XXVIII
Common Birds

The peli-can she loves her young;
   The stork his father loves.
The woodcock's beak is very long,
   And innocent are doves.

These lines, within an illustrative avian border, printed in red, on a small square of common calico, are a memory of early youth: a "Moral Pocket-handkerchief," I do not think they served to give any ornithological bent to my young mind; indeed, in later years they have more than once been used to switch off the conversation of the too serious bird-lover. For there are some, among these ornithologists who can be as boringly loquacious as the worst sinner among golfers and fishers. Moreover, the thorough-going bird man is liable at times to get quite out of touch with humanity. Even the great Hudson (on whose soul be peace) was occasionally quite unhuman.

As a boy I "kept" birds, of course, or rather the family did, as they were generally loose about the place. I remember discovering a grey-headed jackdaw, sagely perched on page 201the rung of a "high chair," and sampling with his strong bill the apple-like red calves of my smallest brother, whose unexplained wild howls had brought about the investigation.

But the most delightful pet of my life was a long-eared owl, taken early from the nest, all claws and beak and cotton-wool. The house was in a Surrey wood, and Squeaky, when he had grown up, would spend the day in one of the shady near-by trees, and at dusk would come and fly round miaowing for his dinner. One night an unbelieving guest was invited out on the lawn to see the bird whose praises we had been singing. While he was gazing half scornfully in one direction, Squeaky, with his perfectly silent flight approaching from the other, decided that our guest's bald head was a very suitable alighting place. But he was not used to such smooth shininess and, scrabbling hard for a footing, succeeded, before he made off, in scratching belief into the brain of Thomas the doubter.

He once frightened a new maid almost out of her wits by sailing in through the open window and fixing his claws in her hair, just as she had put the light out and was getting into bed. His plumage was delightfully delicate and soft to the touch, and he was perfectly happy in one's hands, uttering a page 202little purring chirrup of content as we held him. He had been taken too young to have been taught fear by the mother bird; he would play with our terrier, for instance, the two racing and flying together across the lawn, and this boldness probably led to his early destruction by some prowling cat or fox.

But all this does not seem to have much to do with Poverty Bay, to which it is quite time to return.

How vividly do I remember my first day in the New Zealand bush. My brother and I, having forced our way through fern and scrub to the top of the range, had miles and miles of untouched hill country in full view, with our boundary river winding round for several miles beneath us. All new and beautiful and wildly interesting.

Our object was to find the stream which was part of our back boundary. So, after a long scramble, we broke our way down to a stream that made its way out from the great tangle of bush gullies by little grassy flats that looked to us almost as if they had been specially planted with their fine assortment of beautiful evergreen shrubs and trees. Satisfied that this was the boundary we were looking for, and myself at least quite excited by my first sight of the footprints of wild pig and wild cattle, we strolled up from the little page break

Plate XXV
Sharpening the Axe

page 203flats with their scattered trees into the unbroken growth of the hillside. It was medium-sized "open" bush just there with little undergrowth, so getting about was easy and pleasant, and from the complete roof of leafage, beginning some 20 or 30 feet up, came to us such a variety of musical calls and chatterings, that, though never a bird could we see, we pictured to ourselves the dozens of species that must be in the trees above us.

And what with the beauty of the bush, the tracks of game, and this unseen paradise of strange birds above us, I for one was in the seventh heaven of delights, both present and prospective.

But as for the birds, all the chorus probably came from just two species. A flock of kaka ¹would account for most of the chattering. He is a parrot, clothed in sombre brown, only relieved by some bright crimson under the wing. He lives like other parrots on what he can get, mainly, no doubt, berries, though the delicacy he most loves is a large soft white black-headed grub that bores into the softish wood of the stem of a certain tree-like shrub. The kaka seems to know by smell or hearing, or just by observation and common parrot-sense, exactly whereabout in the stem this grub is likely to be, and with the point of

¹ Kaka=Nestor meridionalis.

page 204his beak well into the bark as a fulcrum, he works his sharp gouge-like lower mandible across the grain, taking out chip after chip till his dinner is reached.

