Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Birds of the Water Wood & Waste

The Ground Lark

page 133

The Ground Lark

THERE are several species on the run that may be called homestead birds, such as the New Zealand Pipit, or Ground Lark, the Waxeye, the Warbler and the Fantail. A specimen or two of each of these breeds may be nearly always noticed about the gardens or orchards or plantations. Each is attracted by his special desire: the Pipit by dug soils, the Waxeye and Warbler by greenfly on the rose beds, and caterpillars on the flower borders, and the Fantail by tree and shrub growth, and in mid-winter especially by the blossoming gums that then yield a plenteous supply of small moths and insects. Nearly page 134 every day the New Zealand Pipit may be seen, the little grey, brown bird that half of us think is an English skylark, and the other half fail to notice at all, yet, if any feathered creature may claim particular recognition, it is surely he who is not one bird, but four. With us in the Antipodes he takes the place of four British species, the Skylark, the Wagtail, the Flycatcher, and the Robin Redbreast.

He does mount, and he does sing, even though he cannot be said to soar, or thrill us with profuse strains of unpremeditated art, but he himself and his four brown eggs and simple nest are modelled on the Skylark's as nearly as may be, the nest, perhaps, a trifle deeper, the eggs practically indistinguishable. Although, however, he cannot sing against the British bird, what Skylark was ever so friendly, so sociable, and so ready always for the game of running with quick little steps along the winding tracks, rising with a merry chirp and a short flight, again and again and again beguiling the loneliness of the shepherd's ride. Then, again, where would you find the Skylark that could obtain amusement from a railway train—a New Zealand railway train?

page 135

Yet Buller writes that he has noticed on the Hastings-Napier line and elsewhere a peculiar habit the birds have developed of following a train, and has seen in autumn a flight of a hundred birds keeping abreast or a little ahead of a train in rapid motion.*

On the open river bed—the deep, dark, fern-fringed gorge offers no attraction to this bird of liberty and light—our little friend becomes the Wagtail, fluttering and hopping on the weed-wrapt stones that emerge from a falling stream at the tail of some quiet pool. On the ebb and flow marked river rim he runs with tail in perpetual motion, and rising again and again with short, jerky flights into the air. Often, too, on the coastal lagoons you may page 136 notice him passing lightly over the estuarine sud, delicately picking up flies and tiny insects, as much a Wagtail in his flights and runs and sudden changes as any Ground Lark can be. Then, as the Flycatcher, he may be seen hawking by the hour from some high chosen perch, perhaps the top of some tall fire-charred, broken bole, or may be he has selected some little eminence on a sharp ridged spur, where his view is fully clear, and where the snap of his mandibles, his airy convolutions and sudden excursions turn him into the Flycatcher.

Metamorphosised again into the Robin Redbreast he will do his share, too, in garden work, keeping just out of hoe and rake reach, and picking up with short, deft runs, the white, soft, sleepy, disinterred larvae of the green beetle. Often and often when gardening have I had one or two of these cheerful little companions, quite friendly but never overbold, and always wearing that veil of shyness so peculiarly their own. Never would the Ground Lark wear the abstracted, distrait look of an English Robin, never would he be guilty of such discourtesy as to sit, as does the Redbreast, like a stone, until he darts on page break
Plate XXXV. Ground Lark Nestlings.

Plate XXXV. Ground Lark Nestlings.

page break page 137 his worm, showing thereby that the worm and not your companionship is his real object. My little brown friend would never do that, each of us gives a happiest interpretation of the other's presence. Though incidentally the turned-over soil may be used later for other purposes, I am there now, the Pipit persuades himself, to provide him those soft-shelled grubs, as white and pathetically helpless as babies. Seeing me lonely at my work, I know he wishes me to believe that he has arrived with his cheerful chirp and ceaseless runs and flutterings, to charm the solitude, make the sun brighter, and the sky more blue. Mutual courtesy is always observed, on my part no too quick motion or sudden throwing down of tools, on his, an exit lingering and reluctant, for his departure, too, is like him, little runs and pauses that carry him further and further, as if breaking the sorrow to me, and when at last he is no longer there I realise the old French proverb and know that of the two parties in our affection it is I who have given my heart whilst the bird only consents to be loved. He is gone, and part of the morning brightness with him!
page 138

The Pipit's breeding season extends over many months of the year. Eggs are laid early in August, and I have noticed parent birds still collecting food at the end of March. Probably the early breeding pairs rear a second brood, but nests are more plentiful, I think, in late summer and early autumn than in spring, and this would seem to show that some couples breed but once and then late in the season. This year, certainly, we got two nests in the autumn for every one in the early months.

Almost any spot unlikely to be trodden by stock serves for a nesting site, very steep banks and almost precipitous hill slopes are favourite places, but nests are often built on the flats, beneath a sheltering tuft of tussock, or where a friendly stick or sturdy fern frond will fend off grazing beasts. Sometimes the Pipit has built even in the trampled stock-trodden, house paddock, and has, moreover, on several occasions hatched out her brood. The nest is a very deep cup, and much resembles the nest of the Home Lark. There are usually four eggs, rather pointed, brown all over, with a ring of deeper brown at the thicker end.

page 139

The young are fed on caterpillars, grasshoppers, and small flies, and one pair under observation seemed to have a little freehold property of their own, a clearly defined area for collection of these supplies, returning again and again to particular runs of rock and sandy flat. When the bill is full—birds can hold their captured booty whilst still continuing to collect, just as they can sing with their mouths full—the old bird would fly off to the nest, always, however, avoiding a direct flight, and pausing many times en route for observation and critical inspection of the neighbourhood. Upon the arrival of food, the young, at any rate during their last few days in the nest, seem to be unable to forbear an eager twittering and chirping, sounds of rejoicing which must be highly dangerous, and by which the particular nest under the camera this season was actually discovered. Although silence is thus in the later days of incubation neglected by the hungry youngsters, the golden rule for Ground Lark nestlings, their first and greatest of commandments, is never transgressed. However hungry, nay voracious, the fledglings are, and at first for several hours in the nest page 140 under observation, the parent Pipits avoided the screen and camera, the young never budge from the nest, and though easily able to do so, never edge on to the little run and platform made by the repeated visits of the old birds. I suppose inherited experience has shown the Pipit race how full the world is of deceit and wickedness in the form of Harriers, rats and other vermin. On Tutira during my time the numbers of the Ground Lark have very much increased, and hundreds of them flock together in the winter months, especially on the pumiceous areas of the run.

page break
Plate XXXVI. Ground Lark about to Feed Young.

Plate XXXVI. Ground Lark about to Feed Young.

page break

* Note.—There is no good reason to suppose that these trains have materially lessened their speed since Buller penned his paragraph some thirty years ago. We have, therefore, the registered observation that the Ground Lark is able not only to keep abreast, but “even a little ahead of the train.” Much controversy is at present taking place over the speed of bird flight, and Gätke, in his Birds of Heligoland, credits the Hooded Crow with 108 miles, the Northern Bluethroat with 180 miles, and the Virginian Plover with 212 miles per hour, while here in New Zealand we know from what Buller says, that the Ground Lark can keep abreast “or even a little ahead of trains on the Napier-Hastings line,” and “in rapid motion,” too.