BLOSSOMS IN SEASON

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 743, 9 October 1953, Page 9

BLOSSOMS IN SEASON

SEPTEMBER 15

ELEN, my niece and neighbour, who spent August in Clyde, was surprised to find the fruit trees as far forward there as they were here, and no marked differences in the flower gardens

of Dunedin. Now in a note from Mangonui, North-

land, R.R.D. sends this information:

Today (September 9) our peaches are nearly but not quite in full. bloom; but our red plum shows only the first spray, while the Japanese plum has not thought about blossom yet. Neither have our two pear trees, about 20 years old; and this is in a district where we grow good winter swedes. and potatoes in all the four seasons. It is chiefly advertising, R.R.D_ thinks, ‘that makes us expect more dramatic differences as we move north and south. Though,he has been crossing from island to island for some years.

he says that he is always surprised, when he goes south in the last week of August or the first days of September "to see that fruit trees such as peaches and plums, which were not out in blossom at Mangonui, Or just starting to spray, are in abundant bloom" by the time he gets down to Canterbury, in, say, six days. "And going north about the same time, I do not find that the Waikato is ahead except for grasses, or that Mangonui is noticeably earlier than either Canterbury or the Waikato." se ts

SEPTEMBER 17

CALLED off the ferret campaign when I had caught and killed sixfive bucks and one doe. Now I am pursuing them in print. It was pointed out to me that what I had killed were perhaps not ferrets at all, but polecats, and that biologists were beginning to

wonder. whether true ferrets had ever reached New

Zealand. This sent me to G, M. Thomson again (The Naturalisation of Animals and Platts in New Zealand, 1922). and to K. A. Wodzicki (Introduced Mammals of New Zealand, 1950), and neither one nor the other is quite definite on the point. Thomson says (p. 72) that wild ferrets are polecats, but confesses (p. 74) that he has found no record that the "true’’. polecat was ever introduced into New Zealand. He also suggests (p. 75) that ferrets can’t have brown coats. Dr. Wodzicki agrees that. we have stoats, weasels, and a third mustelid that is commonly called a ferret, but thinks it safer, until research has gone a little further, to call this third animal a fitch. » I resist the temptatiorf to use Juliet’s argument,’and I am not going to say or suggest that Dr. Wodzicki’ is too cautious. In science no one can be too cautious. But our ferrets have been fer- |

rets as long as I can rémember, They were ferrets when they came here, and whatever liberties they have taken in mating and breeding since, they have remained ferrets. They are all "common," all "wild" if they are not in boxes, all predatory, but all capable of being domesticated. The younger you get them the more tractable they are, and the- more carefully you take them by the neck the less often you will get bitten. But asking me to call them fitches is asking me to call magpies shrikes and our black teal scaups. ~~ a

SEPTEMBER 18

at bo! Quite as interesting (now that I am in their company) as the uncertainty of the. authorities about the origin of our ferrets; is their uncertainty about their survival and distribution. Thomson thought on page 72 that our South Island winters were too cold for ferrets.

On page 75 he admits that he now knows better. and

says that ferrets withstand cold quite easily if it is dry. But he still thought (in 1922) that ferrets were not common in the South Island. Wodzicki says that although "many domestic ferrets are kept by rabbiters" and "wild ferrets or polecats" have been reported from various parts. of the country, it has been difficult to collect specimens for his researches. That makes strange reading to me, and must, I am sure, be strange to most people of my age who have a rural background. In 12 years in the North Island I never saw a ferret, primarily because I was a city dweller most of the time. But I can’t remember a year in the South Island when I would have had difficulty in trapping a ferret in any district in which there were rabbits or fowls. Jim caught 23 ferrets in autumn with two traps. I have just caught six in eight days. In my whole life I must have seen ten ferrets for every stoat, and I should think at least three weasels, But Dr. Wodzicki has found that stoats are more widely distributed-not necessarily more numerous-than either ferrets or weasels, and that weasels in recent years have become exceedingly rare, I hope it is true; but I helped to kill a family of weasels (parents and half-grown young hunting together) in the Raglan motor camp four years ago, and I have seldom spent a day on the roads of Otago or Southland without seeing a weasel cross in front of me. On my last’ journey south (February, 1953), I saw a weasel cross the road near Tekapo, a second run into a cuivert near Miller’s Flat, a third just escaped my‘wheels at Rae’s Junction, and a fourth emerged from a gorse hedge near Waitahuna, stopped for a second and looked at me, then raced back into cover again. In sum that is not many; but I can’t believe that there were no fathers and mothers, and no litters of brothers and sisters, not far away out of sight. (To be continued)