NATIVE BIRDS.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20099, 1 December 1930, Page 13

NATIVE BIRDS.

0H OF their songs. lE ctl-BE BY MR Johannes; c ANDERSEN. of ew eal3lld aD(i rhCir •' Tt the title of a lecture do<rthe Society for Imperial Culifertd , fr Johannes C. Andersen, on in the ball of the Vr. J. Might jjibW Canterbury College, pres.dcd or °\ professor Shelley, president The hall was decorated !tis So" 7 Kosa ga^vtell, SSSSSi*-"- - »» le« ture t,vo s ° nfi3 ' lVeie Madame Gower Burns, mtu \f r W. Hays and piano Lcnt by Miss Bessie Pollard. fcl{ 9pM s t Bird " (Ganz) ,r -Lo, here the Gentle Madame Burns was loudly apty her audience. in introducing the lecturer, •led that Mr Andersen was wcll- ■**" jready to the.members of the C was, indeed, a Christchurch ***■'. „ h like the late Mr Justice y< fellow-countryman, he had Zealand. "What * « about Mr Andersen. said bis versatility. He has .»£££s»?•■'>-»»tf, ' -.Zifin study, While his work for L'rLsbull Library in Wellington is jffiT all poets Mr Aadori.ercat lover of Nature and titorture will show just bow deep a JfrfNew Zealand bird lite he is.' fXt mde me take up the study „Zealand birds," said Mr Andei--1 Jbeifinning his lecture, "was the Sit apparently they were becomand that a record ol then 2a was necessary before they died vlihumther It soon struck me that thirdsof New Zealand were different those of England « of them had songs which jj Va repeated over and over again. vEizlish birds only the blackbird and m «r two Others sings in repetition ai when Browning wrote, 'That s the rat ttowh; he sings each song twice «r,' he was qnite jtoy of the New Zealand birds, eon--jsti the lecturer, were on the point ii becoming eompoaers. It was said by Mih naturalists that birds were not Sjered to the use of scales in their as men were, and that this was imsu ths stale was an artificial thing jewed by man. This was not true—tli telle was a natural thing and the tirf» Mowed it, sometimes even singis in harmony. The tui, indeed, had , tinge of four octaves and understood ss values of pitch and the musical inarraL Two Bpeciea of Grey Warblers. "A curious thing" about ' the grey wibler, a bird well known in Canteri.lerjr," said the lecturer, "is that the I tints in each different district hare a IfStreot song, probably because they -Vt fravef abont reryinaeh. For a ; m&Be scientists thought that there ■ mfco different species, i>ut they oAlfind any proofs. If they had the songs of the bird they I nti kre foand tiem. One species eg a indefinite wild-bird song that aiaiied mnaieal value, and the other optMg of the same quality, but i ittae mimical value.'' • Hthi spoken about the grey warb--4r fat, laid "Mr Andersen, because i nt& I>ird that acted as host to in Jwr Zealand cuckoo. The warbler j UsMle-nest suspended from the Sw JnKhei, and, as the cuckoo that zed tie Met was five or six times as U the warbler, it had always tespioMam how.he got his egg into latKSt?or the first half of the seanlit au&ob sang only the first half i» Ms;, and it was not until the «ew l*d eoma that the whole song W nag. Another interesting point ftsi the tntkoo was that no one knew fewrtsk whether the birds migrated. 3i otkss was always supposed to mi:mßi* :he godwits, but no one had Res him actually leaving, and it jHJrtbible that he was hidden away .•Mutate in the country when he was J# a Ids ntnai haunts. \ Saging in Chorus, i'browa creeper is another South iW* IW. A peculiarity of their '"pija hat one bird always begins *® and then the others join in, ®w? exactly the same notes. The *4alfot'a simple one, so there can *•» &nbt that the >irds know what linging. Sometimes the leader J aeeent beat on the firßt note, >ri the" third and the !®® ilffays follows him exactly. f the larger birds are difficult to imitate. The tui, lias a range of four oeli* although he sings mainly in he has a song pitched ia ii Bla,l ' r people cannot hear .%lm„ t Ugual 'y- w^en singing in ho interrupts his sweet sounds, in imitation »f that he has heard. The 'sunic and if, for example, "ear a farmyard, his be strongly influenced by the the fowls. There has been jhTj? 1 the tui is a better Ijhj, J® tb' nightingale, but it is '*fl«i«* aiUweir because one can't However, the early from England used to *ay that there was Zeaiand tbaa the . Tni and the Bellbird. , a different song in the in the evening M T ? n ßs for various times of 2r* th. M h i^- e J, ening 80ng that bellbird's, but though sometimes alike, the i^jg»»MVes_haye entirely different tni sits still and y ' " while the bellbird t,k*a«li. „^ nc S a hout from brancli l- ■wnetinies even doesn't a P ro perly. I have seen f Vfo|n r t sitting side bv side uet.. and if sure ' y the - v they are singing. It >®ple duet, but still it was fj. * ' gfrf "the female It the male #?* 'lihl* TK 6 ?, 08t beautiful song I k ®b ird seems to sing "ke a perfect t?" Bat m!fLr ith a 80b in her I^^SlGnly 'tnf> t,ie male w*S tog» Qf ra rely. To hear the IIH '•"rtaatv A e bellbirds and tuis Cv !tt »P Ka piti Island, one y —about three than wortl > it'*^aad^T® n v enus;is the inornH ««her v„ 0n ? reach es the hillt " Wn S ]ik e a ball of <t tt '.i,, 1 ! 6 ,t!] e sun is to Bl §^ t grows pale 9 aad then suddenly

down in one of the valleys of the island one hears the notes of a single bird. Perhaps there will be silence for several minutes, and then another will sing and fall silent. One listens in this way until the full day comes, the sun rises, and all the birds on the island sing together. Tameness of Native Birds. "On Kapiti Island most of the birds are so tame that they will come into the house. One year a pair of wild ducks settled near the house, and brought up a brood. The old ducks-made a continual nuisance-of themselves by .coming into tho house, and had to be phased away. When the young ones grew up they flew, away, but next year two returned. The caretaker saw "them on the pond in tho distance and sounded the usual call for feeding'time. There was a swish over the wafer, a 'quack and the ducks flew to his feet. And these were wild ducks, mind you. Most of the bush birds can be tamed, and, in-

deed some are tame already, but it is the way that people go dashing through the bush, shouting and crashing, that frightens them. "Every year the tuis leave Kapiti, and only about a third of them return. Thus Kapiti is a nursery which feeds the whole of New Zealand. The New Zealand robin, the whitehead, and the tui were almost extinct at one time, but now tliey are spreading from Kapiti all over the country. "All sorts of reasons have been given why birds sing," concluded Mr Andersen. "Some say that they do it to attract tlieir mates, but I. think that is wrong. They sing simply because they want to —because they want to give expression to something in them. There is an urge in birds . that makes ' them sing, just as there is an urge in men that makes them express themselves in art and liberature." A vote of thanks to Mr Andersen was proposed by Mr L. R. Denny, and carried by acclamation.