298 



' savagely at the wound, and his eyes with the filmy covering of the bird of prey were as 

 ' wicked as those of a cornered snake. It was some seconds before I could get a hold of his 

 'throat, and even then his cruel curved talons scored my hands with most unpleasant 

 ' vigour. The neck of a wounded bird is broken with a single swift jerk easy enough to all 

 ' appearance, but requiring a certain knack ill the accomplishment. It was dark by the 

 ' time I turned for home, and the mournful silence was disturbed only by the distant 

 ' monotonous hooting of a More-pork. The stars crept slowly out, and a slim moon hung 

 ' just above a line of dusky hills. In the neighbourhood of the Avon valley, bird-life is 

 ' not superabundant, and the few examples I have mentioned here do not by any means 

 • constitute a tithe of the different varieties which may be observed in their native haunts 

 ' by those who have eyes to see and patience to walk with that circumspection which is the 

 ' due demanded by all wild denizens of wood and field." 



—From the Western Mail, Perth, W. Australia. Dec. 25th, 1907. 



Hu Huscralian Settler In IRew Zealand 



The following cutting, which is taken from The Field of December 

 19th ult. will doubtless prove of interest to many readers. — Kd 



" Fifty thrbk yraks ago a little olive, grey, and yellow bird with white ' spectacles,' 

 -which is now quite common in New Zealand, was unknown to either Europeans or Maories. 

 In the winter of 1856 the lighthouse keeper on Dog Island, in Koveaux Strait, which separates 

 Stewart Island from the South Island of New Zealand, found one morning in the gallery 

 of the lighthouse towers scores of these birds lying dead. They had arrived in the night, or 

 early in the morning before the lights were extinguished, and had dashed against the 

 lantern. They had come from Australia, and, flying day and night without finding a 

 resting place, had crossed 1,000 miles of ocean before sighting New Zealand's shores. 



Members of the flock that survived the dangers of the voyage settled ill the 

 southern part of New Zealand, and ever since have occupied an honourable place in New 

 Zealand's avifauna. For several years these little birds remained in the southern district 

 of the dominion, but gradually spreads toward the north, until they were to be found in all 

 parts of the South Island. 



Although they had involuntarily crossed 1,000 miles of water in the Tasman Sea, they 

 hesitated before crossing twenty or thirty miles of water in Cook Strait, which separates 

 the .South Island from the North. At first the3' crossed in small numbers, again retired 

 to the South, and eventually advanced in force. Their arrival was recorded simultaneously 

 by a Maoii mailman at Waikanae, a small coastal village in Wellington province, and by 

 Sir Walter Buller, author of" A History of the Birds of New Zealand," in Wellington City. 

 They flocked through the Northern provinces to Wanganui, Taranaki, Hawke's Baj', 

 Poverty Bay, and Auckland, making friends with the native resident birds, and also with 

 those which had been imported from England, wandering to the remotest outskirts of the 

 dominion in the Chatham, Auckland, the Suares, and Campbell Islands. 



New Zealanders have given this little bird a number of popular names. It is the 

 'White-eye.' 'Silver-eye,' 'King-eye,' 'Wax-eye,' the 'Blight-bird,' and the "Winter 

 Migrant.' The Maoris call it ' Tau-hou,' which means ' stranger,' and scientists know it in 

 New Zealand, as well as in Australia, as Zosterops (i.e., Girdle-eye) ccerulescens- The genus 

 Zosterops ranges over a large part of the world, commencing in Africa south of the Sahara, 

 and extending to Madagascar, the Indian Peninsula, Ceylon, the Burmese countries, the 

 whole of China, Japan, Formosa, the Malayan Peninsula and Islands, New Guinea, the 

 Islands of the Pacific, and Australia and New Zealand. There are no fewer than eighty- 

 five species in the genus, and one of these (ccerulescens) is the species which belongs to 

 Australia, and which, following a remarkable and mysterious impulse has settled in New 

 .Zealand. 



