Sweets for the Singers.

The late Robert Nelson, Government Custodian of the Island for many years, gave some very pleasant word-pictures of the bird life in his reports. It is very much the same to-day under Mr. Hargreaves, the Custodian for the Tourist Department. Here is a June scene at the kitchen door, as described by Mr. Nelson:

“It is not unusual to see thirty or forty tuis and bellbirds waiting when the door is opened in the early morning, and as many sitting on the trees near at hand. Mrs. Nelson gives them the house scraps and left-over porridge page 20 page 21 and milk, of which they are very fond. It is amusing to see them flying after her and gathering around her as she empties the food in the dishes. They are very tame; they even land on our shoulders, and a few come into the kitchen, and on to the table, while we are at our meals. Some of them stay about the house the whole day, while others fly into the bush, but are here again the following morning. They sit around the rim of the dishes, under the trees, feeding all together. They like sugar in their porridge.”

When the morning milk was drained from the buckets into a can, the bell-birds were all around. They sat along the rim of the can, trying to drink the milk as it flowed in.

There, too, is the kaka parrot. When food is laid out, he gets the biggest share. He gets away with the crusts of bread, and he often hangs around the kitchen door when it is quite dark, or whiles away his waiting time by walking noisily about on the roof.

What a picture, in the season of ripe fruit, a hundred tui and korimako in a peach tree, singing their loudest and sweetest as they daintily and leisurely enjoyed their meals. They seemed always to have plenty of time for song.

In midsummer, as in the breeding season, the bush everywhere is ringing with the songs of the various species. “Their charming melodies are delightful to hear,” was a typical item in the monthly reports. “An hour in the bush, sitting listening to the birds, is worth far more than the finest concert in the city.”

And, per contra, a note on the pakeha-bird interlopers: “I am glad the imported birds are decreasing. Long may they stay off the island; they are a great pest.” Rats, too, are a curse to the bird-island; they have become too cunning to take the poison laid for them. Wild cats are more easily dealt with. The custodian shot many of them.

In March, when the peaches and figs in the garden are ripe, all the birds, Maori and pakeha congregate in the trees. A Nelsonian diary picture: “The starlings and blackbirds are taking the lion's share of the figs. They are not easily destroyed; they are too much awake, and discern danger all the time they are on the trees. By hiding in the centre of a bush near the fig-trees, I have been able to shoot fifteen in two days. The tui and bellbirds are all busy feeding on the figs, singing and screaming and chasing each other, when all at once quietness reigns. A blackbird makes its appearance and commands the whole tree. The report of the gun and the fallen dead bird do not seem to trouble or frighten the native birds, for in a few seconds the feasting and singing recommence.”

One season Mr. Nelson made a large scarecrow, which drove the foreign birds away. The Maori birds, of course, knew it wasn't meant for them.

The birds would very soon have taken all the grapes one year, when there was a very large crop on the vines, but the custodian's wife saved some for the household and for the winter supply of jelly by filling two cake-tins with the previous season's jelly and some fruit pulp, and setting it out on the paths. In a few minutes there were scores of birds jostling each other around the tins and feeding joyously. The news of the glorious kaikai seemed to have been broadcasted through the bush, for next day there were far greater numbers there, and before a week was out it looked as if every tui and every korimako on the island were gathered there for the feast. The moment one flew away its place was taken by another. Then the tui chased the bellbirds away, and the little fellows came dancing around, waiting an opportunity to get a place on the dish-rims; and there was a kind of queue sitting on the branches of a near-by apple-tree, waiting till the first table had finished.

The native robin, the toutouwai, is a tiny habitant of the bush that shows a pretty confidence in its human protector. It comes up quite close, and, like the fantail, will hop on to a stick if you hold it out. The garden-digger it regards as its benevolent friend, turning up worms for it, and by way of thanks-giving for its meal and its mate's, it rewards the spade-man with song.

The custodian remarked on the kaka's noisiness, a comment that recalled to me an old Maori bush-guide many years ago in the Urewera Country. We were tramping over the ranges from Ruatahuna to Lake Waikaremoana. The shawl-kilted Hauhau mountaineer broke

(Photo., courtesy of Dr. Oliver.)
The Boulder Bank, western landing, Hauturu. The large boulder represents an ancestor of the Ngati-Wai, according to the Maori.

his warrior silence to express his annoyance at the parrots that were flying and screeching all around us; they were in astonishing numbers in that deep forest. “Ka-Ka-Ka!” he said, scolding the birds flapping about him; “you're like a lot of women, for ever chattering with your Ka-Ka-Ka!”