The Rare White Bird.

Recently a white heron, the beautiful bird called by the Maoris the kotuku, was seen fishing for its daily food in the Awapuni lagoon, near Palmerston. The kotuku is the most graceful of our native birds, but it is unfortunately very seldom seen, and when it is, as often as not, some gunman takes a shot at it and pleads that he took it for a swan or a barndoor chook, or something. One was shot on the coast of Westland some years ago by a youth who didn't know what it was or that it was protected by law.

It is a curious fact about the kotuku that wherever it is seen it is alone; a pair of herons is never seen. It is a solitary rover, page 42 winging its lonely way from swamp to swamp or lake to lake in quest of good fishing waters. It covers long distances in its flights. Several years ago one was reported in the Tauranga district. Then it disappeared, and a few days later the Maoris at Rotorua were greatly pleased and excited by the visit of a kotuku, which was seen daily perched on an old punt on the lake shore at Ohinemutu, intently watching the waters for fish. Most probably it was the same heron which Tauranga had seen.

“Te kotuku rerenga tahi” is a favourite proverbial saying of the Maoris applied to the white heron, and it is a complimentary term often used when welcoming a distinguished visitor; it is usually given as “bird of a single flight,” or, in other words, a guest seen only once in a lifetime. However, it would be more accurate, I think, to give it the interpretation “the lone-flying white heron,” in reference to its solitary habit. It flies alone and fishes alone.

A profound pity it is that such lovely creatures are dying out of our land, with the gradual diminution of their feeding grounds and the inevitable usurping of their old free domains by the pushing and impertinent imported birds and the ravages of destroying animals of the stoat and weasel kind.