The Maoris roast and eat these white grubs, and report them to be most delicious. We ourselves were quite content to take their word for it. But a friend of mine who, like Jurgen, was prepared to try anything once, and had indeed tried most things, was persuaded to accept one fresh-roasted caterpillar and even to raise it to his mouth. But it was no go; lifelong prejudice proved too strong and there was nothing doing.

Returning to the bird chorus, we afterwards found that most of the more musical and cheerful sounds must have come from the tui ¹feeding in company on some berried tree. He is, except when very fat, about the size of a blackbird and of the same hue, save where at his throat two little white feathers hang down exactly as did the old style clerical bands. He has a fine range of musical notes, together with a considerable repertoire of sub-musical conversation, and when you shall see him holding forth to the world below, gesticulating with body and head in full predictorial style, you will understand at once why he is generally known as the parson-bird. Later,

¹ Tui (pronounced Too EE)=Prosthemandera N.Z.

page 205when constantly ranging the bush, I became very familiar with these jolly birds, and have listened for many an hour to their delightfully varied calls.

Moving about and peering up into the branches one day to spot one of the cheerful chorus, there came a sudden silence for a good minute. Then it became quite evident that they had been trying on their part to spot me, as I then heard, from above, enunciated with the most laughable distinctness, the following remark: "I cannot s-e-e-e the beggar," the middle word being a long high musical note and the rest merely conversational.

Not so often, one heard the long-drawn note of the kokako,¹a well-mannered little crow, coal black save for two purple cheeks. He goes in pairs and seems to slide rather than hop through the thick-set branches. His call in the silent woods had an enchantment all its own, though the only simile I can give is that of the slow swing of a highly melodious gate.

The bush pigeon ²is seldom audible, save when the loud beat of his wings tells of his taking flight. He is larger than our wood pigeon, slate-coloured, with a burnished neck and big white breast, and having had for ages no enemies to scare him, he would, had his

¹ Kokako=Collœas cinerea

² Hemiphaga N.Z. N.Z.

page 206food not been mainly in the tree tops, already have far advanced toward the obese defence-lessness of that other great pigeon, the do-do. As it is, instead of slipping out one side of the copse while you are only thinking of approaching the other, as would our home bird, he will let you shoot one of his mates from the same high tree, and after a little flap round, return to his meal there.

A most excellent bird to eat, too, whether roast, stewed, or in a pie, and spitch-cocked, a first-class breakfast for a hungry man.

Though pigeon shooting was often mere pot hunting, it was sometimes a very delightful way of spending a solitary afternoon. Picture to yourself a clear river of pools and rapids winding, now between steep slopes of shining greenery and again by small levels where are scattered pyramidal pine-like trees, bushy-topped trees with shining leaves, many-headed palm-like trees, feathery trees, all sorts of trees, but all evergreen and all possessing a shining exuberance of permanent beauty never seen in this colder climate; and above them as you gaze up a sky to which our midsummer heaven is but the blue of milk and water.

Pigeons have come down from the main bush to feed on the red berries of the white pine.¹ Very high up they are, but having

¹ Kahikatea=Podocarpus dacrydioiides.

page 207spent some time peering skywards, you at last spot a white breast on a lofty bough. Then you make yourself comfortable for a steady shot, knowing that any sort of hit with your little rook rifle means a certain kill.

You are alone, you can take your time, there is no competition, and your bag does not matter; you have sufficient occupation to prevent you having to stare at the scene, and the beauty you absorb without effort remains to you a perpetual delight.

Coming now to the more truly "game" birds, the first is the pheasant which has been thoroughly naturalised. As, however, we never in those days had properly trained "smell dogs," we found shooting them in the rough scrub valleys very arduous work.

Native quail,¹though small, flew straight and hard. Californian quail were larger, but most of the bevy usually whizzed up the nearest tree, after one shot, and remained invisible. But an old cock Californian quail perched on the top of a post and calling to his harem below was always a joy to hear and to see, with his charmingly cocky little crest, and his head enamelled in cream and green.

