PERSISTENT PIGEONS
Sir-In Shepherd’s Calendar in your issue of September 21 under the heading of "Persistent Pigeons," Syndowner states: "Though it is just on 50 years since he left Dunedin . . . he remembers still that one of his consolations when he went unwillingly to school there was the Town Belt and his teacher G. M. Thomson’s talks about the birds in it, But he does not remember seeing a pigeon there or hearing G.M. mention one." In A New Zealand WNaturalist’s Calendar in the chapter entitled "Rambles around Dunedin" (being a Presidential address delivered to the members of the Otago Institute) my Uncle, referring to a tramp to Swampy Hill, says: "Lower down in the bush-clad slopes and in the denser vegetation of the ravines, kiwis, ground thrushes and crows were abundant and no doubt kakapos also occurred; while in the upper foliage the silent wood pigeons were very common, feeding in spring and early summer on the kowhai leaves and later in the season on the berries of mistletoe and the turpentiny fruits of the miros and other pine trees." When one considers it, as the crow flies, or as in this instance the pigeon flies, there is no great distance between the lower slopes above mentioned and the Town Belt of Dunedin. It is 46 years since I left that city but if my memory serves me aright I have seen wood pigeons in the earlier years in the Town
Belt reserve.
PERCY
THOMSON
(Stratford).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 896, 5 October 1956, Page 5
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246PERSISTENT PIGEONS New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 896, 5 October 1956, Page 5
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