps not
quite that on Tutira!—has accustomed the
bird to the ways of man, his ridings, his
driven mobs of sheep and cattle, his barking
dogs and himself perambulating this earth
on his own two legs. This nest had been
visited at intervals, my intention being to
obtain the photos a few days before the
eges chipped and when the birds would be
sitting hardest.
11
74 BIRDS OF THE WATER
The date of hatching, however, I had
miscalculated by ever so little, for upon
reaching the nest, there were two tiny
living chicks among the eggs, only an hour
or so hatched out.
Pukeko chicks are from their birth
clothed along the spinal and other tracts
with silver tipped blackish down, the crowns
of their little heads are of a pinky baldness,
their great mouths when open of a faint
blood red hue, their beaks pink, too, and
even when only a few hours old, they make
great play about the nest, backwatering
with their absurd semaphore wings, also
pink and nearly nude. They are, in fact,
as grotesque little creatures as it is possible
to imagine.
These two were so very lately hatched
that the parental alarm notes failed to
eonvey a meaning. In haste, therefore, I
removed the false camera and replaced it
with the genuine article, for I knew at
any moment the chicks’ developing senses
might wake them to danger, and that then
the youngsters would instantly tumble out
of the nest.
PLATES XX. a-b.
“ Budge’? drying himself.
“ Budge”? and Chick.
WOOD AND WASTE i)
The old birds, far too little acquainted
with mankind, were very suspicious, and
circumperambulated my conning tower until
I felt that at any moment it might collapse
like the walls of Jericho.
The male at times would execute a war
dance in front of the camera, hopping up
from the ground, suddenly flapping or
clapping his wings together and screaming.
The birds had detected either the small
differences between the false and real lens,
or else heard me, though I hardly dared
breathe, much less move. A bad sereen is
bad economy in the long run, for good
work cannot be done in very great discom-
fort, and I was penned in a two by three
bamboo screen like Cardinal Balue in the
torture cage of his own invention, unable to
lie down, sit, or stand.
I have committed crimes in my life I
know. Who hasn’t? But I believe expia-
tion may have been accomplished during
those hours of anguish, kneeling on a water-
proof and slowly sinking into the ooze.
Perhaps in the last great drafting, when St.
Peter races off the just—whom I take to
76 BIRDS OF THE WATER
be those who protect their native birds—I
may be there hoping to get on some im-
proved kinematograph, films of the Notornis,
Colenso’s Coot and the mysterious Megapode
of the Kermadec Islands, all yet surviving
in the Elysian fields.
However, to return to our subject.
After a little the male became somewhat
bolder and though evidently still uneasy,
began to slowly approach the nest. Every
moment I expected to see him settle down,
when to my disgust the nestlings were one
by one ravished from my sight, and I
could only observe the male at intervals
appearing and reappearing behind the nest,
which was now used against me as a Shelter
and shield. Finding the repeated signals
disregarded, he had probably taken them
down in his beak or claw, or, of course it
is also possible that even while I waited
the instincts of the chicks had developed
to the point of interpretation of the
parental calls.
There is little doubt, anyway, that the
old birds must on occasion pick up the
young either in beak or claw, for the
WOOD AND WASTE 17
platforms built for chicks seceding from
the original nest, and already mentioned,
are often too steep for the little creatures
to crawl up. I have, moreover, seen an
old bird supporting in his claw a chick
when feeding it in a precarious position.
After the sudden disappearance of the two
young ones | could see the parent birds
moving about the vicinity of the nest and
hear them rustling softly in the raupo, their
high, querolous notes running through the
whole gamut of interrogation.
There were other calls, too, one a low
croon, another the gentle call to feed—‘Te-
he-he-he,’’ ‘‘te-he-he-he’’—and a third re-
markable noise rather than call, at its
height like grinding, and which I took to
be the bird milling food for the young,
and at its lowest just the snore a retriever
makes when fetching a hurt hare after a
long chase and breathing entirely through
his nostrils. I was confirmed in my theory
of the milling or grinding of food, for
a few hours later, on handling the chicks,
their droppings seemed to be composed of
78 BIRDS OF THE WATER
the tender blanched blades of young raupo
in a highly desiccated state.
Twice leaving my screen on this un-
fortunate day I put back the chicks, and
twice again were they removed, and although
in the end photographs were obtained, they
were of no account. ‘The fact is that one
should never expect to get results from a
first sitting. There are a score of details
you cannot know. Often a Pukeko, for
instance, will enter its nest almost flat on
its belly, crawling in, and with half a dozen
raupo blades borne along on _ its’ back.
Then almost at once, often, the bird may
start to reweave a bower above its eggs,
pulling and tugging while on the nest at
the adjacent blades and stems.
The second Pukeko’s nest, closely watched,
was under observation during October,
1909. Our tent was pitched in an open bit
of swamp directly in front of the nest, but
at many yards’ distance, and this distance
was reduced a yard or two at a time, until
we had got within eighteen or twenty feet.
After that we ventured to cut away a
certain amount of the superfluous greenery
‘SoUQ, FIT eyi Sulpssy |, adpng,,
‘G8 IXX SHLW1d
WOOD AND WASTE 9
shutting out the nest from the camera.
All work of this sort, it need scarcely be
said, should be done gradually, especially
under conditions where human traffic is
conspicuous, as for instance in a swamp
where it is impossible to work without
treading surrounding vegetation into pulp.
This nest also was in a quagmire, where
we always sat in gum boots, and to prevent
the camera legs from sinking, they had to
be supported on broad boards.
The nest was a partnership affair, though
we saw little of the hens, who were giddy
young things, and left the cock to do all
the heavy work. ‘‘You do de _ haulin’,
Brer Fox, and I’ll do de gruntin’,’’ seems
to be quite the hen Pukeko’s idea of a
fair division of labour.
As the camera and tent crept up nearer
and nearer, it was he who brought them
up again and again, and attempted to induce
them to sit, and when they would not, it
was he himself who sat and panted in the
sun, who braved the lens’ awful eye, and
who re-wove from raupo and grasses a
shelter for the nest.
80 BIRDS OF THE WATER
Not only would the hens not sit them-
selves, but they made his life a burden by
constant false alarms. Sometimes when he
had really settled on the nest, and when the
agitated flick of his tail was _ subsiding,
there would be a violent dive into the thick,
crinkly raupo beside him, or a _ sudden
squawk immediately behind. Then, when
they had done what they could to thoroughly
discompose his mind, they would glide off,
and for hours leave the poor fellow to
possible danger and certain discomfort.
Certainly among this species the male is
the bolder bird in incubation. I may say
indeed, that the hens would not front the
lens. This particular cock was in glorious
plumage, and we admired him also for his
erit. A married friend, however, to whom
I related the circumstances, suggested that
we were giving the cock too much credit
altogether, for dangerous as might be the
proximity of the lens, and uncomfortable
as might be the rays of the sun, yet there
in the nest he was alone and free for a
time at any rate from the worries of
domestic life. The eggs laid in this nest
snug pue [pif ‘aspng_,,
THXX FLV Td
WOOD AND WASTE 81
were of dissimilar types, rounder and
smaller, or darker in colour and more
pyritorm.
The third nest under the camera was
found on January 22nd. Placed in a willow
and a couple of feet above the lake, the
intercrossing of several boughs served for
a base, the outer layers of the nest were
composed of half-dry willow weepers,
broken into short lengths, while inside it
was lined with raupo blades. By chance I
had come across it whilst searching late on
a gloomy afternoon for Brown Ducks.
Willow growths almost completely hid the
sitting bird, the dark water admirably
matching his deep blue plumage, and_ it
was his red head that first attracted close
attention. This danger the old bird must
have been fully aware of, for as I leant
over the deep water, peering into the
ereenery from my position on a_ broken
limb, he, too, drooped his head lower and
lower towards the water, and away from
me, until he sat at an extraordinary angle
in the nest. From subsequent observations
I became convinced that this conduct was
£2
82 BIRDS OF THE WATER
not the result of chance, but that the bird
appreciated the danger of his coloured
head.
Twice that evening and afterwards I had
the pleasure of witnessing a repetition of
the original performance, the bird again
drooping his head into shelter and shuffling
himself back in the nest, till it seemed
likely that he would slide completely off
it. Never before had I known an instance
of quite the same kind, so that this cock
Pukeko’s comprehension of the danger
lurking in his crown seemed most inter-
esting.*
The nest was found, as has been said,
on January 22nd, but other work was in
hand, and it was not until January 26th
that we dragged a boat across ‘‘The Gut’’
dividing in summer the upper from the
Note.—During September, 1910, whilst one afternoon riding
along the edge of the lake I noticed, as did also my companion,
a Pukeko again perform this action. We were upon him almost
before he knew of us, and not choosing to fly, he crouched down,
and although his head, of course, was lower than his back, he
took the further precaution of submerging his bill, thus blending
himself more completely into the water background. From the
angle at which his head was held—not stretched out, but rather
dug down into the water—I again cannot but think that the
bird was fully conscious of his danger signal of red.
WOOD AND WASTE 83
lower part of Tutira lake. The nest,
built over very deep water, contained nine
eges. By February Ist another egg had
been added; hatching began February 5th,
and continued till 13th. On the 14th the
nest was deserted, and only a single egg
left, which contained a nearly fully de-
veloped chick.
Pukekos are often rather clumsy in
leaving their nests. McLean one day noticed
an egg knocked out of the nest, and on a
second occasion I heard one fall with a
plop into the water. Whatever the male
and the other female felt in this latter
ease, the guilty hen herself treated it with
the utmost sang froid. She let it go, like
Bailey Junior, the crockery at Todgers,
with perfect good breeding, and never
added to the painful emotions of the
company by exhibiting the least regret.
No doubt both these eggs were upset by
the startled and more timid hens, for in
this case, too, the cock was left to take
the risks. Neither sex, however, can be
said to sit close, the birds usually preferring
to glide off while the intruder is still at a
84 BIRDS OF THE WATER
distance. Last year, certainly, I caught a
bird fairly asleep on its nest, but such
cases are very rare.
When on one occasion at work on this
willow tree nest, and about to shp into
the blind, there were a pair of new hatched
chicks among the eggs. They were old
enough, however, for prompt obedience,
and at a eall from one of the old birds,
instantly tumbled out of the nest into the
water below and swam off.
As the chicks hatched, they left the
nest, and I have taken photos of the cock
still sitting while on each side of me was
a hen wandering about the shore with one
or more cheepers. When once the cock
was: “‘set’? im his’ nest, and if he saw
nothing, no noise, no shouting, sibilation or
hand clapping would seare him off. To
get him to move it was necessary to appear
over the top of the blind like a jack-in-the
box.
Young Pukekos are extremely hardy little
creatures, and this year, intending to rear
them as pets, I took five from a nest from
which they had spilt themselves as I rode by.
WOOD AND WASTE 85
They were, I daresay, some twenty to forty
hours old. As I then believed that a hen
would not feed them, for the httle creatures
are accustomed to be nourished directly
from the mother’s bill, they were kept
warm in flannels, and porridge and milk
ladled out to them from the blunt end of
a nib.
Even then, at that age, and under these
adverse conditions, they survived, until one
day their bowl was upset and all but three
escaped out of an open door, never to be
seen. again. The survivors were given then
to a hen, and when she clucked and broke
up food, it sometimes happened that the
stuff would stick to her bill, and thus
gradually was a _ connection established
between her call and a supply of food.
The Pukeko chicks were put under her
late in the evening, and I am told her
expression of startled astonishment when
they began to pipe and cheep was very
ludicrous. Of the three surviving the acci-
dent to the bowl, a pair thrived and seemed
to be in a fair way of growing up, until
the smaller suddenly dropped dead one day
86 BIRDS OF THE WATER
in the garden. I believe the poor bird must
have swallowed a pin or tack or something
of that kind, for they would both experiment
on all manner of strange foods.
Three more chicks were brought in at a
later date by one of the station children.
They were at once given to a hen, and
have thrived splendidly. ‘‘Budget,’’ the
survivor of the first brood, is perfectly
tame, and ever since his arrival has been
a joy and amusement to the whole house-
hold. A baby Pukeko is indeed the oddest
little creature, grovelling on his belly when
approached, shivering his pinky half-bald
head from side to side, his strange nude
winglets outspread and backwatering, his
eyes turned upwards like a Saint in a
picture, and his great red lined mouth
open like a fern owl’s. His is the abject
submission offered by heathen votaries to a
remorseless god.*
When rather older, and in the act of
taking food eagerly from the hand, his
[*Or, s&y, the attitude of the sheepfarmer requesting a
further loan from his Banker with fleece wool at 4d. in London,
and fat stock a drug on the market.]
WOOD AND WASTE 87
head is zigzagged from side to side, like
a snake about to strike. At length a dart
is made and the morsel snatched and eagerly
devoured.
It is strange, also, to see at so early an
age the use made of the claw or ‘‘foot,”’
the morsel being held tightly between the
“‘thumb’’ and other ‘‘fingers.’’ The arrival
of the three new chicks brought out quite
unexpected traits in Budget’s character.
He was then about eleven weeks old, and
during his whole life had never ceased his
perpetual, plaintive call when wandering
about and feeding himself. His foster
mother was in her coop, and he had no
one to tell him the dangers of such a habit
to little Pukekos, and what a summons it
was to vermin. When the three new chicks
arrived, beyond touching their little heads
with his bill, and feeling them gently,
Budget at first evinced but little imterest.
These chicks were at that time netted into
a very small run until they took to their
new mother, a staid old Buff Orpington.
In a few days they were allowed full
freedom—the hen still penned in her coop
88 BIRDS OF THE WATER
—and would then sometimes wander from
her cover and follow Budget in a desultory
sort of way. About the third day, to our
amazement he began to feed them, and
ever since has been a most devoted
nurse. His is a real labour of love, for
when called up and given a caterpillar or
other dainty, he runs off at once and
presents it to one of the chicks. Should
it be too large, his bill is used for its
crushing and maceration, or sometimes the
morsel is held in his claw and torn up for
the little ones. His lonely ery, too, ceased
altogether, and was replaced by the gentle
feeding note that calls up the cheepers.
This latter cry, by the way, was not de-
veloped at once. At first Budget always
carried food to the chicks, but later he
expected them to come to him, though such
is the dear fellow’s love for his small
charges that he can suffer no long delay,
and should anything prevent their immediate
appearance, will still carry to one of them,
the blue hopper moth, the spindley daddy-
long-legs, or the slimy, succulent caterpillar.
Even when we know him to be hungry it
PLATE XXIV.
