In the Haunts of New Zealand Birds 119
.\/Ioas, including such immense creatures as the Elephant Moa, with its enormously heavy legs and its little head reaching to a height of some thirteen feet, has become extinct in comparatively recent times, as the discovery of feathers, skin and eggs attests, ,’-\n interesting chapter in the history of living forms is furnished by the numerous flightless birds of New Zealand. Isolated upon these islands, without enemies save a few Hawks and Owls. with little to stimulate them to put forth their best efforts. they gradually lost the power of flight through disuse of their wings and became an easy prey to the rude implements of savage men,
Let us now leave these mountain wildernesses of the far south where the wild Black Swans of Australia utter their hoarse, high trumpeting. as they fly over the lake. and the showy Paradise Ducks call in tones of exultant freedom, wandering amid the grassy mountain meadows,—let us desert these splendid solitudes for a glimpse of the haunts of birds in the North Island. I have in mind a charming retreat on the shore of Port Nicholson, just opposite the city of Wellington, where the native bush has happily been preserved, and where birds still gladden the woodland with their calls. Near the bay shore lcaught the liquid roll of the Belle bird from the hillside; the Pied Fantail fluttered merrily about me, and the tremulous pipe of the Gray Warbler came plaintively from the scrub manuka and bunches of toi-toi grass. Here also the Tui, or Parsonrhird, sang its loud and varied strains. I could never be sure of the song of this species, for it mimics all the birds of the grove. The ’I‘ui. which belongs in the same group of Honey-eaters in which we found the Belle bird and Silver-eye. is about the size of a Blackbird. The male is of a burnished greenish black color, with white wing-patches anti white tufts on the throat like a parson's collar, whence its English name. The female, which is olive-brown in color, lacks the white plumes. Turning into the thickets where the Tuis and Bell-birds were singing, I found myself in a tangle of verdure: tree—ferns with quivering fronds of green were lifted on high and drooping gracefully above the shrubbery; great beech stumps were festooned with clinging rata \ines: cordylines or cabbage- trees. with pointed, ribbon-like leaves clustered in bunches on their bare trunks, combined with the other foliage to make a scene of tropic splendor.
In the bush near hilasterton. situated in one of the interior \‘alleis north of Wellington across the Rimutaka Gorge. I found some new birds, in com- pany with many heretofore observed. The Tuis called from the totara trees, their voices mingling with the whisper of the wind in the branches; the dainty strain of the Grey Warbler enlivened the thickets, and the thick— billed North Island Thrush uttered his call note in the shrubhery. llisv tened here for the first time to the song of the European Skylark, and saw the ecstatic minstrel soaring and climbing until it was a mere point in the
