page 113

Chapter XIV.
The Avifauna of the Station Prior to Settlement.

In regard to the immediate past there is no reason to believe that in actual number of breeding species there has been any decrease. On a run so full of crags, impenetrable gorges, and deep river-beds, possibilities of concealment and escape are almost unlimited. The difference between now and then lies not in reduction of species but in reduction of individual birds. Undoubtedly there has been a very great diminution in the aggregate numbers. There are probably not ten birds now for every thousand there used to be immediately prior to settlement.

There had, however, existed—say within a century or two—other species. The older resident natives knew of them by tradition; they knew their Maori names. From hearsay they could, with a fair degree of accuracy, describe their habits. They recognised with expressions of delight their coloured representations as depicted in Buller's illustrated volumes. Thus I learnt that the Blue Wattled Crow (Glaucopis Wilsoni), a breed, until the forest was felled, extremely plentiful on the coastal forest between Wairoa and Gisborne, was at one time common also on Tutira. They recognised, too, the Saddle Back (Creadion carunculatus), a species which in my time has always been exceedingly rare page 114 on the east coast.¹ About one or two less prominently marked species, the Maoris were less confident in their identification, but I gathered that the North Island Robin (Petrœca longipes) had also at one time been common. These three species, it was agreed, had vanished long prior to the inroads of settlement; they had probably passed away with the passing of the ancient forest.

We shall note in another chapter how indigenous species of birds have been affected in different ways by the development of the run—by its change from bracken and bush into grass: how some must inevitably perish, some linger in lessened numbers, and some, I am glad to say, survive and even increase.