PUKEKO SWAMP

Forest and Bird, Issue 51, 1 February 1939, Page 3

PUKEKO SWAMP

(By James Cowan.)

IN the old township there was a swamp of flax and raupo reeds within a hundred and fifty yards or so of the school. There was a brewery there, a tall wooden structure alongside the shallow stream or ditch that drained the swamp pools. It was not every Waikato town that was blessed with a brewery, and this one conferred an air and aroma of distinction on the place; it was a small affair, but it loomed large in the eyes of the populace as the leading local industry. The old brewer —it is many a year ago and the place of fragrant hop odours has long ceased operationswas a man beloved by all the countryside, and I am sure no one esteemed his establishment and its product and by-product more highly than the little tribe of pukekos that inhabited the whispering raupo.

Riding to school in those long-ago years, we knew pretty well every family of the red-legged, blue and black-coated swamp hens that stalked the marshes and fished for eels in the lagoons that the road skirted; at any rate we were quick to observe any temporary desertion of the favourite foraging pools. The pukeko is given to occasional migrations, but that tribe in the brewery swamp was an exception. It seemed permanently attached to the place, and particularly to the streamlet that carried off the marsh waters and the brewery drainage to the near-by river. What with the sustenance obtained in the eel swamp, and the garden patches here and there, and the watercourse of piquant flavour, it was perfectly satisfied with its lot, and even a charge of shot now and again from one of the village sports was not regarded as a serious drawback to the enjoyment of life in the raupo.

Sometimes there was an unusual commotion in the swamp, the raucous row of a pukeko fight. Some other flock, sniffing that delightful brewery aroma, and maybe sampling the hops drainings, had attempted to jump the old settlers’ claim. The interlopers were ejected; our clan held its reedy domain against all invaders.

The schoolmaster’s garden and the paddock in which we boys who rode in from a distance kept our horses sloped down to the rushes and

the swamp. The master grew vegetables and he had a patch of maize. Naturally, the garden was regarded by Ngati-Pukeko as one of their legitimate foraging grounds. When the young crops were coming on the owner kept a vigilant eye on them from the windows. Every now and again those fine days he would give us a task to keep us busy for the next halfhour, and stroll out of the one-room school. A few minutes later there would be the double bang of his gun. “Missed again!” we said. The pukeko became expert in the art of dodging the gunner’s shots; at any rate, we never heard that he had hit any of the marauders. He would have told us all about it if he had.

But I believe even the schoolmaster would have been sorry to see that little tribe of swamp-turkeys exterminated. They did not do his garden much harm, and, as he said himself, he did not grudge them a few cobs of young corn or a cabbage here and there in return for their war on the grubs and caterpillars and other plagues of the vegetable-raiser’s life. They were well worth their keep. The pukeko is one of the most useful birds as well as a handsome one.

The glossy-plumaged clan, the brewer, the schoolmaster, have gone; the swamp is grass and gardens now. That brisk provincial town now has a Chamber of Commerce; and you may not believe it but the principal thoroughfare has been named Main Street. I do not suppose there are many there who have ever seen a pukeko family in its native haunts. Perhaps one lone law-protected survivor of the old township days will flap his way down from the up-country swamps, dimly remembering the convivial feastings of his youth.

“Well, I’m hanged,” says the town sportsman who pots him, “if it isn’t an old boogekker! What the deuce is he doing here? No good for the pot; tough as old boots. The town clerk can have him for the museum.”

Protection -f- cover -J- food -f- water birds. William Vogt.