Gone bird nesting, a bygone pastime

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 13, Issue 631, 9 April 1996, Page 10

Gone bird nesting, a bygone pastime

Ex- Waimarino resident Gerry Cranston reminisces about his young days: As young children in the late 1920's one of our favourite pastimes was to go bird-nesting. During spring evenings, after we had finished milking the cows and on Sunday afternoons after a midday roast meal were the most popular times. My father had planted several rows of lawsoniana trees on our Rangataua road farm which, as they grew, were ideal for bird-nesting. Also the macrocarpas,

which had been planted by the previous owner some 12-15 years before, yielded many a nest. Finding nests was not too difficult for our young eyes as a bird, will always fly off when hearing any unusual noise and if you are alert enough you can usually mark it in your mind. My father was very fond of bird life (and everything concerned with nature) and made very sure we only took one egg from each nest. We were taught to be very careful and not to finger any of the remaining eggs. If the

balance of the eggs were touched or the nest disturbed in any way, the mother bird would not return. If we discovered an abandoned nest with the eggs cold, we were at liberty to take nest and all home with us, which we kept as treasures in the numerous huts and caves that we built. These nests were amazingly well-constructed, some with soft centres made by the chaffinch, yellowhammer etc, some built in a cocoon shape, beautifully soft inside like the sparrows

nest. The thrushes, blackbirds and starlings built a very hard perfectly round nest, I presume with mud or clay and perhaps bird droppings. When we asked Dad why some birds abandoned their nests that no one had apparently been near, he would tell us that perhaps they had flown into a power line and been killed. Or much more likely with so many children about, been killed by boys using shanghais or stone-throwing. I clearly remember during the spring months, we would sooner throw rocks at a bottle or tin sitting on a stump. When we were at the riverside, we would perhaps skip flat

stones across the river to the far bank — never at birds. One blackbird I can clearly remember had a white band of feathers growing around its neck, rather like a collar. It would nest in the trees handy to our cow bail each year. For several years we watched with interest to see if any of the hatched young birds had similar markings. But to our knowledge, none ever did so. I also remember ho w horrified we were, when we saw other children climbing our trees and taking eggs, nest and all, away with them with little or no thought of the wildlife.

The only nests my father encouraged us to destroy were the sparrows nests as they loved to dig up the seeds in the house garden, eat the chook's mush and wheat and gorge themselves on the grass seeds when the paddocks were sown. Each type of bird had different methods of concealing their nests from the prying eyes of wild animals. The nest that proved most difficult for us to find was the lark's which prefers to nest on the ground beside a log, a small piece of wood, a scotch thistle or even an old cow-pat. When disturbed, the lark would fly as quickly as possible high into the air making as much

noise as possible, then landing perhaps 25-50 yards away, it would then run along the ground dragging a wing, making various noises to lure you away. It was quite easy to be completely fooled by these antics, and the nest could be quite some distance away. The dead grass and twigs of their nests blended in perfectly with the natural colours of the ground cover. The eggs being a lightish green, with brown speckly spots also blended in perfectly. Bird-nesting would conclude when Dad called us home for afternoon tea, and then on to the shed to handmilk the dairy cows.