There were duck and teal, too, in the river. The common grey duck²I have known to build

¹ Coturnix N.Z.

² Anas superciliosa.

page 208in a tree some 20 feet from the ground. Before the young were fledged, in fact when they could only just have been hatched, mother duck stood on a near-by branch and called them across. Out they all came, one after the other, helter skelter, and dropped down into the unknown, little balls of yellow fluff, wildly beating their featherless wings. At the bottom they lay for a moment, half stunned, then scuttled off down the bank to the old bird, who was, by this time, calling from the river pool below.

In every little bit of marshy land lives the long-legged swamp hen or pukeko,¹ black and blue, with a red crown and a little white jerky tail. He is doubly unfortunate in that his "get-away" is awkward and slow and that the soup he yields is excellent.

The wood-hen, or weka,²on the other hand, about the size of a small domestic fowl, cannot fly at all, but is a very nimble runner, using its wings to steady itself in its quick dodging turns. It is not edible.

Standing deep in a reedy swamp with his long lance-like bill pointed skywards, the big bittern ³was very hard to distinguish from his surroundings, but in reality he was a

¹ Pukeko=Porphyrio melanotus.

² Weka—Gallirallus Australis.

³ Botaurus melanotus.

page 209magnificent chap, with long sage green legs and a ruffed neck, the whole featherage a lovely harmony of fawns and browns.

The native Kingfisher¹(Plate XIVB) is a trifle larger than our own, with almost as brilliant a back but with a light fawn, instead of a fulvous breast, and with quite similar nesting habits. He by no means confines himself to an entirely fish diet; in fact, from my veranda I have often seen seven or eight of these birds in a row, perched on. consecutive fence stakes, keenly on the watch for a moving worm or other prey in the surrounding grass.

Everywhere, circling vulture-like in the open, you may see the big hen-harrier-like hawk,²a rather clumsy and not at all attractive bird. But there is another much more exciting to watch, the N.Z. sparrow-hawk,³rather rare with us. One day, as I lay on my back resting, in a dip of the high grassy ridge, one of these little falcons came sweeping over the hill, within three feet of my upturned face, glaring at me with his fierce eyes as he clutched close his just-caught prey, a little yellowhammer. Why the near sight of this fierce little chap gave me the keen pleasure it did I cannot quite say, but I love all these

¹ Sauropatis sanctus vagans.

² Circus Drummondi.

³ Nesierax N.Z.

page 210real hunting hawks, from the peregrine downward.

Big black cormorants,¹intent on eels, followed up the streams far inland, as also did the much handsomer white-throated shag.²They sometimes had their nesting communities in big trees overhanging the water.

Among the smaller birds there was, flying close round you in the bush, a charming little tit-like bird, the fantail,³hawking for small flies.

On a low branch I have seen fed by a still smaller pair of birds the progeny of a little cuckoo ⁴ which rejoices in a barred breast and a little plaintive reduplicated wail.

On the high poor ridges you may hear, sounding his charming note, the little greenish bell bird,⁵ and where the manuka scrub has grown up into a crop of tall close-standing line-props, poorly feathered at top, you may see a large grey robin ⁶ with big eyes of liquid black, a melancholy, almost ghost-like bird.

And with the little green and scarlet parra-keet,⁷ living in the richer bush, perhaps I had

¹ Carbo Steadi.

² Phalocrocorax melanoleucos.

³ Kokori mako=Rhipidura flabellifera.

⁴ Lamprococcyx lucida.

⁵ Kakariki=Anthornis melanura.

⁶ Muscicapa longipipes.

⁷ Cyandramphus N.Z.

page 211better end the list. I have known up in the bush a trout-fishing carpenter on whom, at the time, there happened to be no flies, to make, in desperation, lures from the feathers of this last-mentioned little bird, by the help of which, to his own great surprise, he was able to fill his Sunday holiday basket.

It is sad to think that many of the more interesting New Zealand birds, owing in some few cases to the introduction of rats and cats and stoats, but more often to the clearing of many of the big bush areas, are becoming much rarer.