Hutchinson. — On Scinde Island. 217 



an English hedge-row will remember finding occasionally 

 flattened stones surrounded by piles of broken snail-shells. I 

 found just such a thrushes' killing-stone in the fennel jungle 

 at the mouth of Sturm's Gully some months ago. It was a 

 flattened slab of limestone, quarried at some time from the 

 bluff-face — a grim relic of the Pliocene sea-floor put to the 

 same use as the thrushes of the Plain of York put the worn 

 boulders of the glacial drift. 



Another well-known family, the Sturnida, or starlings, is 

 wanting here in the native birds, save — as with the thrushes 

 — in the less-known portions of our islands. It is a sturdy 

 Britisher who, in his thousands, wheezes and whistles from 

 bluff-face or telegraph-wire, intensifying the heat of our 

 sunlit days. 



The parrakeet, the kaka, and the long-tailed cuckoo are, 

 like the tui, but occasional visitors, but the beautiful little 

 shining cuckoo may be seen, or more often heard, yearly on 

 the bill. 



After these we come to those birds that frequent the marsh 

 and the seaboard. The dotterel is common. The bittern, 

 thanks to the pot-hunter, is fast becoming rare. I have only 

 once seen one actually on the Scinde Island side of the 

 swamp-channels. It is not till this bird rises in flight that 

 one recognises him as a heron. His beautiful kinsman, the 

 blue heron, has, I am afraid, disappeared from here. They 

 were to be seen on the Napier beach of forty years ago, but 

 have moved now to the quieter refuge of the Kidnappers and 

 Mahia. 



About the end of November flocks of a long-billed brown- 

 plumaged wading-bird appear on the swamp — the godwit, or 

 curlew as it is more commonly called. This bird is one of our 

 few migrants, and takes a yearly course almost from pole 

 to pole. I give an extract from Buller's " Birds of New Zea- 

 land " : "Our bird spends a portion of the year in Siberia, 

 and visits, in the course of its annual migration, the islands 

 of the Indian Archipelago, Polynesia, Australia, and New 

 Zealand. Von Midclendorff, who met with these birds in 

 great numbers in Northern Siberia (74-75° N. latitude), states 

 that they appeared there on the 3rd June, and left again in 

 the beginning of x\ugust. In the months of September and 

 April Swinhoe observed migratory flocks on the coast of 

 Formosa, and during the winter months he met with this 

 species still further south. Von Middendorff found it also in 

 summer on the south coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, although it 

 did not appear to breed there. It has likewise been observed 

 in China, Japan, Java, Celebes, Timor, Norfolk Island, and 

 the New Hebrides, and its range doubtless extends much 

 further ; but it has never been met with in India, this being 