Pukeko sitting.
ale
1
N
WOOD AND WASTE 89
is never himself who is first fed, and the
distribution of the chopped meat Pukekos
love is a quaint spectacle.
One of us presents it bit by bit to
Budget, who duly passes it on to one or
another of his little troop till they are
gorged, standing round the dish replete,
like sated cobras, and their small tummies
tight as very drums.
‘‘Budget!’’ ‘‘Budget!’’ will always fetch
him running across the lawn with his
funny rolling gait; an outstretched palm
he knows means some dainty for his
little ones, and we are careful never to
deceive him.
He enjoys his bath many times a day,
wallowing and splashing in his milk dish,
and always, after ablutions are _ over,
leaving the water with a skip and series
of short hops. After preening his feathers,
should there be sun, he spreads his wings
to the full, making them slope to the very
ground from an angle above his back.
Should a cloud pass over the sky he
folds his wings, and proceeds with his
perambulations in search of food. With the
13
90 BIRDS OF THE WATER
reappearance of the sun, and when again it
shines forth, instantly he whips round and
expands his wings to get the fullest heat.
“When.1m', doubt. “have a: bath’? isthe
family. motto of the Pukeko tribe. It is
Budget’s balm of consolation, when he has
been gently requested not to cuddle down
on my best herbaceous clumps, solace when
he has been badly startled by the stooping
pigeons, the crowning mercy after a full
meal; in fact, like tobacco, it is a lone
Pukeko’s companion, a bachelor Pukeko’s
friend, a hungry Pukeko’s food, a_ sad
Pukeko’s cordial, a wakeful Pukeko’s
sleep, a chilly Pukeko’s fire.
He still allows one beloved friend to
catch and put him to bed, crouching the
while in the long grass, and wagging his
dear old head from side to side as if in
remonstrance.* He does not like the coop,
still necessary for his safety, and knows
Note.—One good turn deserves another, and Budget at a
later date returned to this particular friend a small torquoise
brooch missed and given up for lost. The bird had no doubt
picked it up, attracted by the colour of the stones, and was,
when observed, standing near the fowlhouse gate with the brooch
in its bill.
PLATE XVII.
Male Pukeko coming on to Nest.
WOOD AND WASTE 91
shutting up time as well as a beggar knows
his dish or a dog knows when he is to
be washed. Wandering away and _ hiding,
he will then even leave his precious chicks
to get into the long grasses and have the
open sky above him. The night calls him,
the heavy autumn damps mean all sorts of
things to him, I daresay, squatting on his
hocks, his immense feet hidden beneath his
breast. He longs to feel the delicious dews
bead on his back, to smell the breathing
mists, to know the water-laden leaves are
bending down and down to kindly hide
him more and more in the dark till the
trickle runs and they nod and rise. In-
stincts a thousandfold more ancient than
this love of a day for his little brethren
summon him. He longs to hear what his
forebears have heard, the raupo chafing in
the slightest stir of winds, the alternate
babble and hush of the waterfalls on the
far hill sides, the falling of wet leaves in
the early light; to drink the morning dew by
passing the long grass blades through his
shining beak, or after frost to listen en-
tranced as the cold-curled blades of flax
92 BIRDS OF THE WATER
unroll and tinkle down their myriad shining
films of ice.
Surely if country life can be so absorbing
to those of us who love it, we can under-
stand the passion for absolute freedom
amongst the wild creatures who know the
meaning of a thousand scents and sounds
quite meaningless to us.
Sometimes during the day Budget can be
seen in his favourite squatting attitude,
nestling down in a thick border of white
pinks or other cosy growth, the little ones
mimicing his actions and lying alongside
like tenders beside an ocean liner.
After witnessing in intimate detail the
happiness and goodness—yes, goodness—of
some of these birds, their affection for one
another and helpfulness, a milk of human
kindness, overflowing in dear Budget’s
case, even to the stodgy old Buff Orpington
hen, who warms his nestlings at night and
is shamelessly deserted by them during the
daytime. After, I say, witnessing the
intimacies of their lives, shooting of these
particular species is no longer conceivable.
I find myself sympathising with the collies
WOOD AND WASTE 93
who must worry, but have still compunction
towards the flocks they have so often
worked and worry far afield and neigh-
bour’s sheep whom they do not know.
This is the particular instance to which I
refer. One afternoon, at feeding time,
Budget had, as usual, gorged his little ones;
he was then presented, in the hope he would
himself eat, with a good lump of bread. With
it in his bill, he ran off, leaving his chicks,
dipped it in his water pan—a very common
custom among Pukekos—and carried it to
the old hen. There, poking his head through
the bars of the coop, the bread was offered
with the Iudicrous grovelling attitudes
alluded to already. The imprisoned matron,
though evidently from her stiff and stately
gait regarding the offer as an unwarrantable
liberty—they had, perhaps, never been pro-
perly introduced !—merely overlooked it as a
lamentable want of society manners that only
a Pukeko would be guilty of, and poor
Budget’s kind, emotional eagerness was
completely disregarded !
Every country place in New Zealand,
where there are children, should rear a
o4 BIRDS OF THE WATER
family of Pukeko. They are delightful
pets, and pets, moreover, in absolute free-
dom who will assert themselves and not
be content to tamely starve like the
wretched guinea pigs, canaries, and rabbits
of our youth.
What a life was that of the rabbit of
boyhood’s days, embraced, forgotten, re-
membered with remorse, more cruel still,
crammed with dank meadow grass, long,
rank, poisonous, grown in deepest shade!
By mid-April Budget was a very hand-
some bird in her smooth blue plumage,
yellowish-red legs and cherry-red frontal
plate or beak. She—we believe her to be a
lady—with her three companions—‘‘Toddy,”’
‘Jack,’ and “‘Gill”’—all grew up to, be
fine specimens, and when the younger ones
were able to fly, they were gradually
weaned from their early quarters among
the flower beds, and made to understand
that the garden was tapu.
Pukekos are no respectors of shrubs and
flowers, and trample the former with their
great feet and tear up the latter with their
PEATES XVIII. a,b,c;
* Budge.”
WOOD AND WASTE 99
powerful beaks, even seeming to have a
special pleasure in experimenting on the
rarer plants.
The birds soon took to their new quarters
and learnt that where the hens could go
they, too, were undisturbed.
The close proximity of the fowls was at
first a great attraction, and it was amusing
to watch the younger birds grovelling before
some quite phlegmatic old hen or chased by
a fowl indignant at the heathen adulation
Omered her: °° Voddy,”’ “Jack, and: “Gall;
were often indeed hunted and pretty severely
handled. Budget never got into any bad
scrape, but with superior wisdom soon learnt
to discriminate. The timid fowls she bullied;
on one occasion an utterly cowed hen was
rescued from beneath a pile of firewood,
Budget standing sentinel over her and ready
again to pull her feathers out ‘on the first
attempt at escape. Towards the bolder
Orpingtons, and _ especially towards the
roosters, her attitude was more respectful,
and upon their approach she would retire
to her coign of vantage, the honeysuckle
96 BIRDS OF THE WATER
hedge, along the top of which there is now
a well-marked path. Not that numbers
would always intimidate her; indeed, she
would challenge the whole fowlyard, roosters
included, when she was outside and they
securely penned within their run, and would
wage a war, at once safe in results and
honourable to herself in numerical dispro-
portion. It was curious to watch these en-
gagements, the fowls partly curious, partly
fascinated, and wholly indignant, crowding
and jostling against one side of their wire
netting run, and Budget on the other in all
sorts of bellicose postures, and thus the
tide of battle would surge up and down the
fence for an hour at a time. Pukekos,
when becoming angry, raise their wings and
tail, and puff out the white undertail coverts,
and the attitude of challenge is to stand as
nearly as possible upside down, the tip of
the beak lowered to the very ground, the
tail pointing straight to the sky, and the
feet swiftly marking time, like an angry
woman’s hands clenching and unclenching
when prepared to tear out a rival’s eyes.
XVI.
PLATE
Pukeko sitting on Eggs.
WOOD AND WASTE 97
We have noticed in Budget this attitude
of defiance displayed also to ourselves. When
sparring in play they will strike at each
other’s breasts with their outstretched feet,
much in the same manner that cocks engage.
We have had to be very strict about
Budget’s ‘‘followers,’’ and she is under no
circumstances allowed to meet them on the
lawn or garden.
“Toddy,’’ ‘‘Jack,’’ and ‘‘Gill’’ have gone,
and in a way their disappearance is a
relief, for hosts of other Pukekos, their
friends, were descending upon us, nearly
forty coming down in a body one after-
noon from the terrace lands above the
house.
Budget still remains, retiring every evening
to her roost in the raupo, and every morn-
ing returning to her friends, and home,
and honeysuckle hedge.
Pukekos are very human pets, and do, I
believe, really care for their friends, apart
from material considerations. ‘‘Gill,’’ for
instance, loved to be taken up and have
her head and neck tickled, and would cuddle
14
98 BIRDS OF THE WATER
herself down in the keeping of her par-
ticular friend, tucking up her long legs,
closing her immense feet, and lying folded
up like a pocket foot rule. They will come
to call, and even if not hailed will follow
their friends for notice and _ recognition,
and no doubt all these birds would have
been even tamer had it not been necessary
to scare them from the house, the verandah
and the garden.
This long screed concerning the Pukeko
may end with a few rough notes of his
feathering. Budget, with the other four,
was a day or two old when taken from
the nest on January 10th; he was then like
all youthful Pukekos, covered with silver-
tipped blue down, thickest in certain tracts,
especially round the head and down the
spine. On February 21st incipient quills
were first noticed, and the faintest shades
of blue. During March he acquired the
grey belly patch, his snowy under tail
coverts showed, his tail feathers were two
inches long, his frontal shield and _ legs
were, however, still only tinged with red.
PLATE XXVI-
Young Harriers.
The Harrier
SOT up to much,” and “‘a bad
D) lot’? are in human parlance,
the positive and comparative,
| whilst ‘‘a bad egg’’ is the
| Sr} superlative of condemnation.
“The bad egg’’ will commit actions so
very low and dreadful that it has not
been thought necessary to forbid them.
Murder of babes by babes and desertion of
tender youth by their parents are crimes
too monstrous to anticipate.
The Harrier is a ‘“‘bad egg,’’ a poor
low coward, a terror only to deformed
creatures and weaklings, fit to glean roast
lizards after a fern fire, to tear out the
eyes from cast sheep, and mean enough to
gorge himself with carrion from the yards.
I accuse him of fratricide even in the
nest, and worst of all, the lowest form of
cowardice, a craven fear that will inexcus-
100 BIRDS OF THE WATER
ably sacrifice his nestlings’ welfare and
lives to his own wretched carcase. He is
a disgrace to his honourable family and
different, indeed, to his gallant little cousin,
the Falcon, a gentleman from beak to talon
tip. Harriers are fairly . plentiful on
Tutira, and begin to lay in the early days
of October. This year, while photographing
Hern Birds on the 23rd of that month, we
noticed a pair of Harriers circling and
wheeling, evidently above their nest.
Knowing, however, the character of the
species, and wishing to run no risks of
desertion, the site was not actually visited
until November 3rd. The nest was built
on tangled fern growth of six or seven
years, and the eggs, four in number and
of a dirty dead white colour, lay on dried
grasses and rush, amongst which were
scattered a few feathers, big and little.
They hatched out shortly afterwards, and
a preliminary screen at a short distance,
and made of the surrounding scrub, was
hastily run up when the youngest nestling
was about four days old.
WOOD AND WASTE 101
The greatest care was taken in no way
to scare the parents, and owing to a sharp
little eminence fortunately providing a
stance from which the nest could be well
viewed, its immediate surroundings were
neither touched nor trodden.
Neither McLean or myself were ever
within nine feet of the nest, and, as I have
said, the herbage around was untouched.
We, moreover, always left the vicinity
immediately on the completion of any neces-
sary work, and in the open country the
Harriers could not but have witnessed our
departure.
Nevertheless, these birds deserted their
nestlings, for on the 10th, when McLean
went to move the break nearer, the chicks
were dead.
Now, as these Harriers must have circled
above their offspring, and seen them, not
as eggs, mind you, but sprawling in the
nest, moreover, probably also heard them
calling, this desertion argues an almost
incredible heartlessness. During the second
week in November I got another Harrier’s
nest. It was built in a swamp of very tall
102 BIRDS OF THE WATER
raupo, where last season a pair of Harriers
hatched out one brood successfully and
attempted a second. Harriers sit very close
and though I almost stumbled on the bird,
I barely allowed myself a glance at the
nest, and came away at once. Indeed, I
believe that with shy species, unless you
have actually exchanged glances with the
sitting bird and she knows you have her
secret, it is judicious to gradually wander
off as if still unenlightened. Burds see so
much and notice everything.
At long intervals the briefest of glimpses
were taken at this second nest, and it was
not until the 9th of December, when the
young, two in number were sitting up—
baby Harriers spend a great part of their
time in this attitude—and about fifteen or
seventeen days old, that siege operations
were begun. The nest, supported on dense
masses of dry, dead raupo, was by this
time flattened into a broad stage by the
traffic of the old birds and the movements
of the nestlings. The latter were densely
clothed in very short, pale, furry-looking
down, and when sitting up, much resembled
PLATE XXVII
Young Harriers Quarrelling.
WOOD AND WASTE 103
teddy bears, formidably mouthed and beaked.
On the 10th manuka poles, hidden by the
tall reeds, were erected a few yards from
the nest, and cross pieces lashed to them.
Next day raupo, in an upright, natural
position, was thickly fastened on to these,
and finally the sham camera put into
position.
So far all had gone well, and throughout
these various operations the Harrier con-
tinued to sit. We now had to clear the
raupo between the lens and nest.
This was done as quickly as possible, and
after finding the focus and fixing up the
real camera, an instant retreat was made.
All was now ready, and about eight the
following morning I took up my position
in the raupo shell, but after several
hours’ bootless waiting, had to give it up,
and came away, thinking the birds extra-
ordinarily shy certainly, but suspecting
nothing more.
I believed then that the Harriers must be
feeding their young late in the evening or
early in the morning, while yet there was
not light enough for photography, and
104 BIRDS OF THE WATER
when, consequently, neither of us were upon
the spot. On that assumption, and fearing
that, perhaps, we were keeping the nestlings
hungry during the hours of daylight, a
good gorge of raw meat was provided
them.
Next morning the young seemed fit and
well, and we still believed they must have
been fed at dawn or dusk, for it seemed
out of all reckoning that the old Harriers
should have abandoned their young, still
alive and strong, and conspicuously visible.
