494 Transactions. 



The huia, a bird we have all read about, but few have ever 

 seen alive, is now very nearly extinct. Almost confined to the 

 mountain fastnesses of the Ruahine and dark glens of the Tara- 

 rua and Rimutaka Mountains, the huia was never common, 

 but it is reported as still existing in several places in the North 

 Island — Mangahao, Ngatimaru survey, Raglan, Komako, Kiin- 

 bolton, Ihuraua, Castlepoint, and Rongomai. Several observers 

 are emphatic in the statement that the birds were decimated 

 by the high price offered for them by collectors. 



Of our climbing-birds, the most notable is the kakapo — 

 that weird night-bird, half-owl half-parrot. Before the coming 

 of the pakeha he had been trapped by the Maori, and so deci- 

 mated were his ranks that he was to be found only in limited 

 localities, and those almost untrodden by the foot of man. He 

 could be found fairly frequently near the West Coast sounds 

 about ten years ago ; but the tourist traffic, with its accom- 

 panying dogs, cats, rats, and, later, ferrets and weasels, has 

 brought this unique flightless bird to the verge of extinction. 

 His great white eggs placed in hollow logs, and his stupidity 

 and sleepiness in the daytime, make him and his progeny an easy 

 prey to the four-legged enemy. In the great wooded forests 

 of Tuhoe Land the bird is absolutely extinct. The experiment 

 of breeding them at Resolution Island will not, I fear, prove a 

 permanent success, as I hear on good authority that a weasel 

 has been seen there. 



The " passing " of the parrakeet has always seemed to me a 

 strange business. The different species are all active, vigorous, 

 powerful of flight, pugnacious, and are able to subsist on grain, 

 fruit, seeds, insects, and native berries such as fuchsia, &c. ; they 

 nest in hollow trees, and lay a large number of eggs — eight to ten 

 in one nest ; and it seems curious that the bird should have 

 practically gone. He came in flocks in the seventies ; he was 

 a scourge in the eighties ; he was shot in thousands for his 

 destruction of grain and fruit ; then gradually he seemed to dis- 

 appear ; and now he is rarely heard near civilised parts. Pos- 

 sibly the destruction of timber, the felling of the broadleaf-tree, 

 his favourite home ; the attacks of weasels and rats, which can 

 get into his nesting-holes ; the increase of bees in hollow trees ; 

 shooting by farmers ; trapping by fruit-growers, are all reasons 

 why this pretty little parrot has gone. The non-success of the 

 large clutches of eggs in preserving the species, in strange 

 contradistinction to those of the kaka with three or four eggs, 

 points perhaps to the presence of some unknown natural enemy 

 against which this bird has had to struggle. It can be seen and 

 heard rarely in the dense bush at Catlin's, Milford Sound, 

 Hawke's Bay, and Waikato ; but reports from all parts of the 



