THE RARE KOTUKU

Hokitika Guardian, 17 August 1929, Page 7

THE RARE KOTUKU

(Auckland Star.)

The “ kotuku-rerenga-tahi, ” the shy white heron, so famed in Maori proverb and poetry, has appeared once again, this time at Mercury Bay. The beautiful bird, the most graceful creature in all our winged creation, is described as “apparently very tame.” The kotuku’s confidence in man is sometimes misplaced, Ifor a youth shot one the otfier day down at Okarito, in Soutll Westland, when he was after pukeko and anything else lie could kill in the lagoon. Nothing appears to have happened to him for his sin of heron murder beyond a lecture from the Bench. The kotrku reported at Mercury Bay may be the bird that was seen at Tauranga some time ago. It may also be identical with the white heron that some years ago delighted the Rotorua Maoris and some pakeha residents by making the Ohinemutu foreshore its fishing ground for several weeks. It was seen daily sitting on an old punt on the lake edge on the look out for Kx meals of trout and carp and frogs. It disappeared one day, and a few' days later a kotnku. no doubt the same, was reported from Tauranga. Now and again one of these lone-flying birds, as the Maori describes them,Ms seen in districts to which it has been oetrnpger for many years. One visited Koxtnn, near tlie Manawntu River mouth, some years ago, remained fishing in the swamp for a while, and then vanished, like a spirit, to parts' • unknown.

Years ago, before the great marshes and fens were drained, the kotuku was numerous in some of our remoter districts. The Ngaere swamp (near where Eltham now stands), in inland Tara-, naki. was a place where it abounded.. An old runaway soldier who lived with the Maoris of the Ngati-Ruanui tribe told me that he his Hauhau com pnnions made annual expeditious to the Ngaere in the ’sixties for eels and birds, and that they caught many white herons in snares near the lagoon edge. But it was probably in the South Island that they were most abundant. The name Lake Heron preserves a memory of the time when tlie kotuku were in plenty there, .as; observed by that Nature lover of othef. days. Mr T. H.. Potts,' who w rqte “Out in the Open'.” The Maori ,nanie of Lake Brunner, in Westland, wliicli is skirted by the railway line, .also preserves a picture? of the olden days, when the snowy heron, .with long, curved neck and spearlike beak, was seen standing as-still as a shadow-in the shallow waters, ready to transfix' the eel or the little kokopu fish. This name, Te Kotuku-whakoaka, mean,s “The Darting Heron,” or “Tlie Staging Heron.” But the rare bird Mins .for many years'- deserted the Brunnei shores) with their- noisy railways and sawmills. ‘ - ' ' •• • There is a small colony-erf kotuku far down the West Coast in the Okarito lagoon. This large area of shallow waters and raupo and flax is a fairly secure home for the rare birds. One of them was in the habit, I remember, -of flying into the old gold-digging township at Okarito, the coach terminus in former years, and fishing in a pond just in behind the one surviving public house. No hand or gun was raised, against him; the few inhabitants re-, garded his as tapu. The heron shot there lately, as mentioned above, fell to young New Zealand’s thoughtlessness or ignorance. Most schoolboys are told these days that it is their duty to protect and preserve tllie native birds. It is not easy to find that lagoon heronry. At any rate, when I was there, a good many years ago now several of us, including a Government photographer who was anxious to get; a unique picture, rowed across the lagoon and in and about its labyrinth of channels through the raupo but did not discover the secret sanctuary. -Stewart Island is the farthest south home of the kotuku. On the east coast of the island, to the south of Paterson Inlet, where the whalers go, there is a narrow, winding arm of the sea called Lord’s River surrounded- by wooded hills. Up towards its head is a heron colony, in probably the safest retreat in New Zealand for the rare white birds, where they are likely to survive when their fellows in' other parts have all vanished to the Reigna. The old Maoris say that the kotuku is the companion or attendant of a rangatira in Spiritland.