One-way Travellers

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 922, 12 April 1957, Page 26

One-way Travellers

bX

SUNDOWNER

MARCH 23

name nor his address-has sent me another message about rabbits in Ecuador. The first time I was told anonymously that their condition was worrying the Ecuadorian Government I suspected a hoax, and I suspect it more strongly now when the news comes anonymously SS er | have neither his

a second time; but it could be true. Ecuador

is one of the countries that have had technical assistance from the United Nations, and if there is no Minister in Quito capable of arguing that rabbits are good to eat and: therefore to be encouraged, there are many experts in the service ofthe United Nations capable of starting the argument for him. I am, in fact, assured that while we have given Boards in New Zealand drastic powers to kill rabbits at our expense, Ecuador has established a Rabbit Production Centre and has asked the United Nations for assistance in encouraging rabbits to breed. It is a circumstantial story which it would be reckless to circulate without some facts. I find it almost as difficult to suppose that it is all fiction as to believe that there is a Government in the Southern Hemisphere-Ecuador, I suppose, is in neither hemisphere-open | to the argument that rabbits pay.

MARCH 26

me ad = \WHEN I repeated a few weeks ago what an Australian ornithologist said about our dotterels, that they are the only east-to-west migrators to Australia, R.R.D.M. wrote from Mangonui

to warn me that "the bird men would be after me." But the bitd

men lay low. Nothing art all happened until R.R.D.M. himself returned with a long statement made two years ago in a newspaper in Auckland. With this

in front of me I am almost bold enough to say (in the manner of a Chinese philosopher) that R.R.D.M. is right and that the Australian expert is not wrong. The point’ made by the Australian was that dotterels alone, as far as he knew, migrated regularly from New Zealand in the autumn and returned regularly in the spring. The fact established by R.R.D.M. is that gannets go in large numbers to Australia every autumn. They go,\ but they do not return. If they come back eventually it is one or two or three years later; and large numbers of the birds hatched here each year do not leave New Zealand. That, if I have read the statement intelligently, is all the authorities have established so far. They have ringed hundreds of gannets on this side of the Tasman and had a few rings returned from the other side. They know that some birds get across in days, others only in weeks; and that many die on the way. But they have not, I gather, found a New Zealand bird in Australia in the autumn and the same bird back in New Zealand in the following spring. If, then, migration in birds means going away from a country or district and returning after a few months, it is still possible that dotterels are the only birds in New Zealand which travel east and west. If migration means going away from the country of origin .and returning (presumably) some time, gannets do it as well as dotterels and perhaps in larger numbers, But gannets are sea birds. They have webbed feet, and they live on fish. Dotterels are land birds and live on grubs, worms, insects and crustacea. Though they find most of their food where water has just been, they are as terrestrial as we are, and can make the journey to Australia only in long flights of hundreds of miles at a stretch. They are therefore far ahead

of gannets as bold or reckless navigators, and must, in many hundreds of cases every year, pay for their boldness with their lives.

MARCH 28

baad * =e T is not necessary to travel farther than .our own windows at present to see what fain can do when the thermometer is high. We have all heard, or read, or seen that rain in low latitude deserts is followed almost at once by a miracle-flowers and fragrance that a

few hours earlier had no existence, Canterbury is not the tropics.

It is from 43 to 45 South, and miracles here come slowly. But they do come; and during the last three weeks, with six inches of rain and the thermometer at, or above, or very little below 70 day or night, there has been a more rapid transformation than I have ever noticed before. Bare patches of earth are disappearing under grass; dying trees have put out new shoots; autumn leaves are being pushed off from within; carrots and parsnips are putting on new tops; oats sown a month ago in my garden to be dug in before spring are waving now in the wind. But the most impressive sight of all is the sensational change of colour on dry pastures: deep green where cover was absent or very short, biscuit and green where the rank growth of a wet spring was not fed off or mowed but just drooped and died and whitened and lingered on waiting for the frest. Now the new growth has shelter from sun and wind, and although it will not defy the frost it will survive the first mild attacks. It is surprises like these that make old men young again. Instead of feeling Browning's fog in our throats we listen for the lark on the wing and look for the snail on the thorn. But the matter goes deeper than that if grass is our bread and our butter and our jam. Then we jingle pennies in our pockets as we walk about and tell ourselves that they will soon be shillings. We beam at our neighbours and are reconciled, in our minds, with our enemies. But in a day or two we look about again and ask ourselves when we saw so many white butterflies; why the tomatoes are wilting and the young cabbage plants have disappeared; what is wrong with the cherry trees and who has shot all the leaves off the spindlewood. One discovery leads to another, one anxiety to another, and in half an hour we know that we have never, however far back we go, seen as many beetles or as many grubs, as many woodlice or as many caterpillars, as many moths or as many butterflies as are holding high holiday uncer our feet and over our heads and in every direction round about us, We can’t milk our cows in peace because flies bite their legs. We can’t turn our backs on our sheep in case maggots appear in their wool, It is the pests’ carnival year, the annus mirabilis for winged and crawling nuisances. The miracle is wearing thin. We shall not be sorry when the rain goes and the thermometer drops to zero. (To be continued)