Later, we came to the conclusion that
after the sitting bird had been scared by
the passage made through the raupo for
the lens, neither it nor its mate had ever
returned, that neither full sight of the
young, nor hearing of their whistle calls
had been of any avail.
During the two mornings spent in
watching the young my suspicions as_ to
their criminal propensities were confirmed.
Very often in a MHarrier’s nest at the
beginning there may be three or four or
five young. I have got as many as six
eggs. Out of these three or four or five,
‘duieMs odney UL JSONJ StotsteY
A
peat, “ON
‘AXX GLV'Td
WOOD AND WASTE 105
two — usually two—leave the wicked nest.
What becomes of the smaller, later hatched
nestlings? I believe they are torn to pieces
and devoured by the larger chicks. On
some occasion, perhaps when parental delay
in supply of food has sharpened the
appetities of all, the youngest and most
feeble is taken. The next youngest is then
devoured, and so the horrid tale proceeds
until but three are left. The third chick
probably suffers from a combined attack
of the biggest pair, battened on their nest
fellows and oldest of the brood.
There were but two in this nest under
observation in December—there had been
four or five eggs—and though they had been
gorged with raw meat to the very throat
late in the afternoon, there were the
following morning quarrels so violent that
I expected to see a tragedy enacted before
my very eyes. One of these surviving
nestlings was considerably the larger, but
the smaller, fiercer chick was the more
strong. The second day the larger was
weakening, and the smaller bird very nearly
got him down on several occasions, seizing
15
106 BIRDS OF THE WATER
him by the head and hanging on as turkeys
do.
This smaller chick I imagined to be
ealculating on his fellow’s ebbing strength
with the hideous interest of the cannibal
convict in Marcus Clarke’s story.
It is hardly necessary to repeat again
that both McLean and myself were then
still under the impression that the nestlings
must be receiving supplies at dawn and
dusk while we were absent.
Even when we removed the camera and
gear, giving up all hope of securing nega-
tives from this nest, we were not perfectly
eertain of its desertion, for the Harriers
still hung about the vicinity.
All doubt, however ceased when we found
the young fallen from the nest and dead.
PEATE XIX.
on to Young.
creeping
Falcon
The Falcon
the Harrier and to turn to
his relative, the gallant little
Faleon. Each season five or
six pairs build on the run,
mostly far back along the high ranges
or on the fern-clad conglomerate country.
The nests are miles apart, for the Falcon
brooks no rival in his own domain,
and will chase the Harrier out of his sky,
hunt the shepherd’s collies back to their
master’s heels, and attack even man himself.
In attempting to focus a nest, I have
had my hat knocked off again and again;
in fact, was unable to proceed without a
companion, who defended us both by
manuka poles held above our heads. The
birds strike with the breast, I think, and
give a severe cuff rather than a blow.
The male—the smaller bird—is the more
swift, the more fierce, the more silent, but
108 BIRDS OF THE WATER
not the more agitated or devoted, and I
have known the hen stand by her eggs or
little chicks, guarding them against an
intruder only five yards distant—this,
moreover, on a first interview.
When accustomed to myself and _ the
camera, I have taken exposures without
any kind of sereen, and at a distance of
about twenty feet. Even on his autumn
and winter hunting grounds, and _ long
after the time has gone for defence of
young or protection of nest, he will pass
unconcernedly in strong, level flight but a
few feet distant.
At all times his joy is to pursue and
attack the Harrier, who, when _ pressed,
turns over in the air, and, lying on his
back, stretches up in defence his sharp
and terrible talons.
One pair of Falcons—I suppose the same
birds—used a cliff site for many successive
seasons, but this return to an old site, or
even its immediate vicinity, is in my
experience, quite exceptional. The eggs are
laid on the spot chosen; if at the base of
a conglomerate cliff, then on the ferruginous
WOOD AND WASTE 109
pebbles, which, by the bye, they exactly match;
if on a limestone ledge or platform, then
among the trodden fern fronds and grasses,
which make a softer layer for them; if on
a wind blown pumice scoop on the ranges,
then among the bare, dry, grey grit.
Quite other sites are, however, more
rarely chosen, for one of the shepherds
found a nest built by the birds themselves
on a low gnarled tutu bush jutting out from a
little cliff, or rather slip of papa rock.
The New Zealand Pipit seems to be the
Species most often taken by the Falcon,
but on the pinnacles where the birds perch
are often scattered feathers of Goldfinch and
Yellow Hammer. No doubt other species
also supply the Falcon’s larder, and I have
seen the bird strike and carry off one of a
flock of Starlings, and also noticed a Quail
chick brought into the nest. On this occasion
the Falcon—the male—was still suspicious
of the screen, and passed several times to
and fro, transferring the Quail in mid-air,
and in full flight, from beak to talon, and
again from talon to beak.
110 BIRDS OF THE WATER
It was an action of extraordinary neat-
ness, and executed with acrobatic exactitude.
After a short time, probably finding that
he would not approach her, the hen flew
off her nest and took it from him.
It is not to be thought, however that a
pale of desolation reigns round about the
Faleon’s nest.
From different coverts used by me on
different nests could be heard the Warbler
trilling, the Fantail creaking, and the calls
of Thrush, Quail, Waxeye, Blackbird, Lark,
Redpole, and Chaffinch. All these species
seem to dwell in the dangerous vicinity of
the Falcon, as folk camp serenely on the
slopes of a volcano slumbering, but which
may at any moment break out afresh; or
it may be that, like station collies who
have taken to worrying, the Falcon prefers
to do his killing far afield.
The eggs, two, or less frequently, three in
number, are so. thickly peppered and
sprinkled with red as to quite obscure the
ground colour. The young Falcon, when
first hatched are covered with white down,
as their age increases it changes to grey
“‘BUIYIG UOo]RPJ Usp]
XOX AV dd
WOOD AND WASTE il
and is not altogether gone when flight is
first attempted. Even when there are three
eggs my experience has been that they
usually hatch out, but in that case out of
the three nestlings one is distinctly smallest.
Often, however, there are but two chicks,
one considerably the larger, and probably
the female.
During the season of 1908-1909 I had a
Falcon’s nest under observation at the base
of a conglomerate cliff on the pumaceous
lands. ‘Tall manuka poles supported against
the pebbly wall made a capital lean-to,
round them scrim was wrapped, and finally
brushwood piled on top.
Thus, within two or three yards of the
nest the most intimate details of Falcon
family life was open to me.
Everything that is good can be said of
their housekeeping—the little ones are
admirably brought up. There is no quarrel-
ing, except, sometimes indeed at meal times,
no snatching at food is tolerated, even
though the young may be whining with
excitement and hunger. With their eyes
fixed on the prey beneath the parent’s
112 BIRDS OF THE WATER
outstretched talon, they keep their distance.
When the chicks are tiny amorphous
creatures, the prey is torn up and fed to
them. Later it is dangled in the beak and
the young are encouraged to grow fierce
and rush up and seize it. When much
older that is no longer necessary, and upon
the given signal, laissez aller, instantly the
youngsters throw themselves upon it.
Always, however, after the parent bird's
arrival there is a pause—grace before meat
as it were—and this rule the chicks,
however hungry, never attempt to transgress.
Besides manners, probably the weightier
matters of the law are not neglected and
justice administered impartially.
On one occasion I saw the male come in
with food, which, after the usual pause for
grace, was annexed by the larger chick, and
after a few protests from the other, was
devoured in a corner. It had been barely
finished when the female falcon swooped
from the sky and lit on the edge with
another dead bird, and this dead bird I
noticed was purposely kept away from the
chick just fed and deliberately held out
PLATE XXVIII.
Nest.
on’s
Fale
WOOD AND WASTE 113
to and given to the other. After waiting,
as Faleons do, with open mouth for a few
moments, she turned and flew off. She was
hardly out of sight when the well-fed and
larger chick seized on the fresh prey too.
But this time the little fellow was not
going to lose his dinner, and a terrible
squealing and tugging ensued, during
which the little chap was dragged about
like the weaker side in a tug-of-war.
Help was at hand, for almost at once
the mother bird, probably not altogether
unaccustomed to such _ bickerings, had
returned. Taking the morsel from the
offender, who at once gave way, she tore
it up for the little fellow, feeding him
from her bill till every morsel had been
eaten.
The effect of a full meal on the youngsters
is very curious, acting upon them as does
a glass of champagne on a man, and
causing the little creatures to strut up and
down their platform, with bellies distended
and the very air of the typical Irishman
trailing his coat and spoiling for a fight.
As with the Kingfishers, supplies brought
16
114 BIRDS OF THE WATER
up, and, owing to fear of the screen, not
at once given to the young, are either
dropped or eaten by the purveyors them-
selves.
While still mindful of the screen, one
parent would watch, screaming out a yell
of maniacal laughter at my least movement,
while the other hunted. When their
suspicions were lulled, both left the vicinity
of the nest and were often away for
considerable periods. It was really beautiful
to see the love of that wild, fierce mother
for her young. Often after she had been
hunting unsuccessfully for a time and had
no food to bring, she would swoop down
for an instant and visit her twin treasures.
She seemed unable to keep away for any
leneth of time while within reasonable
distance of them, but must still return
only once again to have one other glimpse.
In every way the most tender care is
lavished on the young; when the sun grows
too hot for their tender skins, the mother
bird will remove them into shade, lfting
them in that wonderful beak and carrying
them one by one to shelter, just as a bitch
PLATE XXXI.
Expectant.
WOOD AND WASTE 115
will move her pups. The youngest chick
was always first taken. On one occasion I
had knotted a string on to one of the
nestlings to mark him, and was reminded
next visit of the fact by finding the string
on the nest evidently untied by the hen
Falcon.
When advancing to shelter the nestlings,
she ‘‘creeps,’’ or ‘‘glides,’’ or ‘‘pushes’’
on to them—each word would describe the
curious action—and at any rate first covers
them with her breast, not her wings.
The young spend a lot of their time
snoozing; then there is the constant occupa-
tion of getting rid of the black blowflies
who are so tickly, and will clamber about
their fluff, and will not go away.
Then they play, too, venturing out from
their ledge as toddling children do from
an open door, pretending suddenly to be
seared, and hopping back with great
celerity. Great fits of yawning, too, or
more probably some Falcon Sandow exercise,
overcome them at times, and for a minute
at a time they will stand gaping and
swallowing till their jaws must ache.
116 BIRDS OF THE WATER
Whilst hunting, should one of the old birds
high in air pass over the site of the nest
little notice is taken, but the long whistle
signalling the approach of food rouses the
youngsters from their play or sleep, and
they rush at once to their platform edge.
There they remain, gazing into the sky and
cowering and flinching in sympathy with
the flying shadow that swings from the
dropping hawk. With hardly a sound she
sweeps on to the ledge, and then, as always,
comes to the young that trying grace before
meat. She stands with outstretched talon,
pressing down her prey, and during this
tantalising pause, the nestlings’ eyes seem
to be starting from their heads, and they
whine with hunger and excitement. Their
gaze is rivetted on the ground, but they
never offer to stir an inch until permission
is given and the capture dangled from her
beak.
Supplies were brought in quite irregu-
larly, of course, but averaging, I daresay,
about once in every ninety minutes. The
youngsters in this nest, however, were three-
quarters grown, and would require a pro-
a-b.
S XXXII.
PLATE
Feeding Time.
PLATE XXXIII.
Young Falcon.
WOOD AND WASTE TA,
proportionately good supply. As the nest-
lings develop they begin to wander, and
long before fit for flight have ventured yards
away from the original site, hopping and
scrambling with great agility. For several
weeks, and long after becoming fully
fledged they are still tended, and probably
partly fed by the old birds.
The young, when molested, throw them-
selves upon their backs and strike fiercely
with their talons, uttering the while a
yelling Mephistophehan laughter. The beak
is not at first used in defence; it is still
too soft, but the claws of a_half-grown
Falcon will start blood.
Probably not many Falcon’s nests are
taken, and probably, too, not many broods
destroyed. The eyries are often inaccessible,
and the parent birds too fierce and devoted
to allow the approach of vermin.
Even to them, however accidents do
occur, and this season a_ brood under
observation, when about half-grown, were
destroyed. At first I believed it to have
been the work of a neighbour’s rabbiter,
for in my diary I find the brief, vindictive
118 BIRDS OF THE WATER
note, ‘‘Add repeating rifle to photographic
gear!’? I was wrong, however, for later,
when photographing Tuis in the same
locality, we came across, and on more than
one occasion, ewidently the same pair of
Faleon. The three nestlings must have
been destroyed during their parents’ absence,
and probably by some wandering wild eat.
This pair did not attempt a second nest,
and I believe under normal conditions the
Falcon breeds but once a year.
PLATE XXXIV.
aS ere ae
t of Ground Lark.
S)
Ne
The Ground Lark
ee eA
dey OF
the run that may be called
homestead birds, such as the
New Zealand Pipit, or
<3
RIA Ground Lark, the Waxeye,
the Warbler, and the Fantail. A specimen
or two of each of these breeds may be
nearly always noticed about the gardens
or orchards or plantations. Each is at-
tracted by his special desire, the Pipit
by dug soils, the Waxeye and Warbler by
green fly on the rose beds, and caterpillars
on the flower borders, and the Fantail by
tree and shrub growth, and in mid-winter
especially by the blossoming gums that then
yield a plenteous supply of small moths
and insects. Nearly every day the New
Zealand Pipit may be seen, the little grey,
brown bird that half of us think is an
English skylark, and the other half fail to
120 BIRDS OF THE WATER
notice at all, vet if any feathered creature
may claim particular recognition, it is
surely he who is not one bird but four.
With us in the Antipodes he takes the place
of four British species, the Skylark, the
Wagtail, the Flycatcher, and the Robin
Redbreast.
He does mount, and he does sing, even
though he cannot be said to soar, or thrill
us with profuse strains of unpremeditated
art, but he himself and his four brown
eges and simple nest are modelled on the
Skylark’s as nearly as may be, the nest
perhaps, a trifle deeper, the eggs practically
indistinguishable. Although, however, he
cannot sing against the British bird, what
Skylark was ever so friendly, so sociable,
and so ready always for the game of
running with quick little steps along the
winding tracks, rising with a merry chirp
and a short flight, again and again and again
beguiling the loneliness of the shepherd’s
ride. Then, again, where would you find
the Skylark that could obtain amusement
from a railway train—a New Zealand
railway train?
