XV. The Saddleback.

The Saddleback does not seem to reach maturity on Kotiwhenu until its second season. In the vicinity of our camp during early November three generations were to be found, each distinct from the other—the breeding birds, the yearlings, the chicks still in the shell.

Mature specimens of each sex were of an intense shining black about head and neck. Across the back stretched the remarkable band of reddish-chestnut—a new unused saddle on a black horse—from which the species derives its apposite popular appellation. On either side of the bill drop long slender caruncles, those curious sexual ornaments of the breed. Though in the female little developed, in the male they become prominent during the breeding season. They glow with especial brilliancy when the bird is paying his court or in rapid motion; they glance then, and gleam like drops of translucent carmine, like gems in a girl's ears.

Saddleback.

More exquisite specks of colour are not often to be seen.

The plumage of the yearling bird was less gay. It was the hue of blended chocolate and black—ink, as it were, stirred into cocoa,—the conjoined tints producing a brown effect; whilst here and there were feathers or parts of feathers, promising in the immediate future the full maturity of colour. The caruncles of these first - season birds, or “brownies” as we called them, though visible, were wholly undeveloped. Usually these “brownies” were unaccompanied, solitary. One of them, which lived near our camp, roosting at night and often resting by day in a small turfthatched maimai, was many times disturbed from its comfortable quarters during the first few days of our residence, whilst in fact we still believed in the “brownies” as a species, and vainly searched for their nests. Their call, too, was but a section of the mature birds' call; and whilst the full-plumaged birds neither courted nor shunned observation, the “brownies” were distinctly inquisitive. From a foot or two above the observer's head often they would peer down wonderingly. I was unfortunate indeed not to have obtained a good photograph of one of these yearlings. Attracted by the vision of chicks in one of the nests of its own breed that had been practically bared of fern fronds and leaves, this youngster perched for an page 158 instant within focus. Hoping, however, to obtain a still better pose, I refrained from exposing the plate; the bird flew off, and no second opportunity offered itself.

The third generation of Saddleback were still in the shell.

During the first week of November one or two couples of paired birds were incubating eggs, another pair possessed a single egg, others were building, whilst the hens in many cases were still being courted by proffered food, spread tail, and fluttering wings.

Of the five nests under observation containing eggs or young, four were within a few feet of the ground, whilst all were built in deep shade. The first discovered, built into the fork of an ironwood and screened with polypod and the shrubby growths of several epiphytes, was a dozen feet above the dark gritty soil. A second nest was found two feet above the peat, placed in the long cavity of a prone tupari. Extraneous and parallel to this cavity ran an eroded bar of sound wood, which to a great extent concealed the sitting bird. Light was still further cut off by the proximity of many dead logs of considerable girth. A third nest at an elevation of three feet was built in a similar cavity. In this case, however, the fallen tree was a large ironwood, several of whose surface rootlets passed athwart the page break

Saddleback in Maori Kit.

page break page 159 hole. The trunk was, moreover, densely thatched in matted polypod, whose erect fronds filtered such light as might still penetrate to the incubating bird. The orifice of a fourth nest opened into a cranny in a sound green tupari only a few inches above the peat. The entrance to this nest was unusually constricted, and the structure within almost invisible. The fifth nest, also in deep shade, was built into an open flax kit suspended from a nail fastened to an upright board in a Maori hut.

Each of the sites described contained, during November, eggs or young. An additional pair of nests, but in which no eggs had been laid at the time of our departure, were also obtained in tree cavities low to the ground. Guarding each of these unfinished nests was a traverse bar: in the one case a strip of sound dead stuff, in the other a stiff finger of living wood. It would seem, therefore, that the site nearest to the Saddleback's ideal is one low to the ground, deeply shaded, and if possible protected with aerial rootlets or splinters of hard, dry, seasoned timber.

The outermost materials of the nest consist of rootlets and portions of fronds of aspidium aculeatum, the latter so affected by exposure and age as to be easily tweaked into the desired circular form. On this rough base and outer edging rest quantities of narrow grass-tree leaves; on them page 160 are piled, deep and warm, the shining scales of unrolled tree-fern fronds.

Without exception there were two eggs or two young birds in each nest—never more and never less. On several occasions the eggs, when not covered by the birds, had a leaf or two over them—these leaves, I think, not fallen by chance into the nest. Sometimes, too, the eggs appeared to be in some degree buried in the nest material. They may or may not have been consciously hidden—I was never quite able to reach a decision on the point. The pairs of eggs seen by me differed but little from one another, less indeed than do the eggs of many species. In size they were rather larger than those of the Tui, blunter, and less elegant. Grey was their ground colour, the shell thickly blotched all over, but chiefly and very clearly marked on the blunt end; there the grey blotchings became a blur, tinted with violet or purple brown.

