NATIVE BIRDS

Hokitika Guardian, 6 December 1930, Page 6

NATIVE BIRDS

STUDY OF THEIR SONCS. LECTURE BY MR JOHANNES C. ANDERSEN. CHRISTCHURCH, December 1. “This Birds of New Zealand and Their Songs” was tbe title of a lecture delivered to tbe Society for Imperial Culture by Mr Johannes C. Andersen, on Saturday evening in the hall of the Chamber of Commerce. Dr J. Wight, Rector of Canterbury College presided. Dr Might, in introducing the lecturer remarked that Mr Andersen was wellknown already to the members of the Society. He was indeed, a Christchurch boy, although like the late Mr Justice Alpcrs, his fellow-countryman, he had not been born in New Zealand. ‘.‘What strikes one about Mr Andersen,” said Dr. Might, “is his; versatility. He lias distinguished himself as a poet as a writer of short stories, as an historian, as an anthropologist, and in all kinds of scientific study, while his work for the Turnbull Library in Wellington is well known. Like all poets Mr Andersen is a great lover of Nature and bis lecture will show just how deep a lover of New Zealand bird life his is.” “What made me take up the study of New Zealand birds,” said Mr Andersen, in beginning bis lecture, “was the fact that apparently they were becoming extinct and that a record of their songs was necessary before they died out altogether. It soon struck me thaff the birds of New Zealand were different from nearly all those of England, in that many of them had songs which could be repeated over and over again. Of English birds only the blackbird and one or two others sings in repetition and when Browning wrote, ‘That’s the wise thrust; he sings each song twice over,’ he was quite mistaken.”

Many of the New Zealand birds, continued the lecturer, were on the point of becoming composers. It was said by English naturalists that birds were not fettered to the use of scales in their music as men were ,and that this was because the scale was an artificial thing devised by man. This was not true—the scale was a natural thing and the birds followed it, sometimes even singing in harmony. The tui, indeed, had a range of four octaves and understood the values of pitch and the musical interval.

TWO SPECIES OF

GRAY WARBLERS.

“A curious thing about the grey warbler, a bird well known in Canterbury,” said the lecturer, “is that the birds in each different district have a different song, probably because they don’t travel about, very much. For ft 'ong time scientists thought that there were two different species, but they couldn’t find any proofs. If they had followed the songs of the bird they would have found them. One species has no fixed musical value and the other sings a song of the same quality, but of definite musical value.” ,

He had spoken about the grey warbler first, said Mr Andersen, beacuse it was the bird that acted as host to the New Zealand cuckoo. The warbler had a bottle-nest suspended from tbe tree branches, and, as the cuckoo that used the nest was five or six times as large as the warbler, it had always een a problem how he got his egg into the nest. For the first half of the season the cuckoo sang only the first half of its songs, and it was not until the summer had come that the whole song was sung. Another interesting point about the cuckoo was that no one knew for certain whether the birds migrated. The cuckoo was always supposed to migrate like the godwits, but no one had ever seen him actually leaving, and it was probable that he was* hidden away somewhere in the country when he was not in his usual haunts SINGING IN CHORUS, “The broil creeper is another South Island bird. A peculiarity of their singing is that one bird always begins the song and then the others join in, and sing exactly the same notes. The song is not a simple one, so there can be no doubt that the birds know what they are singing .Sometimes the leader puts the accent beat, on the first note, and sometimes on the third and the chorus always follows him exactly.

“The songs of the larger birds are exceedingly difficult to imitate. The tui for example, has a range of four octaves and althought lie sings mainly in the lower register be has a song pitched so high that many people cannot hear it at all. Usually, when. singing in the lower key, be interrupts his .sweet notes with bard sounds, in imitation of various noises that be has heard. The tui is a great mimic and if, for example lie is brought up near a farmyard, his song will be strongly influenced by the clucking of the fowls. There has been a question whether the tui i.s a better

s nger than the nightingale, but it is difficult to answer because one can’t hear them together. However, the early settlers straight from England used to write home and say that there was a better singer in New Zealand than the nightingale—the tui. THE TUI OR THE BEIVLBIRD. “The tui lias a different song in the morning from bis song in the evening and different songs for various times of the day. It is his evening song that ius so like the bellbird’s, but though their songs are sometimes alike, the birds themselves have entirely different characteristic-—the tui sits tstill and sings deliberately, while the bellbird is- always fluttering about from branch to branch, and sometimes even doesn t 1 finis!) off bis song properly. I have soon

a tui and a bellbird sitting side by side on a branch singing a duet, and it birds can sing a duet, surely they must know what they are singing. It was a very simple duet, but still it was a duet.

“With the bellbird it is the female who usually sings, but when the male does smg it is the most beautiful song in the bush. The bird seems to sing with feeling, sounding like a perlect contralto singing with a sob in her voice. But, unfortunately, the male birds sing only too rarely. To hear the morning, song of the bellbirds and tuis in the sanctuary at Kapiti Island, one has to get up very early—about three o’clock—but it is more than worth it. In the right season Venus is the morning star, and when one reaches the h. 11top one sees her burning like a ball of lire in the east, where the sun is to rise. Gradually the night grows pale over the mainland, and then suddenly down in one of the valleys otf the island one hears the notes of a single bird. Perhaps there will bi; 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, andi 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 the house, and had to be chased away. When the young ones gew up they flew away, but next year two returned. The caretaker saw them on the pond in the distance and sounded the usual call for feeding time. There was a .swish over the warter, a ‘quack and the ducks flew to his 'feet. Anil these were wild ducks, mind you. Most of the bush-birds can be tamed, and indeed, 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. they 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 their 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 literature.’

A vote of thanks to Mr Andersen was proposed by Mr L. R. Denny, and carried by acclamation >