WOOD AND WASTE 121
Yet Buller writes that he has noticed on
the Hastings-Napier line and elsewhere a
peculiar habit the birds have developed of
following a train, and has seen in autumn
a flight of a hundred birds keeping abreast
or a little ahead of a train in rapid
motion.*
On the open riverbed—the deep, dark,
fern-fringed gorge offers no attraction to
this bird of liberty and light—our little
friend becomes the Wagtail, fluttering and
hopping on the weed-wrapt stones that
emerge from a falling stream at the tail
of some quiet pool. On the ebb and flow
marked river rim he runs with tail in
perpetual motion, and rising again and
again with short, jerky flights into the air.
Note.—There is no good reason to suppose that these
trains have materially lessened their speed since Buller
penned his paragraph some thirty years ago. We _ have,
therefore, the registered observation that the Ground Lark is
able not only to keep abreast, but ‘‘even a little ahead of
the train.’’ Much controversy is at present taking place over
the speed of bird flight, and Gatke, in his Birds of Heligoland,
credits the Hooded Crow with 108 miles, the Northern Blue-
throat with 180 miles, and the Virginian Plover with 212 miles
per hour, while here in New Zealand we know from what Buller
says, that the Ground Lark can keep abreast ‘‘or even a
little ahead of trains on the Napier-Hastings line,” and “in rapid
motion,’’ too—marvellous.
17
122 BIRDS OF THE WATER
Often, too, on the coastal lagoons you may
notice him passing lightly over the estuarine
sud, delicately picking up flies and tiny
insects, as much a Wagtail in his flights
and runs and sudden changes as any Ground
Lark can be. Then, as the Flycatcher, he
may be seen hawking by the hour from
some high chosen perch, perhaps the top
of some tall fire-charred, broken bole, or
may be he has selected some little eminence
on a sharp ridged spur, where his view is
fully clear, and where the snap of his
mandibles, his airy convolutions and sudden
excursions, turn him into the Flycatcher.
Metamorphosised again into the Robin
Redbreast, he will do his share, too, in
garden work, keeping just out of hoe and
rake reach, and picking up with short, deft
runs, the white, soft, sleepy, disinterred
larvae of the green beetle. Often and often
when gardening have I had one or two
of these cheerful little companions, quite
friendly but never overbold, and always
wearing that veil of shyness so peculiarly
their own. Never would the Ground Lark
wear the abstracted, distrait look of an
‘SSUIPJSON] YreqT punoirg
‘AXXX ALY Id
«aye
oe
WOOD AND WASTE 123
English Robin, never would he be guilty of
such discourtesy as to sit, as does the
Redbreast, like a stone, until he darts on
his worm, showing thereby that the worm
and not your companionship is his real
object. My little brown friend would never
do that, each of us gives a happiest inter-
pretation to the other’s presence. Though
incidentally the turned-over soil may be
used later for other purposes, I am there
now, the Pipit persuades himself, to provide
him those soft-shelled grubs, as white and
pathetically helpless as babies. Seeing me
lonely at my work, I know he wishes me
to believe that he has arrived with his
cheerful chirp and _ ceaseless runs and
flutterings, to charm the solitude, make the
sun brighter, and the sky more blue.
Mutual courtesy is always observed, on my
part no too quick motion or sudden throwing
down of tools, on his, an exit lingering and
reluctant, for his departure, too, is lke
him, little runs and pauses that carry him
further and further, as if breaking the
sorrow to me, and when at last he is no
longer there I realise the old French proverb
124 BIRDS OF THE WATER
and know that of the two parties in our
affection it is I who have given my heart,
whilst the bird only consents to be loved.
He is gone, and part of the morning
brightness with him!
The Pipit’s breeding season extends over
many months of the year. Eggs are laid
early in August, and I have noticed parent
birds still collecting food at the end of
March. Probably the early breeding pairs
rear a second brood, but nests are more
plentiful, I think, in late summer and early
autumn than in spring, and this would seem
to show that some couples breed but once
and then late in the season. ‘This year,
certainly, we got two nests in the autumn
for every one in the early months.
Almost any spot unlikely to be trodden
by stock serves for a nesting site, very
steep banks and almost precipitous hill
slopes are favourite places, but nests are
often built on the flats, beneath a sheltering
tuft of tussock, or where a friendly stick
or sturdy fern frond will fend off grazing
beasts. Sometimes the Pipit has built even
in the trampled, stock-trodden, house pad-
WOOD AND WASTE 125
dock, and has, moreover, on several occa-
sions hatched out her brood. The nest
is a very deep cup, and much resembles
the nest of the Home Lark. ‘There are
usually four eggs, rather pointed, brown
all over, with a ring of deeper brown at
the thicker end.
The young are fed on caterpillars, grass-
hoppers, and small flies, and one pair
under observation seemed to have a little
freehold property of their own, a clearly
defined area for collection of these supplies,
returning again and again to particular
runs of rock and sandy flat. When the
bill is full—birds can hold their captured
booty whilst still continuing to collect, just
as they can sing with their mouths full—
the old bird would fly off to the nest,
always, however, avoiding a direct flight
and pausing many times en route for
observation and critical inspection of the
neighbourhood. Upon the arrival of food,
the young, at any rate during their last
few days in the nest, seem to be unable to
forbear an eager twittering and chirping,
sounds of rejoicing which must be highly
126 BIRDS OF THE WATER
dangerous, and by which the particular
nest under the camera this season was
actually discovered. Although silence is
thus in the later days of incubation
neglected by the hungry youngsters, the
golden rule for Ground Lark nestlings,
their first and greatest of commandments,
is never transgressed. However hungry,
nay, voracious, the fledglings are, and at
first for several hours in the nest under
observation, the parent Pipits avoided the
screen and camera, the young never budge
from the nest, and though easily able to do
so, never edge on to the little run and
platform made by the repeated visits of
the old birds. JI suppose inherited ex-
perience has shown the Pipit race how full
the world is of deceit and wickedness in the
form of Harriers, rats, and other vermin.
On Tutira during my time the numbers of
the Ground Lark have very much increased
and hundreds of them flock together in the
winter months, especially on the pumaceous
areas of the run.
PLATE XXXVI.
eed Young.
F
Ground Lark about to
The Fantail
EQS EF the smaller species that live
/ D> about the station policies, the
¥ Fantail, our second small
homesteader, is equally fear-
: as less and sociable. Tree
growth and shelter it is that brings him
to the station. The garden itself con-
tains little of interest to the Fantail, the
herbaceous borders must appear wasted
labour, and the green lawn of no ac-
count. He is a flycatcher first and fore-
most, a worshipper of woods and groves,
happy in summer amongst his native bush,
whilst in late winter the alien bluegums are
a particular attraction. On calm July
mornings parties of Fantails gather about
their blossoming tops, fluttering and turn-
ing, diving and rising, and _ performing
a hundred airy turns and somersaults in
pursuit. of their prey.
128 BIRDS OF THE WATER
Never almost is he to be found at rest,
for even perched on a bough, he cannot
remain quite still, but will sidle along its
length, jumping from side to side drooping
his wings to their full stretch, or trailing
and scraping them like a gobbling Bubbly-
jock.
The little bird never remains for any
time in the air, always after an instant or
two alighting, before again he flutters off.
Although, however, of so mercurial a
temperament and though so peculiarly a
bird of the air, sometimes he is still and
sometimes his little claws touch earth.
Usually he takes small account of strangers
near his nest, yet on occasion I have seen
him still as a statue, crouched up and
glowering almost as if prepared to dash
forth in defence. Then in late spring
sometimes I have watched him on _ the
ground, hopping about and feeding on a
little moth sheltering among the withered
fronds of water polypod. Often it is a
sheltered glade that holds him, where the
wind hardly blows, where shadows have
their edges soft, and grasses droop at
TIP], SUIMOYs “SONY S[lejuRy
WAXXX ALY Td
, —
4
F
Beh ee ee
ee ea Cen a ers
eta bape eee ae +
“eyhueyAy Ul JSON Ss jrejue
“XIXXX ALVTd
WOOD AND WASTE 129
noon over undried dews, or at an early
hour on the sunny side of a clump of
Mahoe, he will be catching flies, while still
the sward is silver mist, and while yet the
skies are of paler blue. In summer he
loves to hunt above the limestone runnels
that trickle and drop from pool to terraced
pool, deep in the sombre shade of groves of
manuka.
Quite in the open, too, over the bubbled
brooks, and just above their sheltering
fringe of overarching growth, he flutters
and flits in the fullest sun, dancing like
a gnat or ranging at random like a
wandering butterfly. In winter hundreds
and hundreds of Fantails move from the
uplands in a vertical migration towards
Tutira lake, there to regale themselves
during the cold weeks on the copious
water insect crop.
It is not uncommon during the winter
days to have a Fantail enter the house by
an open door or window, returning morning
after morning to hunt for house flies,
fluttering round the cornices, perching on
the pictures, neither courting attention or
18
130 BIRDS OF THE WATER
Shunning it, perfectly unconcerned and at
home. This fairy of the bush, however
frail and fragile in appearance, is really
a hardy little creature, and will weather
storms that kill off some of the alien species
in scores.
I have seen him hunting for flies in
downpours of torrential rain, when the
boles of the great pines were waterpipes,
and from the patter and splash of the big
drops a gritty mist arose throughout the
forest undergrowth.
The cup nest is sometimes securely woven
on to the top of some naked bough, and
balances there, bare and exposed, or it may
rest in a fork, or again be snugly slung
beneath some sheltering branch. Sometimes
the nest is deeply lined with the fluff of
raupo heads, at other times with hair or
wool or soft particles of shredded grass.
The exterior is made to match its
particular surroundings, with mosses, par-
ticles of decaying wood, and lichens. These
are neatly smoothed off and bound with
spider web, keeping all trim and taut, and
acting as a sort of hair net.
PLATE XXXVII-
Fantail’s Nest.
WOOD AND WASTE 131
Sometimes a _ tapering tail of mixed
lichen and grass and wool is added, the
idea perhaps borrowed from the pendent
‘fold man’s beard’’ that, yards in length,
swings from the tawa boughs.
But with all this thought and care to
match the surroundings properly, the
Fantail fails to tidy up, and shreds of web
and wool are left thick on the branches on
the: building route, and often betray the
nest.
In manuka scrub it is always worth
looking for a Fantail’s nest beneath any
dense lateral branch. JI have known the
curl of a broad flax blade act throughout
incubation at once as umbrella and parasol.
Birds feel the sun heat very soon and when
the sheltering boughs about a nest are
temporarily tied back, the sitting bird at
once begans to pant; manifestations of
discomfort are even more apparent in the
young.
Many Fantails’ nests this season have
been under observation, several of them
actually under the camera, and others seen
132 BIRDS OF THE WATER
day by day, whilst at work on the nests
of other species.
Fantails breed at least during six months
of the year, for during this 1909-1910
season I have noted in my diary the earliest
nest in August, the latest in February.
The birds sit so close that not infrequently
they can be stroked on their nests, and
when on one occasion this season the sitting
bird had to be moved, she suffered herself
to be lifted off, clutching her tiny claws
into the nest and holding on lke a broody
hen.
Sometimes almost no notice seems to be
taken of the camera; at other times the
birds are more suspicious, in this, as in
other matters, each pair having its own
particular idiocynerasies. Sometimes the
branch holding the nest has to be cut down
and lowered—afterwards, of course, to be
earefully replaced. On one occasion, when
this had been done, one of the _ birds
returned, and not finding the nest in its
proper place, began to show all the signs
of violent rage, scolding, and creaking and
PLATE. XLT:
antail.
is
;
WOOD AND WASTE 133
tearing and tugging at the manuka like a
very termagant.
In this particular case, as a matter of
fact, she again took to her nest, where the
full brood was hatched out and reared, but
I have since wondered if I then witnessed,
though perhaps in a minor degree, one of
those fits of blind passion or jealousy that
cause a bird to throw out and destroy its
own eggs.
The early nests are built with comparative
leisure, but the late in very great haste and
finished in a day or two. A nest discovered
late in January, with only the rudiments of
its base begun at 10 a.m., was practically
complete by the afternoon of the following
day, the Fantails then putting on the
finishing touches and binding the edges
with web. This nest contained but a single
ese. Probably the Fantail rears) on
occasion three broods, for little time is
allowed to elapse between the abandonment
of the grown brood and the construction of
another nest, and I have seen members of
the former brood still supplicating food
from one of a pair just about to take its
134 BIRDS OF THE WATER
place on a nest containing four fresh eggs.
The young are fed on all sorts of small
insects, caterpillars, moths, ete, and ap-
parently have, like the young of the Waxeye
and Warbler, the power of ejection of their
indigestible parts. These little dry pellets
I have noticed about the edges of the nest,
or resting on the growths below. The
droppings are, of course, at first removed
by the parents, and later ejected by the
half-grown birds themselves.
Immediately after vacation of the nest,
to which, I believe, they never return, the
young birds continue for a short time in
the company of their parents, who train
them to hunt while still continuing to
supply food. They roost together at night,
and the young may be seen at earliest
dawn, sitting in a row on some convenient
bough, cuddled together like little Love
Birds.
PLATE XL.
Fantail.
me ee Be ae OS er tre be say prem emg teretes me
=
The Waxeye
KBOUCHING on to the flat
upon which the Tutira house
is built is one minature gorge
and several smaller valleys,
or dens, each sheltering its
own trickle stream. Yet these insig-
nificant rivulets it is that have created
the flat, for in winter rains, and when
the hill sides are slipping, avalanches
of mud and water are carried down and
stones, weighing hundredweights, rolled for
scores of yards. One great slip in the
nineties came down close to the house,
filled all the open drains, washed through
the stockyard into the garden and tennis
court, and even inundated the back room
of the house with its mud puddle of fine
silt. These valleys, as far as possible, have
been allowed to remain unspoiled and uncut
and to act as bird sanctuaries. Resident
YD
136 BIRDS OF THE WATER
always in them are several small species,
the Waxeye, Fantail, and Warbler, with,
so to say, the wilderness behind them into
which they can at any time retire.
Out of these wilds, pairs and parties of
Waxeyes are constantly coming down to
the gardens and orchards. In spring one
of the attractions is the green fly, and
during the breeding season the Waxeye
gathers from the flower beds a _ rich
harvest of caterpillars for his nestlings in
the neighbouring scrub.
The breed is plentiful on the run, though
varying much in numbers from year to
year. Last season, for instance, they were
very plentiful, this comparatively scarce.
In August, and before pairing, they go
about in flocks on the run, and may often
be seen on the hill side fuchsias, whose leaf-
less branches seem then to be stirred into
sentient life. Perhaps in a single tree one
or two score may be hanging like animated
fruit in a hundred strange and varying
attitudes. A continuous merry twitter
proceeds whilst they gather honey from the
bells of glaucous blue.