Twenty or twenty-one days is the duration of incubation, the birds beginning to sit immediately after the second egg has been laid. Thus a nest got with two eggs on the 8th November contained chicks on the 28th. The nest built, as already related, in a flax kit had a single egg in it on the 9th; on the 10th there were two eggs; on the evening of the 30th the chicks were about to emerge. On that evening the hen was so page break

Saddleback With Beak Full Of Maggots.

page break page 161 wrapt in the ecstasy of brooding that she allowed me to lift the kit from its nail and carry her forth still sitting to show to my companions. She appeared to be perfectly unconcerned, her plumage fluffed out to the utmost, her side feathers made to cover completely the outer margin of the nest. It was a critical period when greatest warmth was required. The beak of one chick already protruded from the shell; the second egg was chipped. Unalarmed, she was returned to her comfortable quarters within the dry gloom of the hut.¹

The usual call of the Saddleback is a rather harsh “che-che-u-che”; not infrequently another syllable is added, “che-che-u-che-che,” the last earnestly accentuated with something of entreaty in it. Sometimes near the nest a rapid series of notes was uttered, which to me sounded like the faint rattle of a distant castanet. Another cry was “che-we-we-we-we-we,” another “woo-ete-woo-ete.” On one occasion, when the male had rather suddenly alighted on the edge of the kit nest, the hen gave vent to a sharp “vt-vt-vt.” As the nesting season of the species had but barely opened when we arrived, it is probable that we heard during our residence all the calls of courtship and parentage. I give them, not because any two persons would clothe them in like orthography, but rather to show the limited number in common use. By no stretch of imagination could any of them be termed “flute-like”; the “flute note” of the Saddleback was indeed as non-existent in these southern regions as that “organ note of surpassing richness” credited by Buller, and others with whom I have spoken on the subject, to the Orange-wattled Crow. The absence hereabouts of both these calls bears out what I have elsewhere surmised, that members of a species differ in their notes in different districts.

Although the Saddleback is by no means a recluse, and although I may say I have a general page break

Saddleback.

page break page 163 acquaintance with Stewart Island except its southwest corner, I have never there heard or seen the species. Its usual cry, too, is perfectly unlike that of any other species of bird, and can be heard, moreover, at a considerable distance. I doubt, therefore, if the breed is resident on Stewart Island; perhaps it may not have been there even in pre-European times. Supposing, however, that the Saddleback did at one time live in small numbers on the mainland of Stewart Island, it has probably, on account of its selection of nesting sites at low elevations, perished long ago by the depredations of the grey rat and of the old English black rat. Even the Wekas, the police of the woods, would find it difficult to conserve a breed that does not nest until its second season, which lays but a brace of eggs, and whose chicks reach adolescence slowly. The small clutch, slow growth of chicks, and retardation of sexual growth may argue hardihood and long life normally, but with eggs destroyed and chicks slain ere feathered, what would these qualities avail?

Unlike other chicks known to me, the Saddleback twins had on every occasion to be roused for their meals. Not even the jar of the nest structure consequent on the arrival of parents was sufficient to arouse the little sleepy-heads. They had to be gently progged into wakefulness. This lethargy did not, however, proceed from any page 164 indifference to their provant; like all healthy young things, they were ever ready for food. For several weeks, like the Fat Boy of Dingley Dell, they slept interminably except when roused for meals. At the date of our sailing they had still to be awakened when twenty-one days old or more. Almost all nestlings can be animated by artifice: a gentle jar of the twigs supporting the nest or a touch of the head, but it was rarely possible thus to deceive the youthful Saddleback. On one or two occasions only some incitement unknown to me would cause the long necks to stretch up and the yellow gapes to open wide. These strange youngsters were, moreover, not only always sleepy, but always silent, different in this respect to youthful Tui, Bellbirds, and Robins, who know presumably that they would not be fed at all unless the coast was clear, and that therefore they may give vent within reason to childish supplication.

Although the arrival of the feeding birds was most deliberate and most open, the actual offer of food to their chicks was conducted with a certain curious diffident bashfulness—in fact, though such a statement may sound strange indeed to the ears of some folk, again and again I was made to feel as if in witnessing the action I had been taken into the bird's confidence, that what I saw was a secret between the male, especially the page break

Saddleback.

page break page 165 male, and myself. Often whilst feeding he would glance back at me with a shy, almost with a pitiful, air, as if imploring my sanction to some action or other, as if deprecating any shadow of ridicule, but, alas! though he so knew and trusted me, though he allowed me to watch the whole process as it were over his shoulder, I ever failed to fathom his mystery. It may be that the bird piqued himself on the exclusive possession of certain methods of administering food, specialities my human stolidarity was unable to appreciate. It may be that the Saddlebacks did not wish their patrician modes divulged to the commoners of the island—the Tui, the Bellbird, the Robin.¹

The parent birds were, from almost the earliest hours, unconcerned in the presence of myself and camera, even at the distance of eight or nine feet. Eventually they became so tame that, when desirous of obtaining both birds on the one plate, I sometimes failed to keep the first-comer off by waving my hat directly over the chicks. The male and I had become real friends. He had perfect trust in me. We were in sympathy with one another. I believe he had fathomed my true opinion of his wife.

