In Touch With Nature

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 19 November 1927, Page 15

In Touch With Nature

(By

J. DRUMMOND, F.L.S., F.Z.S.)

Nature notes appear In tt>e “Tribune" every Saturday. Mr Drummond will be pleased to rereoelve from our readers, notes relating to any remarkable incident or peculiarity they have noticed In bird, animal, or plant life, and he will also be pleased to answer questions. Letters should bo addressed to him personally, care of Tribune Office, Hutlngs. Rrom Siberia to New Zealand. The handsome and elegant Pacific golden plover, seen by a correspondent a) Corbyvale, Westport, on October 23, is one of the world’s most famous migrants. Like the Pacific godwit and the knot—waders three—it nests in the Arctie Regions, but it come to New Zealand year in, year out, with unerring regularity. It has a winter costurns and a summer costume. The winter costume, put on in August and September, and worn in New Zealand, as described by the Corbyvale correspondent, is shiny brown, spotted or speckled with white and gold, with silver on the under part of the body. Hie Pacific godwit and the knot gather together in great flocks. The Pacific golden plover, Mr. E. F. Stead reports, usually is seen in somewhat thinly distributed companies. At different tmies. he has seen many hundreds of golden plovers, but not more than six that had any sign on its breast of the black breeding plumage. During a terrific gale, when he went from Sydney to Wellington twenty years ago, two golden plovers flew on board, and took up their quarters on cases of oranges on the after boat-deck. A C pathetic chief officer protected n, and they stayed for two days, leaving probably to continue their journey across the Tasman Sea from Australia to New Zealand. That was in October. The Corbyvale visitor, doubtless, bad completed the journey when it was fonnd. ITS YEARLY MIGRATION. An idea is given of the length of that journey when it is stated that the golden plover’s nesting-grounds are in North-Eastern Siberia, and, along the sea-coast of Alaska. Its yearly migration is along the Asian coast to Japan, the Phillipine Islands, the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago, Borneo, Java, Australia, and so on to New Zealand. The Hawaiian Islands and smaller islands in the Pacific are on its itinerary. It is a casual visitor to Arabia, Malta and Spain, and about fifteen records have been made of its presence in England and Scotland. i, THE KUAKA. The very plentiful godwit, the Maoris’ knaka, is the Pacific godwit, or eastern bar-tailed godwit, but Mr Stead has recorded, also, the Hudsonian godwit, or American black-tailed godwit, which is ranch less plentiful in New Zealand than its ally. All four individuals of the Hudsonian godwit noted in New Zealand, seem to have been taken near Lake Ellesmer.e Canterbury. Lord Ranfurly sent the first one to the British Museum; two are in Canterbury Museum; and one is in Mr Stead’s collection. The Pacific godwit's nestinggrounds are in Eastern Siberia, Kamchatka, and Western Alaska. Its route on its great southern migration is through Manchuria, Korea, China, Japan, the Phillipine?, Borneo and Celebes to islands of the Pacific, including the New Hebrides, Norfolk Island, Fiji and Samoa, and then to ’(Australia and New Zealand; and it is • casual visitor to the Hawaiian Islands and California. t THE LITTLE STINT. The Pacific golden plover, the Pacific godwit and. the knot are plentiful in suitable places in New Zealand •t this season. A smaller migrant, with a modest grey costume, the little stint, is represented in New Zealand collections by about seven specimens. In vast numbers it nests on the tundras of Siberia. Its route to New Zealand seems to be via Southern Asia, India, Ceylon and the Malay Archipelago. There is one record in New Zealand of

the sanderling, the only specimen! of this migrant known in New Zealand, an interesting additions to the native birds section of Canterbury Museum. Mr Stead, who obtained it at Lake Ellesmere, describes it as, in its full winter plumage, resembling New Zealand’s wry-billed plover in size and colours, although its bill is not bent to one side, a character that distinguishes the wry-bill from all other birds in the world. The high north, all round the North Pole, is the sanderling’s other home. SANDPIPERS AND DOTTERELS. Twenty-two years ago, Mr. Stead, at Lake Ellesmere, took the first curlewsandpipers recorded in New Zealand. He had seen them often since, usually in company with banded dotterels. Their only known nesting-place is in the valley of the Yenisei, the great Siberian River that flows into the Arctic Ocean. The irresistible attraction offered by the sunny south to these residents of the Arctic Regions is a secret hidden in their breasts. Almost the same climate, the same food supplies, and the same conditions are available much nearer their northenr homes, yet they fly from end to end of the earth to spend the summer months here. THE CUCKOOS. More shining cuckoos than usual were heard hy Mr C. Stokell in the Ellesmere district this season. Along the Selwyu River at different points over a distance of four miles, his brother and he. on October 16, heard six. Several of them were accmopanied by a chaffinch. It was impossible to determine whether the chaffinch’s object was to take insects disturbed by a cuckoo amongst the willows, or whether it regarded a cuckoo as an intruder that needed watching. A very tame cuckoo was seen on the Main Drain, Fernside, Ellsmere district. It flew to within a few feet of the observers to catch a fly on the wing, and whistled immediately afterwards.

“I like the long-tailed cuckoo very much,” Mr E. S. Toone writes from Waiotahi, Bay of Plenty, “as it always comes to eat sparrow eggs from pinus radiata trees. One season, it carried young sparrow out of the nests when we were watching it. During the day, it is very silent, but at night it may be heard screeching.”

NEW ZEALAND’S EXTINCT EAGLE

New Zealand's great eagle, Harpagornis, left its bones scattered over this country. It received its dismissal in fairly recent times geologically, but so long ago that no human being ever sa.w it spread its wings. Its extinction has made New Zealand devoid of eagles. If it had lived, it would be, perhaps, more famous than the golden eagle, to which Mr Seton Gordon, Aviemore, In-verness-shize, Scotland, has devoted a large monograph. Trap gun and poison have done, in part, for the golden eagle, what Nature did thoroughly for New Zealand’s eagle. The golden eagle is extinct in England; it is diminishing fast in Ireland; in some districts of the Highlands of Scotland it is going down hill. The most optimistic view Mr Seton Gordon can take is that, over the Highlands as a whole, the golden eagle is holding its own, probably. This drift towards extinction is in the United Kingdom only; the golden eagle’s vast range covers a large part of Europe, Northern Asia. India, China, Northern Africa and America, as far south as Mexico. SUCKING FISH. A lady took to the Australian Museum. Sydney, two sucking fish, caught in New Zealand waters. With a large sucking-disc on the top of its head, a sucking-fish attaches itself to sharks and other creatures of the sea, and to vessels, and has easy transport from place to place. Mr G. P. Whitley, ichthyologist at the museum, was surprised to find on the fish a remarkable parasite. It had long, stringy processes springing from its bristly tail. The parasite is arrow-shaped, and the stuck in a bull by a toreador. It processes make it look like a banderilia is like a worm, but is a crustacean, named Pennella—little feather—allied to a group which, when young, have only one eye. Little is known of Pennella, except that the strings that trail behind are bags of tiny eggs.