‘Ysng pynue|\\ ul QAO-XP AA jo JSON
TTX ALV Id
PLATE: XIeVi-
¥ 4
-
ae
a a ’
Sanitation of Nest.
WOOD AND WASTE 137
The Waxeye breeds a month or six weeks
later’ than the: Wantail:and'/it is ‘not ‘il
October that the tiny nest may be discovered
in a trail of native bramble flung on a
lacebark or manuka sapling, or cunningly
hidden on the edge of a patch of low
serub or dense bracken, and for choice
suspended over water.
The two or three delicate eggs of pale
blue hang in the frailest looking fairy
basket imaginable, a diaphanous cradle,
woven on to frond or branchlet, and stirred
by every breath of wind. The nest, though
so slight in appearance, is really sufficiently
strong, and is firmly fastened on to the
supporting bough with web and wool, and
lined with long, pliable bents and horsehair ;
for further ornamentation it is striped and
crossed with fresh faded leaves of soft
meadow grass, their pale pilose surfaces,
flat on the exterior, blending exquisitely
with the bluish cocoon wool and grey
spider web.
At a later stage many of the nests hang
quite awry. Although perfectly secure, the
parents do not seem to have allowed for
19
138 BIRDS OF THE WATER
the fledglings’ growing weight. The nest is
tilted, and has lost its earlier eminently
trim and dainty appearance. On Tutira
the Waxeye’s nest is always cup shaped,
and it seems to me a very remarkable fact
that those I have got from about the
Taupo district were noticably different and
distinctly boat shaped.
These little Waxeyes, when paired, show
great affection for each other, stroking and
preening one another’s feathers, and cuddling
together on the bough.
During the eighties the species increased
largely in numbers. They then used to
roost in large flocks among the fern and
often at dawn, when mustering sheep, have
I startled then from repose. At the very
peep of dawn, too, whilst waiting for the
sheep to gather, and meanwhile amusing
myself by watching and listening to the
birds have I heard them, deep hidden in
the dewy tutu, singing what can be only
termed a whisper song, its notes so very soft
and low as to be inaudible at even a few
feet. Although not quite so courageous as
the Fantail, the Waxeye, too, is a good
PLATE XLVII.
PY
Male and Female Wax-eye.
WOOD AND WASTE 139
photographic subject. His movements, for
one thing, are much more easily caught,
and the parent bird’s incessant feeding of
the young gives many opportunities. When
the youngsters are but a few days old, one
or other of the parents is practically always
on the nest. The parents then take it in
turn to sit, the cock bird sounding forth
his coming and whistling off his wife, and
he in his turn vacating the nest when she
arrives with supplies. The young are fed
with moths, spiders, caterpillars, ete., all
crushed and dead. They are fed fairly, as
far as can be judged, but probably the
strongest and hungriest gets rather more
than its rightful portion.
After placing, or rather stuffing in the
morsel to a nestling’s mouth it is some-
times found to be too large, and whilst the
body of it has gone, the long legs or wings
still project like antennae. This condition
of things is then considered judiciously for
a moment by the feeding parent, and the
morsel often withdrawn and given to a
hungrier or larger mouthed child. Mean-
while the unlucky loser still continues to
140 BIRDS OF THE WATER
gape and quiver in expectancy, persevering
in vain long after his nestfellow has
swallowed the mouthful and settled down.
At the least shake of the bough support-
ing the nest, up go all the long necks, and
all the mouths are opened wide, but it is
strange to mark the lttle family’s dis-
crimination between a shiver of wind and
the light tread of parent bird.
Nearly always after feeding is over, and
before the old bird departs, a dropping is
deposited by one of the young on the very
edge of the nest. The old bird, who has
awaited the event, carries it off in its
bill. If by accident, however, the sac
containing the deposit has been broken or
torn, the contents are still gathered into the
bill, and very careful search made in all
parts of the nest for the least bit of
matter that would cause harm. By the
Waxeye these droppings are got rid of at
a few yards from the nest, and quite at
random.
The young, whilst being fed, stretch forth
their long necks with a sort of rotatory
motion, working their naked wings, too,
PLATE XLIV.
Wax-eye feeding nestlings.
XLV.
PEATE
”
Nothing More.
“
WOOD AND WASTE 141
and shivering with eagerness. During rain
one of the parents sits with wings out-
spread over the nest, and in this ingenious
manner keeps the nestlings dry and warm.
The young are also carefully sheltered
from the heat, and most particularly when
quite naked and flabby. Even from a
distance it is easy to tell the age of the
young, the sitting bird acting as a sort of
animated barometer. With eggs or squab
young you hardly see her back, a week later
you can notice her sides, and a day or two
before the nestlings fly she is fairly hoisted
up by their growth.
The Waxeye’s nest may be had between
October and January, and probably earlier
and later.
The Warbler
JR most perfect winter and
early spring weather comes
when the wind blows directly
off the snow-clad Ruahine
: Range, the nights are frosty,
the days are still, the lake a sheet of glass,
the blue sky cloudless. During weather such
as this in early August, everywhere on the
run may be heard the long, tremulous trill
of the Warbler, rather a cricket’s cry than
a bird’s.
Presently, from some manuka thicket, a
sombre plumaged little bird will emerge,
light on some topmost twig, and pour forth
to three-quarters of the globe—for in his
ecstasy
sweet trill that heralds fuller spring.
Although a plentiful species on the run,
even in winter the Warbler’s presence
about the homestead is infrequent. During
XLVIII.
PLATE
Hen Warbler approaching Nest.
WOOD AND WASTE 143
spring he is even more rarely to be seen;
he has then, like all the native species,
retired to breed in deeper solitude than a
New Zealand homestead can afford, but
though gone, he has not gone far, and his
faint song is still distinctly audible from
the house.
In some dark manuka thicket his pear-
shaped nest is built, or deeply set In some
dense branched bush. The nest itself is
not unlike that of the British Long-tailed
Tit, similar in the neat finish and feather
lining, but our New Zealander has often a
tiny portico above, or little ledge beneath,
his entrance hole. The five or six eggs
are sometimes almost quite white, sometimes
they are freckled like a Wren’s, with tiny
spots at the thicker end. The Warbler sits
close, and often when feeling for eggs or
young I have touched the old bird in her
nest. The youngsters grow with great
rapidity, and for some time after quitting
the nest they may be seen all together,
haunting the vicinity of their old home.
Watching the parents and brood together
thus in a family party, the young able to
144 BIRDS OF THE WATER
feed themselves, though still accepting food
and all very merry and lively and_ busy,
gives the impression that this last week of
companionship must be one of the happiest
episodes in the lives of parent birds. The
cares and dangers of incubation are past,
the labours of feeding and rearing over,
whilst there still remains just sufficient
responsibility to excite the parental instincts.
The young, like children to whom each hour
provides new matter of wonder and interest,
are content in the exercise of their new
developed functions, their facile captures
and brief flights.
Then comes a day at last when the
Warblers begin to think of their second
nest, and again in early summer, as in
early spring, couples may be seen playing
and fluttering in the glades, poised in the
warm air, and again may be heard poured
forth at every stage of their courting tour
that faint, sweet, tremulous trill so unlike
the note of any other native bird. It is
this second nest that is often patronised
by the shining Cuckoo, for the Warbler,
though so small a bird—only four inches
PLATE: L:
Warblers feeding young.
ha
o
--
=
PLATE XLIX.
Male and Female Warblers.
WOOD AND WASTE 145
long—is that barred migrant’s favourite
host.
It is the warmth, perhaps, of the domed
nest that tempts these tropical sybarites, or
may be their knowledge of the unwearied
industry of the little Warblers.
The earliest nest I got this year was partly
constructed on August 19th, and _ was
but a few days in advance of many others.
No doubt, therefore, second nests would be
in process of construction, or even finished,
by the date of the arrival of the shining
Cuckoo.
This Cuckoo arrives at Tutira during the
first week of October. This year he was
first noticed only on the 8th, and heard at
intervals up till the 27th January.
The Fern Bird
LAS HE Fern Bird, like several
SSéecy other species at Tutira, has
SEGOS. ME NK very much increased in num-
ay: » bers, and has adapted himself
aN KY to the changed conditions of
the run. Years ago I wrote that in the
many raupo beds around the lake, the bird
might be heard, but that the title ‘‘Fern
Bird’’ was a misnomer, for the species at
Tutira was never found in the bracken.
The run had been, and was then, still
to a great extent covered with deep fern.
This growth was swept periodically by
immense fires, continuing to burn day and
night sometimes for a week at a. time.
After one of these conflagrations the face
of the country was quite black and desolate,
and all ground birds and feeble fliers de-
stroyed. After 1895, however, the stocking
of the land began to affect the fern, the
PLATE LI
“a
a
r 4
. —
x
y/
{Yo
Nest in clump of Cutty-grass.
Fern-bird’s
PLATE LIII.
Fern-birds by nest.
WOOD AND WASTE 147
exuberance of its growth began to lessen,
and the fern fires became less frequent and
less sweeping. Season by season the
transformation became more marked, and
as the fern became thinner and more
dwarfed, so did the Fern Bird increase
and multiply and replenish the earth. He
has found shelter and safety and food
supply over poor lands, and along the
edges of hundreds of boggy creeks, spots
now comparatively safe, but fire-swept and
utterly desolated in the early eighties and
nineties. On Tutira he has at last truly
earned his name of Fern Bird, and every-
where nowadays through the areas of low
fern can be heard his metallic ‘‘click,”’
**ehick,”? in isolated syllables. His other
favourite haunt and breeding ground is
amongst the damp flats, where cutty grass
grows rank and thick. Four nests were
got this season, and all of them were in
this growth. Like other species on the run,
they wax and wane in numbers, but during
the last couple of seasons have become very
plentiful.
148 BIRDS OF THE WATER
Before this year I had only obtained a
single nest, very neatly built in raupo.
This season alone we got four, McLean
discovering one in late September (29th),
and another in early October (ist). I
myself got two nests on the one day in
December. McLean’s, no doubt, was the
early brood, and mine the late.
The nest is planted deep—buried—a foot
or fifteen inches in the heart of a bunch
of cutty grass, and usually a clump is
selected, growing in a soft, wet spot, the
Fern Bird, like the Pukeko, relying on
these extra safeguards to fend off vermin
and trampling stock. Fern Bird’s nests can
be discovered most easily on _ horseback,
owing to the extra view, and by continuous
riding through these half-dry swamps, speci-
mens are sure to be put up. If when a
bird is flushed it flies off horizontally, probably
it has been merely disturbed at feeding or
resting, or gathering nest materials. If,
however, the bird pops straight up out of
the centre of a clump, the nest, after
patient peering, will usually be found deep
set among the saw-toothed blades. In form
PEATE LIt.
bird by Nest.
ern-
F
ale
and Fem
Male
“‘bUNOA BUIpsa} pAIq-Uso,]
TAT ALVTd
PEATE EVIt.
bird entering nest.
Fern
WOOD AND WASTE 149
it is a cup-shaped structure, the outer
layers composed of cutty grass, the inner
of grasses and pliable bents, but it is the
finishing touches that peculharly mark the
nest. At the base of its interior, small
blue Pukeko feathers are so arranged that
their curly tops meet, and to a great extent
conceal the eggs.
Ordinarily the species is shy, but in
spring the male loses to some extent his
timidity. He will then, regardless of the
presence of man, mount to the very top of
a flax stick, climbing up in little runs, like
a mouse or a house fly. His tail is all
the time bent in towards the stem; indeed,
like a young bird swung in the air, the
Utick seems to use his tail for balancing.*
He soon becomes accustomed to the
camera, and many of our photos this year
were taken at the distance only of a few
feet. The nestlings were chiefly fed on
daddy long-legs, though occasionally moths,
erubs and caterpillars were also brought
in.
Note.—See Paper by H. G-S. in Transactions of the N.Z.
Institute.
150 BIRDS OF THE WATER
We noticed that the sacs of excrement,
when borne off, were mostly taken to one
particular spot, probably not designedly,
but from force of habit, the particular
blade of flax where they were usually
dropped being presumably on the line of
the richest food collecting area.
Sometimes the Fern Bird will fiy forty
or fifty yards, his long abraded tail hanging
down all the time, and giving his flight a
ridiculously feeble air. Usually these efforts
are much shorter, and when constantly
visiting the nest, much of the distance is
covered on the ground, the bird running like
a mouse beneath the overarching leaves and
threading its way with the utmost ease
through the thickest obstructions.
Often, for reasons connected with light
and shade and proper background, a_ bird
has to be diverted from its accustomed
track. With some species this is easily —
done, but it was in vain we tried, with
heads of cutty grass, to deflect the Fern
Bird from his chosen routes. He was
always able to push through our barrier,
rustling through the sere, brown growth
a-b.
PLATES LIV.
ee
D aN |
N oF Y/
on nest.
about to. settle
Fern-bird
young.
and
Fern-bird
‘uoleiurs 10, jsou Bu1joadsuy]
‘pAIq-U12,]
ABN SaLbVvld
awe ee ee ee ee
WOOD AND WASTE lol
and appearing unconcernedly on the nest’s
edge with moth or daddy-long-legs.
Unlike the Warbler, Waxeye, and Fan-
tail, where the percentage of destruction,
both of eggs and young, is very great,
perhaps, indeed, one-third, the Fern Bird
seems to suffer no great loss. The nest is
excellently concealed, and its site very
unattractive to vermin, both on account of
the saw-toothed sedge and the wet surround-
ings. The bird itself is too small to be
worth the pursuit of Harriers; and Wekas,
without great difficulty, could not obtain
footing on the stiff, bristling clumps where-
in the nest is hid. The Morepork at night,
even should he discover the nest, would
be kept off, too, by the same harsh growth.
In fact, the Fern Bird is likely to survive,
for he can obtain sustenance even in the
most arid and barren lands, neither does
a low temperature affect him unfavourably,
for I have noticed the bird fully two
thousand feet above sea level. His metallic
“click,” ‘‘click,”’ is likely, therefore, long to
be heard in the land.
The Tui
ONSIDERING our opportun-
ities the Tui has baffled us
more than any other species
attempted during the _ past
season. Not that he is very
shy or very timid; far less so, indeed,
than we had _ anticipated. It is_ the
extreme rapidity of his every movement,
the gloss and sheen of his plumage,
and to a lesser degree the brief period
between laying of the eggs and develop-
ment of the nestlings. The young, further-
more, are very restless and wild, and,
when jarred and disturbed, and both are
unavoidable, readily quit the nest, a pro-
ceeding in every way abetted and encour-
aged by the parents.
