In Touch With Nature

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 26 November 1927, Page 15

In Touch With Nature

(By

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

Nature notes appear In tfie "Tribune" every Saturday. Mr Drummond will be pleased to rereceive 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 be addressed to him personally, oars ot Tribune Office, Hastings. , MAORI DOG AND DINGO Auitralia has ao extraordinary advantage over New Zealand in reaped to mammals. Its 400 species are matched by New Zealand’s two, if whales and seals are not counted. Those 400 are surprisingly diversified. They range fro mdogs and bats to rats and mice, dugongs, marsupials, and the world’s only two egg-laying mammals, the platypus and the spiny ant-eater. One of New Zealand’s land-mammals, the long-tailed bat, is on the Commonwealth’s list. Otherwise, there is no specific connection between the landmammals of the two countries separated by the Tasman Sea, although several species of birds and many species of insects are common to both. CURIOUS DOGS. Selecting “The Wild Animals of Australasia," as the title for a useful book on the mammals of Australia and New Guinea, Messrs. A. S. le Souel and H. Barrel might have coupled the Maoridog with the dingo. Passing over the egg-layers, the dingo is Australia's most interesting mamal. Handsome, graceful, not sagacious, with affinities to the wolves, it is a genuine dog. So was the Maori dog, but this member of the genus Canis was small, dull, stupid, quiet, lazy, sullen, very ugly and almost devoid of the proverbial watchdog's honest bark. The dingo is absolutely devoid of a bark, but it howls dismally as any dog that bays the moon. The Maori dog crossed with domestic dogs brought by Europeans. The crosses, going out into the mountains and the forests, became wild, a condition into which the self-indulgent Maori dog never lapsed. Its stupidity often caused it to be lost. The crosses, more vigorous than the Maori dog, wilder than their domestic ancestors, worried sheep and sometimes attacked men like packs of wolves. The dingo also crosses readily with domestic dogs, and the Australian pastoralist finds that the crosses are more cunning than either of their ancestral strains. They krfow all worth knowing by a dog about traps, poison and man's ways, and mutton appeals to me as a very desirable dish. THE ORIGINAL KURI.

The Maori dog became as extinct as the moa not very long after Europeans arrived in New Zealand to change the face of the fauna. All the crosses between it and domestic dogs were wiped out by settlers before 1900. and every strain of the Maori dog, apparently, has been extirpated. From all accounts, its loss la not greatly to be regretted, if it is regarded merely as a sample of the Canidae family, which includes some of the most faithful, intelligent and lovable creatures in the world. Messrs, le Souef and Burrel state that the purebred dingo is rare except in uninhabited districts. The pure dingo, evidently, is following the Maori dog on the road to extinction. The Maori dog is not on the list of New Zealand's mammals because evidence of its ancestry shows that it was not indigenous, but was brought by Maoris, who domesticated it, in their migrations from Pacific Islands. It has no more claim to rank amongst New Zealand's animals than have the hosts inother parallel between the Maori dog troduced by Europeans. Here is anand the idngo. Messrs, le Souef and Burrell show that the dingo was domesticated by the Australian aborigines and that there is reason to believe that they took it to Australia at some period in that vague borderland of time where the geologically recent meets the historically remote. In remote timet, possibly, neither the dingo nor the Maori dog was a dumb dog. They may have possessed the faculty to bark in remote times, and may have lost it owing to disuse. Charles Darwin states that descendants of European dogs left on an island, fed on shell-fish along the shore, and lost the faculty completely. MAORI DOG CUSTOMS. Alive, the Maori dog was a plaything and a pampered pet. Dead, its flesh was used for food, its skin for clothing, its hair for ornaments. Itfed pn rats, fish, birds, refuse and offal. Highly prized by its Maori masters, it received lavish affection. It was black, brown, particoloured or white. If white, it claimed particular attention, especially if the hairs on its tail were long. A white dog slept in a bouse on clean mats, in order that the precious tail should be kept as white as possible. The pets’ tails were shaved regularly and strangely, never by a common person. Their flesh wa sa sacred dish, fit for the tapu stomach of a tohunga. On some great occasions associated with tapu rites, a dgo was killed as food for the priest—killed by a tangata-a-moko, who tattooed chiefs. , PETS OF WOMEN. Some ninety-six years ago. at Mangakahia, a great lady had her chin tattooed in the ancient pattern. Sacred dog-flesh was necessary for the operator. The only dog in the neighbourhood had to be taken almost by force from its owner, a petty chief, who mourned and wept for the loss of his pet. Dogs were the particular pets of Maori women, who nursed them with affection. When Maoris shifted their places of residence, they took their dogs with them, sometimes carrying them long distances in canoes. Dogs taken on board Captan Cook’s vessels absolutely refused all food and soon died, as if from grief at being parted from their owners.

DOGS AS KIWI HUNTERS. The only use for Maori dogs when alive was in hunting kiwis at night. Rattles of pieces of wood or bone were tied to their necks by a hunter, who more easily followed the dogs’ movements. They were taken after dark to a place kiwis frequented. A kiwi's rumbling nolt was imitated by the hunter. On kiwis responding, the dogs were released to find them. A Maori chronicler explains that the rattling was mistaken by kiwis for the sounds of worms stirring in the ground, and that, whiietbe birds stood and listened, the dogs approached and baited them. The hunters, advancing with torches, dazzled and caught the birds. WHITE-HEADED STILTS. A fairly close watch has been kept by Mr J. Pattison during the past year on white- headed stilts that frequent swamps near Bay View, Hawke’s Bay. He reports that their winter migration is so brief that it hardly can be termed a migration. This year the stilts began to leave when the cold fveather came. At the end of three weeks they began to return. He believes that they leave when the food-supplies decline, and that last winter supplies were short at the places to which they migrated, and back they came to their old grounds. He adds:—“They begin to nest in swamps here in the last week of August. Fledglings were found in the third week of September. At pre-, sent. September 11. about ninety adults live in the swamp. When anybodygoes near their nests there is a great demonstration. Scores of stilts behave as if they had been wounded, in efforts to lure the intruder from their precious nests and young. They attack, singly or in numbers, any harrier hawk that comes in sight. Harriers seem to fear them and more off in haste. The eggs are fairly large, about the size of a bantam’s. They re stone-coloured, mottled and splashed with black; some have also dark red spots. Four eggs are the usual thing in each nest, but in one nest I found five. Although each nest is made roughly of grass, there is constant care of the home, and deaths are few. The young, when hatched, are fluffy, pretty chicks, from cream to putty in colour, marbled with black. The female induces them to leave the nest early, and she takes them to the long growth of grass or rushes where their home will be until they can fly." THE HAWK PEST. Commenting on an announcement that the Hawke’s Bay Acclimatisation Society intends to give a bonus for the destruction of hawks, Mr H. Christie. . Turua, Hauraki Plains, writes: “Hawks are a greater pest than stoats and weasels. When Mr and Mrs Oliver Wasley. Oraait, were standing on the rise of a bill on their property, they saw a hawk devouring something amongst bracken in a hollow. They thought that it might be some of their poultry, but found that the hawk was at a pheasant’s nest: several eggs in it had been broken. Other societies should take the same step and wipe the pests out.”