496 Transactions. 



among the imported birds. Both birds are predatory, and have 

 been repeatedly seen eating eggs of other species. 



Our wood-pigeon, the most beautiful and harmless bird we 

 have, one of nature's noblemen, is, like the kaka, deliberately 

 being gunned to death. At Catlin's, where it breeds, it is actu- 

 ally shot in the breeding season. It lays but two eggs, in a 

 flimsy and unprotected mass of sticks, which does duty for a 

 nest, and numbers of young perish on this account alone. 

 If, as now happens, we permit of indiscriminate shooting at 

 this time, the eggs and callow young will rot, and this noble 

 bird will soon be wiped out of existence altogether. The pigeon 

 is still plentiful throughout New Zealand, but with this sort 

 of thing going on he must go. A weasel has been seen to run 

 up a tree to a pigeon on the nest, and, with its active twisting 

 and turning, running round and round, so fascinate the bird 

 that it has fluttered helplessly to the ground, where 'it was soon 

 " polished off." You will thus see that unless some strong steps 

 are taken to protect this bird from man and beast, neither bush 

 resident nor nature-lover elsewhere will have any opportunity 

 of seeing it outside of our museums. The birds are found in 

 immense numbers in the Urewera country, the Upper Wanganui 

 and Rangitikei districts, Whangape, northern Auckland, and 

 on the Bay of Plenty coast ranges. 



On the Taieri Plain in the fifties our native quail abounded 

 through tussock and flax-bush. Now, search New Zealand 

 through length and breadth and you will find them not. They 

 are absolutely extinct. Tussock-burning destroyed nests and 

 eggs innumerable. These birds were the natural quarry of the 

 sparrow-hawk and harrier. Their eggs — from ten to twelve — 

 were carefully hidden in tussock, and their numerous progeny 

 were ready to hide almost the moment they were hatched ; but 

 what chance had they when the settler came among them ? 

 The quail was an active little bird, with keen sight, but poor of 

 flight, beautifully coloured (for protection), a born mimic, and 

 clever hider, and the sparrow-hawk and harrier and Maori 

 would never have exterminated it, but the white man, with 

 his gun, dog, and, worst of all, his agricultural implements — 

 his plough, his harrow, his poisoned grain, his scythe, and, later, 

 his reaping-machines — has gradually done the deed, and the 

 quail has gone. 



Our kiwis, with our kakapos, are being wiped out of 

 existence. Conspicuous, easily captured by dog or weasel, 

 hatctting but one egg at a time, and the egg or young com- 

 paratively easily got at, no wonder the kiwi finds the tourist 

 traffic too much for it, and that the day of the wingless bird 

 is over. Semi-nocturnal as it is, man is not its hunter, but 