In spite, therefore, of the many nests
found and the trouble taken in building
Swiss Family Robinson platforms high
PLATE LIX.
i
schia berry.
Tui feeding young with fu
WOOD. AND WASTE 153
among the trees, the photographic results
have been poor. By ill luck, the only fairly
good negative gave us the bird without his
tail. He had during the infinitesimal
fraction of time necessary for exposure,
turned from broadside to full face. Nor
has such a case been exceptional; again and
again has the image on the plate turned
out utterly different from our anticipation,
the bird, for instance, pointing north and
south when we had expected it east and
west.
In this alone, of course, there is nothing sur-
prising, but it seems curious that several
of these plates have come out sharp and
clear and show no trace of motion.
The movements of some breeds in par-
ticular are enormously rapid, and _ there
seems to be a great lot of luck in very
fast photographic work, and even with the
most rapid lens; the most restless species
may be secured in a quiet fiftieth part of a
second, and the most phlegmatic and slow
spoiled in a restless hundredth.
Then, again, when the parent birds of
any breed have become suspicious, even
Zl
154 BIRDS OF THE WATER
though to the human eye, the rapidity of
their movements has not been perceptibly
accelerated, the dark room will tell a
different tale. Contrariwise, that is why
so often photographs will come out satis-
factorily when the two parents appear
together. Hach has given the other con-
fidence, with the result that their motions
are more slow and leisurely. This in part
also accounts for the superiority of a
second over a first day’s work.
The sunlessness of this last season, too,
and its constant summer rainfall, also
militated against us, the Jordan sunshine
recorder showing eight perfectly sunless
days during November, and nine during
December. Then, also—and this is the best
reason of all to account for my failure
with the Tui—I had no intimate knowledge
of its habits; 1 mean that real intimacy
begot of watching unseen a bird, hour after
hour, and day after day.
At the beginning of the season we did
not dare to take liberties, which too late we
found might have been successfully at-
tempted. In our siege work we erred on
WOOD AND WASTE 155
the side of over-caution. Still, as a rule,
the processes of sapping and mining can
hardly be too gradual, and in our operations
against the Tui it was, after all, rather the
weather and the very rapid development of
the young that beat us.
Among all species throughout the rearing
of every brood there is a gradual increase
of devotion to the nest and offspring, this
devotion culminating a few days before the
birds are fit to fly. A nest in building will
often be deserted if looked at, neither when
complete is it of much account in the eyes
of the little builders; even eggs, when
perfectly fresh, inspire no great ardour.
As, however, they approach complete in-
cubation, so in exact correspondence do the
parental instincts of care and tenderness
increase. Then, again, there is a great leap
in parent love from themoveless, quiet
shells to the pathetic little creatures that
move and wriggle in the nest.
They become daily more and more
precious, until the feathers are almost
complete, when the old birds’ affection begins
slightly to cool, or perhaps, rather, they
156 BIRDS OF THE WATER
know that their offspring ean do without
them for longer periods, and that closer
attendance and constant feeding are no
longer necessary. With species such as the
Warbler, the Waxeye, and the Fantail, the
camera will be least regarded between the
third and tenth days. No generalisation
is possible, of course, but after the young
are a few days’ old, no parent birds, save
indeed Harriers, will leave their brood
unless driven off by very gross blundering
and mismanagement.
The earliest Tui’s nest got this year was
on November 12th. I believe it was not
finished, but did not care to climb up for
fear of doing harm. On the 23rd the Tui
was on the nest. She was sitting hard,
and probably the eggs were just hatching.
At any rate, I boiled my billy and lunched
not far from the tree, and satisfied myself
that neither of the parents was bringing
in supplies.
On the 11th December the nestlings were
gone, and inspection of the broken shell
chips, fragments without doubt from ineu-
bated eggs, the soiled condition of the nest
PLATE LVIII.
> I4 ‘te eee
? se Sr
kee
+
arata.
T
est in
N
Tut's
WOOD AND WASTE 15%
and its tilt all told of a brood safely
reared.
There were, therefore, in all probability
eggs in this nest on the 23rd, and they had
hatched out and gone by the 11th, and, of
course, possibly even earlier.
I got another nest on the 26th November
containing a single egg, and on the lith of
December there were young in the nest. How
many of the young were at that time
hatched, and what their age might then have
been I cannot tell, as again I was satisfied
with the knowledge that they were out of
the shell and feared to disturb the parent
birds.
Late in November and early in December
is the height of the Tui’s breeding season.
About that date we knew of five or six
nests, and four of them were in one patch
of bush about a couple of acres in extent.
I got a nest on January Ist, with a fresh egg
just broken, and McLean got the last nest
of the season, with four eggs, on the 7th.
The Tui sometimes builds in a ‘‘cup”’ of
small branches, often selecting a_ thick
clump of side shoots for a site. Oftener
158 BIRDS OF THE WATER
the nest is placed among trails of supple-
jacks and bush vine or lawyers, never in
too thick a clump, however, and always at
twenty or thirty feet from the ground.
The nest is about the size of a Black-
bird’s, or Thrush’s, but not so deep or
compact, and is always finished with an
edge of manuka twigs. It is only loosely
secured on its site and many Tuis’ nests
are biown from their moorings during
summer gales. The graceful eggs are much
pointed and white, or white shot with a
very pale rose or pink.
Both nests under the camera this year
were built on matapos. The Tui feeds her
nestlings on fuchsia and probably other
berries, and supplies of some sort were
also gathered from the matapos in the
vicinity.
The Tui very strongly resents the presence
of other birds in the vicinity of his nest.
In the Kaihekatearoa bush, where their
nests were so numerous this season, McLean
saw one pursuing a pigeon, nor did the
persecution cease, even when it settled, the
unappeased Tui sidling up the branch and
WOOD AND WASTE 159
digging his enemy in the ribs. During
December we got a Tui’s nest in a
small spinney near the Waikahau_ river,
and from above, off the hill’s steep slopes,
we could both see and hear the _ bird
singing on her eggs.
Never before had I known any species
sing on the nest, and this Tui’s ‘‘O-coc-coc-
eoc-coc-coc,’? each syllable rapidly enunci-
ated, produced a distant and peculiar note,
impossible to forget or confuse with any
other. When her mate was expected—
presumably she was the hen—the bird
seemed to raise herself on the nest and
stretch forth her neck as if in expectation
of food. We were close to her, yet she
sang as if her song could have no ending,
as if the world was too full of the ecstasy
of life for wrong and rapine to exist. The
sun was shining above the flowing river,
the leaves green, of every shape and shade,
her great love had cast out fear. Much
of the Tui’s singing we cannot hear, the
notes too high, I suppose, for our human
ears, for I have often watched the bird’s
160 BIRDS OF THE WATER
throat from but a few yards’ distance
swelling with song entirely inaudible.
Excuses have been given for our failures
with the Tui, both in wretched negatives
and scanty notes. The honest truth has
been kept to the end. It was shearing
time, and an extraordinary instance it is of
the inherent perversity of human affairs
that shearing should occur just at the busy
period of the year, when all the birds are
nesting, and during the very height of the
breeding season. To it the Tui has been
sacrificed; the fact is I had to be about the
shed and sheep yards when really I should
have been working.
Nest as first seen with no branches cut away.
LX.
1
7 D
ur pF wach V2 a DP
ef. ge)
ae
‘
Mohit fi
Msi!
“4
The Pigeon
GSAS HE geology of the run is too
ip To fascinating a subject upon
3 NK which to embark in detail.
Suffice it to repeat what has
Ds 5 been said before, that there
are several hundred miles of precipice
and crag on Tutira. The western boundary
running north and south is for miles a
rampart of sandstone capped with limestone.
The native name of the block, Heru-o-Turea,
the comb of Turea, most aptly describes
the look of the country side, sliced as it is
into sections by immense standstone ravines,
each forming a separate ‘‘tooth’’ of this
titanic comb.
The boundary rivers of the run are
gorges from watershed to within two or
three hundred feet of sea level, and many
of the paddocks are almost completely
bounded by cliffs and gorges. In _ the
22
162 BIRDS OF THE WATER
crannies of their sheer sides all sorts of
interesting plants find foothold, and where
one stratum overlaps another, limestone
over papa for instance, the superposition is
marked by a long lne of greenery, some-
times flax and toi, but often rangiora,
fuchsia, mahoe, ete, and it is on their
lateral branches, jutting out into the air,
that pigeons love to nest.
For pigeons, therefore, Tutira is an ideal
breeding place, and many nestlings must
be reared on the run each year.
This season we got four nests, three of
them built in lateral forked branches
jutting out from cliffs; the fourth, built in
low bush, was spread over the intercrossing
growths of three species of tree and an
immense lawyer vine. The pigeons’ nest is
not unlike a heap of magnified spilikins
well spread out and flattened. Only sticks
are used, and through them from beneath
can be seen distinctly the pecuharly long
narrow white egg.
The earliest of these nests came to grief
a day or two before the 3rd of November,
“ToyJOUL sy pur 218 Pld 7
IXT FLV Id
WOOD AND WASTE 163
for upon that date I found the perfectly
fresh egg lying broken beneath the spillikin
platform. It had been probably blown out
during windy weather. The next nest was
found on November 11th, and one of the
parents was sitting on the egg ‘‘Pidgy.’’*
On the 5th of January I took him from
the nest, and he was capable of flying a
yard or two on January 12th.
Another nest was got on December 23rd,
containing a young bird, ‘‘Kuku,”’ of about
the same age as ‘‘Pidgy,’’ and he also was
taken home. On the 18th December I got
another nest, the parent sitting hard on the
egg ‘‘Uncle Harry.’’ By the 5th of January
‘“‘Uncle Harry’’ had hatched. Later on he,
too, was taken home to be hand reared, and
on January 15th was able to fly a yard or
two. From the start all these hand-fed
birds throve admirably, and I believe the
first attempts at flight were in no degree
delayed by their short spell of artificial
life.
Note.—The three pigeons brought in for pets were chris-
tened by my little daughter ‘‘Pidgy,’’ ‘‘Kuku,’’ and ‘‘Uncle
Harry.’’
164 BIRDS OF THE WATER
Of the two nests got with eggs, the first
was found on November 11th, and the young
bird was able on January 12th to fly a
yard or two, and would no doubt then
have left the nest. Sixty-one days, there-
fore, elapsed between my discovery of the
ege and the evacuation of the nest by the
young bird.
The second nest contained an egg on
December 23rd, and the nestling hatched
from it was fit to fly a yard or two on
February 15th, or fifty-four days later.
The egg, moreover, in the first nest was
certainly not fresh when discovered, and in
the second nest was very much incubated,
the darkness of the young bird’s body
showing very markedly through the shell.
Some seventy days, therefore, must elapse
from the laying of the egg to the abandon-
ment of the nest by the young bird.
Such a long period of defencelessness
must be compensated for by long life and
a very small percentage of loss to nest and
nestlings, the more so as it is possible that
with breeding operations so unusually pro-
tracted, the pigeon may lay but a single
WOOD AND WASTE 165
egg in the season. On the other hand, I
have got pigeons still in the nest at a
very late date, and, taking the first weeks
in November as the commencement of lay-
ing, and supposing that the young are gone
by the second week of January, and further
supposing that the old birds build again at
once, there would still be time for a second
nest, the second youngster leaving it by
somewhere about the third week of March.
Each of the nests containing egg or young
has been under the camera, and from them
much insight has been gained into the
pigeon’s domestic arrangements and way of
life generally. We have found out what
excellent mothers the hens are, how seldom
the young require nourishment, the curious
method by which their wants are supplied
in the nest, the different notes of young
and old, and their extreme hardihood both
in the shell and after hatching.
The female pigeon when sitting is rather
more steadfast in her objections to leaving
her egg than the most broody old hen of
a fowl yard. Pecking the intruder’s hand,
striking at him with her wings, and ‘‘growl-
166 BIRDS OF THE WATER
ing’’ with anger, she will withdraw to the
very edge of the flimsy platform, nor during
this retreat is the egg, which, I believe, is
somehow carried between her thighs, ever
exposed to view.
When desirous of securing a picture of
the egg alone I have tried again and again
to gently shove her off, but in the end have
failed and had to leave her, exceedingly
angry and broody, her feathers fluffed out,
her tail spread to the very fullest extent,
but victorious, and still in possession of
her treasure.
The egg, nevertheless, need not be so
earefully cherished, at all events as far as
warmth is concerned, for on the Sth of
December I know that ‘‘Pidgy’’—to my
great concern—was uncovered for over four
hours, yet on the 6th he was hatched a fine
strong chick.
The hen pigeon, when not disturbed, is
an extraordinarily quiet and serene sitter,
apparently for half an hour at a time not
altering her position in the slightest degree.
One of my particular ambitions of the
past season was to see this species feed its
‘pooy suyjosdxea uoasiq B8uno,
AIX ALV Td
WOOD AND WASTE 167
young, and to secure a picture of the act
in progress. The nest where ‘‘Kuku’’ sat
was selected for the preliminary effort.
He had been first discovered when a well-
grown bird of three weeks, and opposite
his platform a screen and sham camera had
been fixed.
This first attempt was a failure, for
although I waited for over twelve hours,
the old birds never visited the nest.
I was there by 6.30, and a few minutes
later had finished unwrapping the real
camera—placed there overnight—and was
ready. During these operations the nestling
never moved, but for a couple of hours lay
quite still with his back to me. Later on
he changed his position from time to time,
once or twice during my vigil stood up in
his nest for exercise, and at intervals during
the long day, did a good deal of yawning,
preened his feathers, nibbled the leaves and
sticks within reach, relieved himself over
the edge of the nest, rolled his crop round
and round as pigeons do, and also went
through series of throat and neck exercises,
retching as if he was preparing to be sick.
168 BIRDS OF THE WATER
At eleven he began to feel the heat very
much, and moved about the nest, seeking
for the least particle of shade. About noon
I saw the parent birds in the distance, and
heard them alight on a tall dead tree some
sixty or eighty yards away.
It was not, however, until long past six
in the evening that either of the old
pigeons began to approach the nest.
It was then too late for photography,
and partly because I wanted the young
bird and partly because I thought it just
possible it had been deserted, I decided to
earry ‘‘Kuku’’ home.
