Fulton. — Disappearance of Neic Zealand Birds. 493 



famed in Maori lore, once very common near every house, have 

 almost entirely gone from our midst. I saw a solitary pied 

 fantail in Jubilee Park last spring, and a black fantail in Leith 

 Valley Road in November of last year. At the Taieri an occa- 

 sional specimen still lingers, but their extreme gentleness, their 

 fearlessness, and curiosity, allow of their easy destruction. 

 I am pleased to report that they are considered common at 

 Raglan, Piako County, Rangi-iwi, Port Albert, Tauranga, 

 Stratford, Manganui, Castlepoint, and numbers of other places 

 throughout the islands. One came into my garden at Pitt 

 Street on the 21st April, 1907. 



Our crows, once common in many localities, but always 

 restricted in their range, far from common near Dunedin in the 

 fifties, and never seen by white man between Mount Cargill 

 and Catlin's River, have long disappeared from our locality, 

 though they are still sparingly distributed through the pine 

 forests of Owaka, at Milford Sound, and in the Urewera country. 

 The North Island crow is reported as being extinct in a large 

 number of places, but is still mentioned as existing in four or 

 five ; and, as the birds in the Tararua Range are said to be as 

 common as ever, it is probably found there in numbers ; he is 

 also found at Komako, Maungatawhiri, Ngatimaru, Raglan, 

 and Mount Egmont. The South Island crow is reported as 

 being pretty common at Stewart Island : this bird, which is 

 quiet and shy in its habits, largely a ground feeder, its nest an 

 easy object for weasels and rats to rob (being built not many 

 feet from the ground), is now found only on rare occasions. The 

 collecting fiend has had a great deal to do with the destruction 

 of these birds ; and the small clutch of eggs — not more than 

 two or three — has also been a factor of no mean importance. 



The saddleback was never to my knowledge known at the 

 Taieri or near Dunedin. At all times curiously local in its 

 habits, rarely found on the east coast of our Island, fairly 

 common in the Waikato district, the Barriers, and the depths 

 of the West Coast, it was to be met with sparingly at Milford 

 ten years ago, but latterly I hear it is almost gone. It is still 

 found at Wairoa Gorge, near Nelson. For some reason which 

 is not quite clear, the saddleback had the habit of accompanying 

 the flocks of yellow-heads on their expeditions ; possibly some 

 food found by the chattering crew was made more easily attain- 

 able by the saddleback than when he hunted alone. Much 

 of the scarcity of the saddleback is due to the insatiable greed 

 of collectors, who invariably bagged every one that appeared. 

 Sir Walter Buller himself makes that clear in his supplementary 

 volumes. The saddleback is practically extinct in inhabited 

 parts of New Zealand. 



