Our Bush Birds.

A member of an acclimatisation society has been urging that New Zealanders should plant native trees wherever possible, and especially berry-bearing trees, for the sake of the native birds. Certainly it is time someone took up the cause of these vanishing sweet singers of our forests, in the matter of food supply. Look at many of our public parks, planted with that depressing and altogether miserable pinus insignis or with bluegums and wattles—anything but our New Zealand trees. There is a valley not far from where I write, a city park, filled with Australian eucalyptus—“a ragged penury of shade”—not a New Zealand tree raising its graceful head in the alien company. The valley could have been made a Maori-bush glade of cool beauty, a glen of a score of forest tintings and with food-trees that would resound with the notes of the tui and maybe the bell-bird, for our native birds are soon attracted to a place where their accustomed berries are plentiful.

Fortunately there is an increasing interest in this country in the preservation of our birds, and land-owners in many places preserve patches of native timber not only for shelter, but for the sake of the pretty bush creatures. An example of this I noted some time back on the road between Rotorua and Tauranga. At Ngawaro, in the partly-cleared rough country half-way to the coast, an owner has planted many miro trees in a suitable area, in order to provide food for the pigeons and other birds. The tawa tree, too, the kahikatea, the pohutu-kawa, the kotukutuku and even the native flax all attract the birds, especially the tui and the bellbird. Sometimes these birds reappear in numbers in a district from which they had apparently vanished, as soon as the berry trees and the honey blossoms they like are provided for them.

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The miro especially brings its bush birds to pay for their board with their cooings and bell notes.