THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 291, 3 September 1910, Page 5

THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN.

* By W.B.

ABOUT THE PIGEON,

Despite repeated answers, the question is still asked: Why our kuku, or kereru, or pigeon (Carpophaga Nova Zelandia) yearly declines in numbers. Man' 3 living brain-cells are only finite, and to remember, without reference to what has been explained in previous replies, scattered over a wide field of literature, is a rather large demand. Yet, I think a short resume may be restated and exhibit something new. Our wood pigeon, then, in the years when the Maori still pecked at the forest with his axe of stone, before the white man's axe of steel, and saw, and wedge, soothed his ruth to murder and destroy, and Nature, glorious in her perfection of beautiful proportion, nurtured each of its kind with loving care, the kuku was so plentiful that even the Maori during his annual snaring and spearing expeditions, catching them in their countless thousands, caused no apparent diminution of their numbers. For he knew the forest fruits the kuku fattened on: hinau, niiro, matai, kahikatea, kareao (supple-jack), popohue (cono muhlenbeckia), kawakawa (piper excelsum), poroporo (solanum aviculare),etc. And so sacredly were these conserved that, where they grew, and birds were known to annually return to feed thereon, even an idiot recognised their sanctity, and approached their habitat With awe. And when in their various seasons the fruit was ripe, the kuku returned and took possession of its realm. And the annual thinning outs the Maori found it his profit to unconsciously perform, provided just that balance which equipoises demandment and supply of food. It is just here, in this example, we may see how immeasurably wiser Nature is to convention, sentiment, and art. And when these ask, bewildered at discrepancies, the admission seems barbarous that Art is an impudent attempt by man to violently deform proud Nature to his arrogant ideals. So piously were these preserves approached, that certain rites and crafts were acted when their precincts were entered on; and before even a snare could be set, intricate observances of a placative intent, were rigidly enforced and cheerfully obeyed; just one instance: After the forest gods have been appealed to for their favours, and especial incantations chanted, for mana upon spear and snare, the birding party went upon its quest: the trappers to set snares, and the spearers to climb the sacred trees previously prepared with climbing ladders, and fern leaf bowers, from beneath whose cover the fowler waited until the unsuspicious bird alighted where the berries seemed the ripest, and while the kuku "picks out the eyes of God's own country" (vide A. W. Hoger), protrudes a 14-ft, and longer, slender rod, pointed with a splinter of an enemy's thigh bone, delicately barbed and polished, and pushing it noiselessly beneath the happy banqueter, stake the creature in its vitals, and despite aimless flutter, draws it to him, bites its head and casts it down to earth. But before the party leaves camp at early dawn, extraneous garments are laid aside, no food eaten or touched, but stately and sedate, each fowler stalked forth, repeating invocations for success taught him by his tohunga, and lauded with reverent memory. And when —towards noon, when the kuku's feeding time is ended—and he returns to camp, then, and not till then, may food be eaten and the frivolities of life resumed. Of the home economy, its habitat, and its migration, these the Maori learnt from observation. He knew that it periodically disappeared, and of such a3 remained behind, he found. them nesting in the forks of trees, where kie kie proffered cover. That there the matron bird collected sticks and leaves in the immediate vicinity: that there it brooded its two eggs, and fed its young on berries disgorged with that intent into the gaping, furry youngster's throats, turn and turn j about; until they started on their own. All these adjuncts to its life this quaint observer learnt and stored away for future application with a view to kai; but its destination, when, its harvesting completed, it disappeared, he might have thought about, -indeed, but if so, he left no word of his discoveries. It has been reserved for us, the pakeha, from trave-is in other lands, and meeting our kuku there, to trace his various migrations. And here I might intervene to emphasise how that migrative instinct resolves us many mysteries. For, when, say, in some Matiere bush in ages 'long ago, the pigeon found a patch of most esculential miro or hinau, and those fruits were done, it travelled to latitudes where other sorts were ripe, and thus the years have seen its innual return, until the mystic stranger with a mania for hewing things, cut down these trees; and when upon its following advent it found tis orchard an open void, it in consonance with pigeon sense that it should waste its time wondering what had become of its preserve*; or moon about on dry charred trees till the white marauder fetched out his gun? No. bless you! That "stupid" bird'seeks other orchards, and pakeha, not having a pigeon's common-sense lavs his sudden final flight to isolated gunshots here and there, and hies him madly to the Talking House, where scientists of like capacity, ordain "elo=e seasons," and cures of similar ineptitude; for the birds, while these wa-rte much doddery, have flown to lands where Nature's biped children have not yet learnt to hew and slay. *■ That the pigeon mirgates, I have witnessed on the Chathams, a group of Hands to the southward of New Zealand, and distant from the nearest land-to-land 400 miles, before Ithat scourge to wild life, the sheep, •ring-barked its fruit trees, and baae it return no more, where its numbers were so dense that, when a covey settled on the shrub-like trees, they swayed like rpysterefs who have

been "hevin some," and whose diminution the many shooting parties in the season, made absolutely no impression on; but twenty years of sheep destruction of their fruit preserves, and its gradual non-return, confirms the attitude I take: That it is not the gun has frightened our visitors away, but the wild destruction of its food supplies. In the days I write of, when the early autumn sheened the slopes and uplands with the chromes of ripened fruits, I have seen the migrant kuku come from seaward in singles ; in pairs; but never in coveys numbering more than six to eight, but the invasion was continuous, and as they fattened, some, with a premonition of winter storm and heavy flights, left earlier than others, who, over-poised by gluttony, too fat to fly, and for that very defect enabled to bear the rigours of those latitudes, nested there. I have found these nests and watched the progress from egg to full-fledged chick. The question has been asked: Where does the pigeon migrate to? And some have suggested the Niccbas Islands; but M. De la Geroniere, in a cruise among those islands, very fluently describing the richness of those tropics in multifarious bird and forest life, makes no mention of the pigeon. Neither does the Austrian scientific expedition in the No vara, 185 S. But A. R. Wallace tells us that he found them in their several varieties, in Java and the Sunda Islands. Yes; the pigeon migrates, but so sure as we destroy their food trees, thes immigrants will stay away despite cheap clap-trap, close-seasona, and penal laws!