Until we sailed, a species of soft white grub was the food almost exclusively supplied to the nestlings. Throughout very many hours' watching at close quarters twice only I noted other pabulum offered. Once a hard-looking chrysalis and once a small green caterpillar were included in the juicy oblations—these two exceptional morsels given when the chicks were more than a fortnight old. The soft white maggots mentioned were plentiful; from beneath the tall clumps of aspidium the Saddlebacks grubbed them with their powerful beaks. Most of the food was delivered by the male. In his hard horny bill he was able to carry three or four soft grubs not only unbroken but alive—I could see them squirm and wriggle. Very many more than that number were brought in at each trip, but by the time the nest was reached the earliest obtained had become reduced to a white pulpy mass much diluted with saliva. During the act of deglutition its ropy dribble could be noted sagging between the parent's bill and the chick's gape. This pulp seemed to be produced from somewhere about the base of the old bird's beak.

Although, however, most of the food was collected and brought in by the cock, he was by no means always allowed the pleasure of giving to the chicks all that he had gathered. If the hen was on the nest or in the neighbourhood—and she page break

Saddleback Nest And Eggs.

page break page 167 made it her business to be in the neighbourhood—a part of each supply had to be given to her to pass on to the nestlings.

Studying the ways of one particular pair, I sat sometimes close in front of the nest; sometimes I covered their comings and goings from a seat high in an ironwood tree. I could well view from the one position the intimacies of feeding and sanitation; from the other, owing to the bareness of that part of the island, I could discover pretty accurately what the birds were about when not in the nest or feeding their young. To climb from the one observation post to the other was the work of a few seconds; it in no wise disturbed the birds. By this time, possibly believing me to be some sort of fancy seal and equally innocuous, they did not care what I did. As in the woods there is no repetition, no action exactly reproduced, I will set down from my notes the gist of what I was able to glean of the proceedings of these Saddlebacks during three or four hours of one most heavenly summer day. The hen had been off her nest for some time when I took my seat among the ironwood boughs. On the wide expanse of comparatively open ground beneath I soon picked up the pair, and found that the hen was accepting large spiders from her mate. He then disappeared in the direction of an aspidium clump, where I could page 168 fancy him toiling and grubbing for the family meal. The hen meantime spent her time in much less arduous fashion. On one of the boughs of my ironwood she preened her feathers very carefully and thoroughly; then, immediately below me, searched the ferns growing there, hopping leisurely from log to log, peering among the green leaves, or, like a woodpecker, inspecting every chink and cranny and bit of tattered bark. Nor was a vegetable diet scorned: she partook of several snacks of the fruit of blueberry and five-fingers. She then returned to her nest, where I was in time to see her loosening the structure of its sides by diving her great beak up to its hilt into the material, opening her mandibles wide, and thus prizing it apart. She then moved away a twig or two, and at long-last was settling herself on to the nest when the male arrived. The good-tempered fellow, who had been labouring while she played, was greeted with harsh cries and snappings of her bill. With an overflowing beakful of soft maggots he was made to await her caprice for some minutes. Finally, she deigned to allow him to give to the chicks a portion of what he had gathered and brought home.

In front of another nest on another occasion I have seen another male watch, with the pathetic look of a chidden spaniel wishing to be forgiven, for a chance of himself feeding his own offspring, page break

Saddleback And Chicks.

page break page 169 hesitating and vacillating before his harsh shrewish wife with many a supplicating glance and many an embarrassed baffled approach.

Often—too often for chance to enter into the matter—the male is allowed only as it were by favour to enter into the nest and personally nourish the young. Advantage is taken of his amiability—to speak plainly, he is henpecked in no common degree. When, for instance, both cock and hen have been away from the nest, the hen will not infrequently return with an empty bill. She will then hang about the vicinity till her hard-worked mate returns, take food—sometimes the whole of it—from his bill, feed it to her chicks as if collected by herself, and then only settle into her nest. I conceive the chicks, reared in the belief that their mother toils whilst their father idles, allowed to think in her absences that she has been doing what she has not been doing, just as bad people who have shirked Sunday service will in the street mingle with the devout, passing off themselves also as worshippers.

Although, however, the female thus cows the male, both alike are bullied by other breeds.