I had, moreover, the less hesitation in
taking him, as there was a second string
to my bow in the nestling on the Racecourse
cliffs. In regard to desertion, later in the
year, and with a larger knowledge of
pigeon nature, I found that I had certainly
been quite mistaken, and that the old birds
were merely keeping away because slightly
suspicious, and well aware that their
nestling would be none the worse for a
twelve hours’ fast. Through that long day
indeed the nestling never seemed to me to
‘sou Jo adpa 0} Sujvase1 pue ArBue A19A uoadig
UXT ALV Id
WOOD AND WASTE 169
evince any signs of hunger. He never
whined or piped or looked about him with
any particular interest. On the contrary,
‘‘the dog it was that died’’; it was I who
was starving, for my lunch was in my
saddle bag, and I could never, of course,
venture out for it. As, however, hour after
hour passed with my thoughts fixed on the
joys of witnessing the pigeon feeding its
young, I began to think about feeding
myself, and the poor innocent bird on its
nest began to have a ludicrous resemblance
to quail on toast. By 6.30, when I left the
cliff, ample as were the proportions of the
quail, and huge as was the piece of toast,
I could have easily disposed of both. I
rode home that night wondering if it was
suspicion of the shining lens—the screen
had been up three days—that had kept the
old birds off, whether they fed the nestling
only at dawn and very late, or whether in
truth the nest had been deserted.
Allusion has been made to the discomfort
suffered by the young pigeon from the
sun’s heat. That its rays should have ever
reached the nest at all was of course owing
23
170 BIRDS OF THE WATER
to the necessary tieing back of some branches
and the excision of others. The pigeon is
most particular to guard against any risk
of this sort, and always selects a site in
open shade and where the sunlight is
filtered through many layers of leaf.
The bird incubates indeed in almost
complete shade, for even at noon hardly a
chink of direct light falls on her. |
During August, when the mated birds,
clad in kings’ raiment of purple and gold
and green, seem on their lchened kowhais
conscious only of the joy of spring
returned, perhaps really they are planning
their future nests. There can be no greater
error than to believe that any spot is good
enough for a bird to build, and I believe
myself that the nestling site is only chosen
after long deliberation.
This year three times I chanced upon a
pair thus deep in thought, each time upon
the same branch, and within a yard of the
spot finally chosen for the nest—a _ nest
from which, unluckily, the egg was blown
or tumbled out. I have often admired the
care with which the details have been
PLATE LXV
Hen Pigeon and young.
WOOD AND WASTE 171
studied out, the shadow of each leaf and
growing leaf, the sway of branches dancing
in the breeze or lashed and swaying in the
gale, the course of the water runnels that
cling and linger on the wet bough’s base,
the ceiling of leaves that overlap like scales,
and are fit to deflect even the huge drops
of thunder rain.
The Pigeon, nevertheless, in his choice
of a site, does not seem always to quite
allow for the force of gales in spring, and
possibly a few nestlings and eggs are blown
from their spillikin platforms. I have
mentioned the egg found broken beneath
the nest, and ‘‘Pidgy,’’ after a violent
storm, was found beneath his nest, unhurt,
however, and serene on a bed of swamp
fern. Evidently he had been fed and tended
there by the old birds. In his case, how-
ever, alterations had been made in the
surrounding branches; several saplings had
been cut and other boughs fastened back.
My second attempt was on the Racecourse
nest, which was reached at 3.20, for on this
occasion I was determined to discover if
really the nestling was fed at dawn. A
i
=]
bo
BIRDS OF THE WATER
few minutes later the silence of the bush
was broken by a single sharp, clear note
from a Tui, and shortly afterwards a
Warbler began to trill. The young Pigeon
lay with his head sunk between his shoul-
ders, and remained in that posture till after
eight o’clock. About then I heard the
parent birds settle in the immediate vicinity
of the nest, and presently I became sure
that the youngster was about to be fed.
He also knew it, becoming watchful and
attentive to every sound, and beginning also
to pipe faintly and agitate his wings,
shaking them out from his sides with a
curious shivering motion. These expressions
of his feelings became more and more
marked as the hen bird approached, and
when at length she perched only a few yards
distant from the nest, the youngster’s eyes
were rivetted to her with an intensity of
gaze almost solemn in its earnestness.
I noticed, too, that though he thus fol-
lowed with his head her every motion, he
had shuffled his body round so that it
pointed directly towards a certain claw
marked bough that led on to the nest plat-
‘pay Buraq uosdiq suno
HIAXT FLV Td
IsIsol 0} Sutiedaig
XIX ALV Td
WOOD AND WASTE 173
form. He thus sat looking across _ his
shoulder, his head following her body slowly
and steadily, as iron does a magnet. All
the motions of the parent bird were most
deliberate, although by this time her off-
spring was piping with impatience and
continuously shivering out both wings, but
especially the one nearest her.
Still acting with tantalising slowness, she
finally reached the branch leading into the
nest and towards which his head now as
well as his body pointed, and down this
bough she sidled till close to her eager
nestling.
Then, again, she paused as if to calculate
the exact distance, bending her neck down
towards the young one, who simultaneously
raised his head. ‘Their beaks then met, the
old bird’s overlapping that of the nestling,
and the contents of her crop were transferred
to his with curious swaying, undulatory
motions. This remarkable operation ‘took
about three seconds, and I judged that the
food given was at least partially digested
from the absence of dilatation in the nestling’s
outstretched neck. After staying for a few
174 BIRDS OF THE WATER
minutes about the nest, she flew off and
the young bird again settled down com-
fortably on his platform.
I had at last witnessed the actual process
but still wanted to find out how often it
was repeated, for as yet one of the puzzles
of the bird had been that no attempt at
feeding had ever been witnessed, and al-
though McLean was away for some weeks
at this date, I had been time after time
for hours about the nest, and the Pigeons
were perfectly accustomed to the screen
which had been then up for weeks, and
was, indeed, hardly necessary, so friendly
had the birds become. Until that afternoon
no further feeding took place, and no bird
was even in the vicinity except the male,
who kept watch and ward from his perch
on the dead kowhai tree. He never moved
from there, and only at long intervals ex-
changed a ‘‘ku’’ with me. At about four
I heard the hen settle a few yards off, and
at the sound the nestling began as before
to prepare for his dinner, shaking out his
wings and piping.
PLATE LXVI
Young Pigeon being fed.
WOOD AND WASTE 175
As before, too, though his eyes were
rivetted to his parent, yet his body pointed
to the claw scratched bough leading to the
nest. Again he sat with his head pointing
across his shoulder, as step by step the old
bird sidled down the bough.
Once more, after due pause for exact
measurement of distance, were the beaks of
parent and child locked together, and as
before the contents of her crop transferred
to him. Both parents, I believe, fed the
nestling, but the female was the more bold
and more frequent visitor.
How often young Pigeons may be fed in
very early life or immediately before leaving
the nest I have no means of knowing, but
about nine o’clock and about four o’clock
were ‘‘Pidgy’s’’ meal hours during a con-
siderable portion of his nest life, and
experience gained by the artificially reared
birds bears out the belief that Pigeons
only feed twice a day. My trio, while on
their made-up nests, were never ready for
food oftener, and to this day in full liberty
come down to be fed but twice in the
twenty-four hours.
176 BIRDS OF THE WATER
No doubt at first the baby Pigeon is
fed from the proliferation of the cells of
the parent’s crop, and gradually the food
given in a form less and less digested.
During his last week in the nest ‘‘Pidgy’’
was being fed on almost or quite raw
kaiwhiria berries, for the ejected kernels
lay thick beneath the nest. The transfer-
ence of the contents of the crop then takes
longer, and is repeated twice or thrice in
a couple of minutes.
‘‘Uncle Harry’’ also, like ‘‘Pidgy,’’ was
an egg when I first discovered him, and
as I had failed before to get a photo of
a Pigeon’s nest and egg, and as this nest
was in an impossible position, we decided
to lower the sapling on which it was built,
photograph the nest, and afterwards replace
the whole. Much had to be done, for the
nest rested on intercrossing branches of three
trees—tawa, whau, and matipo—as well as
on a lawyer vine, and all sorts of sawing
and shipping and cutting was required.
First of all, however, and in case of a
sudden jar, and as an act of extra pre-
caution, we took (out. ““Wnele) (Harr.
PLATE LXIll.
*“Ku-Ku.”
WOOD AND WASTE 177
raking him out very gently from beneath
his mother. I then wrapped him in my
cap in case he should be broken, and left
him on a limestone ledge while we continued
our work.
After a time it was curious to notice
how the mother Pigeon gradually began to
miss him and became uneasy, yet even then
we succeeded in lowering her down, still
sitting, to the required level.
It was only when we had all but secured
the lashings of the lowered sapling, that she
flew off, shamming lameness and a broken
wing, and fluttering off through the open
underwood—the only time, by the bye, I
have noticed a pigeon exercising this useful
ruse. Had she had her egg beneath her I
believe she would have continued to sit
through the whole operation.
‘Uncle Harry’? was then put back in
his nest and photographed, the sapling was
replaced and securely fastened, and when
an hour later I returned, hardly daring to
hope all would be well, I found the cour-
ageous hen again sitting on him. In due
course he hatched out, and eventually was
24
178 BIRDS OF THE WATER
taken to join ‘‘Kuku”’ and ‘‘Pidgy”’’ at the
house.
The Pigeon has several notes, one a single
low ‘‘ku,’’ which may be taken to express
watchfulness and caution, perhaps recogni-
tion too; then there is a louder, more
interrogative single ‘‘ku,’’ by which alarm
is indicated. The ‘‘growl’’? of extreme
anger in the hen bird, and the eager pipe-
ing of the nestling in expectation of food,
have been mentioned. There is also the
almost inaudible sharp, slightly sibilant
whistle of welcome, hardly perhaps a
whistle, or if to be so designated, then a
whistle etherial, spiritual and sublimated to
attenuity. I often hear ‘‘Uncle Harry,”’
perched in the pear tree, shaking his wings
and whistling thus when he spies me on the
lawn and welcomes my approach. Then
there is the curious double sound of grunt
and whistle, noticeable when food is not at
once forthcoming, and which may perhaps
express impatience. Lastly there is the
moan* coming sometimes, though very -
Note.—‘‘The moan of doves in immemorial elms, and
murmuring of innumerable bees.’’
PLATE LXXI
‘Uncle Harry.”
WOOD AND WASTE 179
rarely indeed, from the parent bird—usually
the male—who watches and guards the nest.
What is its signification I have no idea
whatsoever. ‘There seemed no reason for it,
and I could associate the sound with neither
comradeship nor danger.
The youngsters thus ravished from their
nests and named by my little daughter
‘*Kuku,”’ and *‘Pidgy,’’ and ‘‘Uncle Harry,”’
were each, upon arrival at the house, pre-
sented with an artificial nest, and though I
say it who shouldn’t, quite a superior
article to the original. A _ large bowl
was filled up with broken flax stems,
over them were placed sticks, and on top
of all the slender droopers of weeping
willows cut into short lengths. ‘‘Kuku’’
and ‘‘Pidgy’’ were companions at first,
and afterwards, owing to an accident to
the Jatter, ““*Pidgy’’ and ‘‘Unele Harry.”
They were fed on oatmeal porridge, and
on that and bread they thrived from the
very start of their new life. During the
first few meals the feeding was rather a
messy business, but we soon learnt that by
gentle manuipulation of the throat, the birds
180 BIRDS OF THE WATER
could be made to voluntarily gape. The
porridge should be fairly thick, and if it
is then fed with a teaspoon and the little
sections moistened with milk, they slither
down the Pigeons’ throats most artistically,
and no porridge sticks either to the neck
of the bird or the fingers of the feeder.
The birds held their beds of state at eight
in the morning, when the nest had been
changed, and then, before the throng of
courtiers, each eager to do the feeding, and
each firmly impressed with the belief in his
or her superior method, the Pigeons received
their first meal. The second was about 2
or 3 in the afternoon. After feeding was
over there was the further interest of
watching the process of ‘‘churning,’’ as we
used to call it—the stirrmg of the crop
round and round, first one way, then the
other. After feeding too, often the tail
feathers would be agitated for very long
with a rapid shivering tremor. As early as
their third meal piping and quivering of
wings assured us of an eager appetite.
Later, bread was added to their simple
menu, and sometimes cake, which their
WOOD AND WASTE 181
souls adore, and which was always welcomed
with extra piping and wing fluttering.
The wing is held out laterally, and we
were thus able in a manner to shake hands
with our little charges. The birds during
this period of detention, were very careful
never to foul their nests, always retreating
to the edge of the platform when about to
relieve the necessities of nature. When
they began to want to fly, our friends were
removed to an aviary, where they could
practice short flights. In it they stopped
for a week or ten days, learning always to
hop down from perch to perch when meal
times came round. Except this, they moved
but little, and I should imagine that under
perfectly natural conditions, when the young
first quit the nest, they do little more for
many days than perch quietly and feed.
Maybe during that period they are still
nourished by the parents, or perhaps the
old birds lead them to a berry-loaded tree
and there leave them. ‘There was never
any question of confining or cageing the
birds, and the little aviary was only used
during these few days because the young-
182 BIRDS OF THE WATER
sters were beginning in their peregrinations
to upset the ink and generally disarrange
my working room, where they had been
brought up. At last came the day of
liberation, with its anxieties lest the birds
should lose themselves during the first flight,
and its satisfaction when we beheld them
established and at home in the big willow
on the lawn. One side of the aviary, I
may say, was taken down so that they
could emerge from it without any handling,
for however tame birds may be they cannot
bear to be held—their liberty is too precious
to be entrusted even for a moment to the
very dearest of human friends. Should
grasping, however, be unavoidable, the bird
should be held gently, though very firmly.
The struggling, which terrifies more than
the capture, can thus be almost entirely
avoided, and the bird lberated tenderly
and quietly. Ever since then, with the
exception of another brief period of deten-
tion to ‘‘Pidgy,’’ through an accident, and
to both during the worst period of their
moult, ‘‘Kuku”’ and ‘‘Pidgy’’ have come and
gone in perfect freedom. ‘‘Unele Harry,”’
‘plo SYIOM d91Y) a ALIVE] o| yu a) te
aA
¢ \
Fa
TWIXXT SALV'Td
WOOD AND WASTE 183
taken from the bush at a later date, was
still in his artificial nest in my working
room, and was not then fit to fly. Their
first meal is usually made a little after our
seven o’clock breakfast, and the second after
lunch, or should the household be away,
about afternoon tea time. In the event of
prolonged absence, we would find the birds
waiting for us in the drawing-room or one
of the bedrooms off the verandah, and would
get a friendly whistle and a shake of the
wings as welcome. But although perfectly
clean in their habits, we had to discourage
this custom, as “‘Pidgy’’ one day in an at-
tempted exit hurt himself against a closed
window.* By the last week in January
‘“‘Kuku”’ and ‘‘Pidgy’’ were in magnificent
colouring, their plumage perfect, and them-
selves very fit and strong. After that
moulting began and the feathers gradually
Note.—While perched on trees, pigeons during showery
weather wash themselves by turning their wings, one at a time,
upside down, and thus enabling the rain drops to fall into an
almost flat inner surface of feather. To assist this operation,
the bird leans very much over to the side, and the extended wing
held over his head appears as if dislocated or broken, so com-
pletely is it reversed and supple.
