THE HILLSIDE'S DEWPEARLED.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 237, 6 October 1928, Page 8

THE HILLSIDE'S DEWPEARLED.

All's well in the forest and the air is full of mellow mating songs of the birds. Bellbirds and tuis make amazing harmony with their liquid gurgling notes. - They sing early and late, in spite of the rain, It seems at times because of it, for with the downpour of the past weeks they must rest from their labours. At mid-day the little whiteheads take up the song, for the rest of the birds are ( quiet then. They run down the scale, then call and answer. One has a nest just below tho garden, a beautifully neat little nest, with quite a canopy to shade the nestlings from the sun's heat. These little natives are rather rare now; the pity of it, for they are sociable, charming little singers, with an infinite variety in their music. Their haunts seem, to be manukas and wine berries, the mossier the better. . A regular colony uses an old dead wineberry as a happy hunting ground, both, as a larder of tiny insects and a treasure house for the 'choicest mosses and fragments of bark suitable for little nests in the making. Fantails have quick tempers and one flew into a passion lately when Noelle removed a bowl of hyacinths which it fancied on the verandah. Doubtless countless small insects hovered there attracted by the scent. The little, whiteheads are sweet and kindly. Tuis will scold and bellbirds engage in battles royal, but the pigeons look on in solemn state and seem rather fearful of quarrels among their feathered neighbours'. The shining cuckoo, almost a month early for this valley, is whistling the first long call. It is much the same as the shepherd's call to heel for dogs when mustering. The cuckoo's call changes. later to a short call, which appears to answer himself in a lower key. The little wrens that have delayed .with their first nests had better beware or. the cprious bird with its all too large egg will crowd out the rightful nestlings from even the first nests. Only during the heaviest rain have these-.busy forest builders desisted, and -a wild duck on the river has moved tliree times to> avoid . the swollen river. There is infinite patience in it all and the grey days are no longer grey when the woodland singers" flood the- place with melody. To them at least "God's in His >-a.ven, all's right with the world." '?,:.. ■■:■".; ' .-;,;• '-'■', ~ " —M.J.B.