There is always an especial pleasure in plucking out the heart of the mystery of a species the essential characteristic of a breed. The predominant trait certainly of the Saddleback is an exceeding mildness and gentleness of disposition. page 170 Robins especially take all sorts of liberties with the sitting birds, spying, for instance, into the cavities containing their eggs and young, a bit of boorishness only to be compared to the conduct of a man inadvertently chancing on bathing damosels—happy inadvertence,—not feigning himself heedless, blind, and passing forward on his way. I have photographed the Robin and the rightful owner of the nest on the one plate. On the nest built in the Maori kit I have seen a Robin alight on the very edge of the woven flax, an impertinence of so gross and outrageous a nature as to provoke even this most pacific of birds. Still, however, remonstrance was but passive, the hen rising on her nest with legs wide apart—a favourite Saddleback attitude by the way,—and for long standing on guard over the new-hatched chicks. Few species again willingly suffer a stranger near their young, yet within a foot of the nest Robins would actually attempt to snatch food from the bills of the long-suffering birds, fencing and fronting them as people colliding in a street step together—first right, then left, dancing opposite one another in their attempt to get clear. Though so much larger, Saddlebacks never attempt to resist imposition; the best they can do for themselves is to ignore the highwaymen at their door. An unadventurous placidity marks their conduct always.

Saddleback And Robin.

Wishing once to obtain the two Saddlebacks on one plate, I had blocked the nest by wedging my handkerchief into the cranny. The gentle birds were not in the least alarmed by the linen. They could only not make up their minds to remove it, and in this dilemma very characteristically merely attempted to squeeze past the obstruction; on the other hand a Robin, who had no business at all on the premises, began at once with the utmost hardihood to tug at the handkerchief.

The business of sanitation of the nest is shared, but often, if the hen had been at work, the male would carry off in his bill any bit of rootlet or peat that might catch his eye. His instinct was to carry away something; it was a happiness even to seem to be doing something for his beloved children. Sometimes the droppings were carried off in the bill, and sometimes swallowed on the spot.

Although so exceedingly tame to me, now and then, for reasons I could never fathom, panic would seize the pair. On these occasions no cry of warning or apprehension would be given; without audible sound the alarm would be communicated from one to the other, the birds silently bounding over the ground or through the low scrub at a great pace. These nerve attacks were of brief duration, and from whatever cause originating page 172 cannot have been very acute, for after a minute or two one or other of the pair would return without caution or reconnoitring. In their entrances and exits it was more usual for the parent birds to hop than to fly to and from the nest.

The Saddleback obtains a large proportion of its food amongst the leafy tops of the bare-boled tupari, a tree naked to the neck, reaching a height of sixteen or twenty feet, thickets of which extend over a large part of the island. Immediately beneath this verdant thatch Saddlebacks may be most easily watched whilst courting and mating, whilst gathering grubs, spiders, caterpillars, and flies. On one occasion I believe I got a glimpse of a Saddleback using its foot in some feeding operation. In their unremitting search for insect life the loose bark of moribund trees is torn away by the strong-billed birds. If too tight for easy detachment, it is nosed off by insertion of the bill and neck and a jerk back of the head. I have seen the bird disappear, save for the tail tip, beneath hanging folds of bark loose enough to be thus raised, but sound enough to resist complete severance from the trunk. Any yellowing leaf also that promises a blight or gnawing insect is seized in the mandibles and examined.

As the Robin and the Wren haunt the floors page break

Saddleback Nest And Eggs.

page break page 173 of the woodlands and the Tuis the tops, so the Saddleback dwells half-way between the two. He never ventures much higher than the tupari-tops; he never climbs high on the ironwoods that attain a height of fifty or sixty feet; he knows that the Tuis and Bellbirds are unfriends to him. During the breeding season much time also is spent in the groves of aspidium and stilbocarp, their cool gloom seeming to be as welcome as the tall tuparis' filtered shade.

The progress of the species is accomplished, as already pointed out, by a series of hops, sometimes so rapid that they blend or melt into what appears to be a run. If the bird is in great haste the bill is held nearly erect, as is also the curiously curved tail. As he then bounds and leaps at speed over the uneven ground he bears no small resemblance to a monkey. Wing movements are laboured, the birds never flying far, nor do they fly directly upwards. They prefer to rise by rapid hoppings from bough to higher bough, and then to flutter or volplane downwards. The wings of the Saddleback are, in fact, used for brakes as much as for propulsion through the air.

Ringed in their slithery aprons of shining kelp, girt in their ramparts of battered rock, long may these islands of the south protect the breed. page 174 Long may the roll of polar seas secure it from the interference of man. To me the Saddleback will ever be associated with the serene peacefulness of the wilds, the pleasant solitude of desert places, a loneliness far as the poles apart from the dreary awful loneliness of cities and streets.

Saddleback.

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Saddleback, M. And F.