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Forest Lore of the Maori

The Bell-bird or Korimako:

The Bell-bird or Korimako:

The bell-bird (Anthomis melanura), the korimako, makomako, kopara, rearea, etc. of the Maori. Of a fluent, graceful speaker, or an admired singer the Maori would say: He rite ki te kopara e ko nei i te ata. (It is like the bell-bird singing at dawn.) When, in 1839, the the late Major Heaphy camped for a night in the forest about the head-waters of the Orongorongo stream, he heard a chorus of which he wrote: "The only sound worth noticing was the beautiful melody, towards morning, of the bell-birds. Thousands of these were singing together, and, probably by some auricular delusion, the sound seemed to arrange itself into scales, like peals of bells running down octaves. As the sun rose the music ceased altogether." When J. C. Crawford was at Karatia, on the Whanganui river in December, 1861, he wrote as follows: "The concert of bell-birds here and elsewhere on the river surpassed anything of the kind which I had previously heard."

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Another saying of yore was: He kopara kai rerere; this may be rendered as 'a flitting bell-bird'. Like the fantail and whitehead this bird is a restless creature, and so the above saying is applied to a restless, flighty, irresponsible woman, with the implied meaning ot a weak moral nature. In some cases a more out-spoken remark is made, such as: E haral He kopara kai rerere, tona hoatutanga he wahine kari hika, he wahine mau korero, kaore e tau, meaning that the woman alluded to is but a poor creature, a flitting or flighty person who will probably become a loose, gossiping woman.

The bell-bird was taken by snare and by the hauhau method, often on small trees or shrubs, such as Coprosma.