184 BIRDS OF THE WATER
lost their lustre and gloss. The whole
plumage, too, seemed to be thinner and not
to fit and overlap with the former exact
nicety. The birds, in fact, looked compara-
tively shabby and dingy. We noticed, too,
that their appetites fell off, and by the first
of March they were in poor plight. ‘‘Uncle
Harry’s’’ moult, perhaps because he was
later hatched, seemed to come on _ faster,
and a noticeable crop of quite new quills
appeared about the base of his beak. There
is no native bush close to the house at
Tutira, and the only shelter for Pigeons
smallish clumps of pinus insignis, through
which heavy wind and rain can easily
penetrate. As about then the Pigeons were
evidently feeling the bad, wet weather—
‘‘Uncle Harry,’’ indeed, was found on the
ground one day in a very wretched condition
—the three were again put back into the
aviary, where there was good shelter, and
where the birds could feed out of the rain.*
“NoTE.—This housing of the Pigeons was done just in
time, as on the 30th March 480 points were registered, 836 on
the 31st, and, on April Ist, 341.
‘sou [Proytyte sty ul , Ade o[oul),,
AIXXT “ALVId
WOOD AND WASTE 185
As before, the whole side of the aviary
was opened, and the birds were marched
in seated on our heads and_ shoulders—
their usual habit when flying down to be
fed. All handling was thus avoided. The
birds were in no way fluttered or terrified,
but hopped quietly from our heads on to
their perches. After one or two attempts
at the wire on the part of ‘‘Kuku,’’ the
trio settled down happily, and were fed
and watered in their enclosure for two or
three weeks. Moulting is with the Pigeon
seemingly a lengthy process, for even by
mid-winter our trio were in far from perfect
plumage. Probably under natural conditions
the young birds retire during the worst
period of the moult to the very depths of
the bush, and there, in shelter and comfort,
build up their strength. About mid-April,
when they began to seem more robust, the
aviary was opened and the birds allowed
to quit at their own convenience. Since
then they have enjoyed full freedom, coming
to their meals every day, once in the
morning and once or twice in the afternoon.
Whilst eating, the pigeons are most par-
25
186 BIRDS OF THE WATER
ticular as to the condition of the feeder’s
hands. On one occasion I had been gar-
dening in muddy weather, and the birds,
though hungry, evinced every sign of disgust
and nervousness at the soiled appearance
of my hands, and, indeed, I had to wash
to appease their susceptibilities. Gloves,
too, cause them uneasiness, and on another
occasion, when a Maori woman, one of my
innumerable ‘‘landlords,’’ wished herself to
feed the birds, her brown skin was_ so
evidently an offence that we feared the stout
old lady would notice it, and had to invent
many excuses for the birds’ unusual conduct!
They are now beginning undoubtedly to feed
themselves on poplar buds, the undeveloped
male seeds of the insignis, and probably
other dainties of that kind.
Often I hear the Pigeon termed a stupid
bird, and just as an honest man among
rogues is called a fool, so perhaps the Pigeon’s
trust and guilelessness does deserve that
name amongst those who shoot him sitting
at close quarters. Otherwise he is by no
means a fool. Far from being stupid, the
LXXII
PLATE
ip ee
epi
>
|S
and his mother.
Harry ”
ncle
]
oe U
WOOD AND WASTE 187
Pigeon, on intimate acquaintance, seems
truly a very sensible bird. Thus, when put
back into the aviary after some weeks of
entire freedom, many birds would have spent
hours battling against the wire. Not so
the Pigeons. They at once settled down.
Then, when poor ‘*Pidgy’’ was hurt by an
angry hen, and carried back wounded to
my working room he was welcomed by
“Uncle Harry’’—still on his artificial nest
and then for long separated from his
parents—with effusive wing shakings, and
it is a curious fact that on at least two
occasions ‘‘Pidgy’’ attempted to feed the
younger bird pigeonwise from the crop.
Then, again, ‘‘Pidgy,’’ when brought back
hurt, settled at once on his bowl and re-
sumed again his old cleanly habit in regard
to sanitation of nest. Other instances of a
high degree of intelligence on the part of
the two perfectly wild bush birds that
have domesticated themselves will be men-
foned) later! Ot »the trio it is. °‘Unele
Harry’’ whom we love best. I confess we
spoil him, though, mind you, his is not a
nature easily hurt. He is too gentle and
188 BIRDS OF THE WATER
good, and if he does get more jam roll
and cake and sponge cake and the buttery
inside bits of scones, who can resist a
creature so sure of his welcome? We can
tell him before he alights, merely by his
straight, resolute flight to shoulder or head.
fie has never heard a harsh word or known
a moment of fear, and comes up like a
happy child not knowing yet that elders
ean be churls and chide, or that there is
aught in life but loving welcomes and loving
words. He was taken from the nest as a
younger bird than the others, and we
rather flatter ourselves that his superior
manners are the result of a longer acquaint-
ance with the Guthrie-Smith family and
their guests. While still on his artificial
nest, I was always, when passing between
my workroom and the darkroom, sure of a
friendly wing shake, and this often when
the bird was full fed, and when there
could be no suspicion of cupboard love in
the action. Afterwards, as a grown bird
and free, for long we continued to exchange
greetings, I on the lawn giving him a word
or two, he on the tree top softly fluttering
WOOD AND WASTE 189
his wings in reply. I notice, however, that
as the birds grow older, this pretty infantile
custom becomes more and more rare, and
has now indeed practically ceased. Each
of our three birds has his own well-marked
individuality and_ special habits, ‘‘Uncle
Harry,’’ for instance, always preferring to
fly direct to the head or shoulder. There
his first act is to nibble along the edge of
the nearest ear, ending up with a real good
hard tweek, just for all the world as if
he was wrenching a morsel from a slice of
bread. He likes also to be fed on the
shoulder, peering eagerly over for the
morsels handed back to him. ‘Uncle
Harry’s ’’ speciality is the human ear; but
each of the three will, when hungry, attempt
to swallow the little finger or the finger
tips. Perhaps by some blind, confused
mental process they may believe us to be
some new species of berry bearing tree, the
fruit borne always at the extreme tips of
the branchlets. ‘‘Pidgy,’’ always rather
more touchy than his mates, has of late
begun to suffer from what in a human
subject we should call nerves, and unless
190 BIRDS OF THE WATER
every motion of his feeder is extraordinarily
gentle and deliberate, will on his worst
days open his wings as if to strike, and
even use his beak to peck. This, we know,
of course is only his way, and not bad
temper or malevolence, and doubly excusable
after his two small accidents in early life.
‘*Kuku’’ is the strongest and handsomest of
the original trio. He is the first usually
to alight on the ground for fallen scraps,
a position disliked by the Pigeon tribe,
and where they show to little advantage,
with their awkward hops and waddling
gait. He is a famous trencherman, too,
and even when moulting, his appetite hardly
fell off. Of the three he is the wildest
bird, perhaps from natural disposition,
perhaps because he was a more mature
nestling when first transferred to my work
room.
Some time about the beginning of April,
these three, ‘‘Kuku,’’ ‘‘Pidgy,’’ and ‘Uncle
Harry,’’ began to attract other wild bush
pigeons to the homestead, and somewhere
about that date my little girl was de-
PEATE: TEXXVIe
Nox 4?
WOOD AND WASTE 191
lighted to notice a fourth bird on the
pear tree top, ‘‘because, you see, Daddy, it
might be ‘Uncle Harry’s’ mummie coming
to see if we are good to him.’’ On one
or two occasions there was also a fifth bird
about the place. But it was not until the
beginning of May that either of the two wild
birds showed any signs of wishing to make
our more intimate acquaintance. About
then one of them, whom we christened
‘"No. 4,”’ began more and more frequently,
sometimes two days running and again
sometimes not for five or six days, to come
down with the others. At first he was
content to watch them from his pear tree
perch, but at last approached still nearer
to the scene of their feasts, and settled on
the verandah roof. Still later he took the
great step of joining the tame birds on
the lawn, where on that particular day
they were being fed. At first he would not
attempt the bread thrown near him. On
the other hand, he appeared to think that
not to eat when the others were feeding,
might, in the strange company in which he
found himself, perhaps be considered a
192 BIRDS OF THE WATER
breach of good manners. He fed, therefore,
at first out of courtesy and complacencee,
on the only vegetation visible. This was
grass, and it was comical to watch him
plucking rather distastefully small mouth-
fuls of this uninviting ‘‘tack,’’ whilst the other
three were gobbling at their little squares
and cubes of bread. Several times he thus
fed with the others, hopping about and
apparently searching for something better
than the grass and daisy heads, of which
he partook sparingly and in a very half-
hearted fashion. At last one day he was
seen to pick up and swallow one or two
tiny crumbs, and this we considered another
great step in his education. After this my
dates are exact, for our hopes were growing
that we should be able to hand-feed and
tame a fully matured wild born bird, ana
we were all very much interested. On
June 2nd he was again on the ground, and
this time attempted to secure abit of bread
out, of **Uncle’ Harry’s’’ ibeak..) A) day (or
two after, and when once more on the
eround with the others, ‘‘Uncle Harry’
was observed to feed him twice, turning
PLATE: LXXY
“No. +” at breaktast.
WOOD AND WASTE 193
round to do so, and moreover taking care
to shove the bits of bread well down his
throat. On June Sth, sitting on a low
branch, he took bread readily, but though
eating a hearty meal, could not be quite
coaxed to leave his branch and accept the
proffered wrist. On the 6th he took from
me a big feed of the suety crust of an
apple dumpling. Though, however, he
would not venture on to my wrist, he was
otherwise perfectly serene, and apparently
regarded apple dumpling crust as not at
all an extraordinary diet for a_ sensible
bird. Between the 5th and the 13th, whilst
being fed, he was repeatedly within an
ace of trusting himself on wrist or arm,
and several times, too, when about to alight,
hovered as if intending to perch on the
head of the bread carrier. Until the 13th
his heart failed him, but upon that date
he flew without hesitation or vacillation
straight to the head of one of our guests,
and allowed himself to be quietly manipu-
lated on to her wrist and in triumph
lowered down and fed. We now consider
him completely domesticated, and as a
26
194 BIRDS OF THE WATER
regular member of our little flock. ‘‘Ku-
ku,’ *“Pidgy,”’? and )*Unele’ ‘Glarry””) ane
tame, and will allow their friends’ to
earess them. But this newcomer is still
more confident and trustful. The young
birds, especially ‘‘Pidgy,’’ are liable to
sudden panics, on which occasions they
seem to be listening intently, and then dash
off in all directions. ‘‘No. 4’’ is the last to
join in these stampedes, and sometimes
does not budge at all. Nor does he seem
to have any objection to numbers, for
during his first few meals, we were all
eager to view him closely and admire his
magnificent attire. He is a heavier bird
than any of the others, and his matured
plumage quite outshines that of the younger
Pigeons.
On June 26th another bird, ‘‘No. 5’’ as
he is called, flew down on to the lawn, and
as ‘‘No. 4’’ had at first behaved, began to
pluck and eat mouthfuls of grass. That
day he was in company with the other
pigeons, and with them came up close to
us and appeared perfectly tame. [our
days later he arrived by himself, settling
on the verandah roof, and his mates ap-
WOOD AND WASTE 195
pearing shortly afterwards, the lot finally
perched on the railings. There for some
little time ‘*No. 5’’ watched the others
feeding, and at last quietly flew on to my
daughter’s head, hopping after a while on
to my wife’s arm, and then on to her
shoulder, but still refusing the bread offered,
and always attempting to pluck the finger
tips. So trustful, however, was the bird
that even on this, his first close connection
with us, when his mates scattered in one of
their sudden panics, he quietly remained.
For long this bird had been about the
place, and had evidently noted that we were
entirely to be confided in, and that his
friends were obtaining food. These facts he
must have pondered over for mouths, while
ieideye: “Kuku, > “Unele: Harry, “ayaa:
later, ‘‘No. 4’ were filling their crops and
making themselves very much at home with
us. It was not, however, for another six
or seven weeks after the date mentioned
that he actually took bread from our
hands. That amount of time was still ap-
parently necessary to work out the bread
and finger tips problem. ‘‘No. 5” has for
196 BIRDS OF THE WATER
many weeks now been completely domesti-
cated, and comes and goes with the other
four. . He; too, like ““No..4,” 1g;a fully
matured bird in fine plumage.
“Kuku,’?<*Pidey,” and, ** Umcle; icHannyss
are now some seven months old; _ they
have given no trouble to the grown-ups,
and to the younger folk of the station
have, together with the Pukekos ‘‘ Budget,’’
‘“Moddy,’’ “*dack,?? “Jall,?? and laters Sep-
timus,’’? been a source of unmixed plea-
sure and interest. Even if they left us
to-morrow, we elders have learnt from
them what we never could have guessed.
The station children have gained more.
To them it has been an education, I
believe myself, of the soundest sort, not
taught by parents out of books, but drawn
by the children themselves direct from
nature.
Printed by Whitcombe & Tombs Limited, Wellington. 88559
PLATE LXXVIIL.
Child feeding Pigeons.
be jt
ee re 3K
wf 8} Me br
Sap fh ee &
eon eres
peewee rrrite tes
ssese tet
bre oe
titytarata:
wood & waste /
i te he
Teieer
.
3573!
’
ae
irae eee 2
epee Ob ae
Letedbe ot mies
ret
nhbird QL693.G98
Birds of the water
3 9088 O035e%e0 4
3222 Ve-
Serer te
*
ete atetere
Se rethtatoteras
<3°,
=>
aeee
a
rer
rises rt ee : n : tetetetetatie tet
eteie pesees : PRE .
ete seat : Beier:
%
Btetetecttsts : 7 sstisats
ee Srasaee= 4 Heeatsesestety:
eserieiis sisfeteitcst se SHY erage
ate . ; Sater ons $ : a8 oe
3 ‘
tfc!
.
wi
ey
i
aiatgte®
Sets
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11