AND OTHER BIRDS 161 



with his bill, a blow worthy of Porthos or 

 Ivanhoe, or when he stands over a bone holding 

 it down with one foot like a dog, and like a dog 

 wrenching from it mnscles, meat, and tendons, 

 that 3^on can believe that even a weasel might fall 

 before him. 



We did not succeed in getting a nest with eggs, 

 but I believe the Stewart Island Weka, like his 

 relatives elsewhere, breeds very early in the 

 season. 



In 1911 whilst w^alking between the head of 

 Te Anau and Sutherland Falls I found Wekas 

 ever^^^here very plentiful, not in pairs only but 

 sometunes as many as five grown birds together 

 howking — I have never known a Weka to 

 scratch or scrape — amongst the grasses and 

 cushions of moss. Some notion of their numl3ers 

 along this track may be gathered from the fact, 

 that without quitting the trail I found two old 

 nests and detected Wekas gathering material 

 for another. These old nests, to the best of my 

 belief, had seen the birth of chicks. 



Now, it is quite improbable that the 

 Weasel tribe should have spared particularly the 

 AVeka — a ground bird, be it remembered, and 

 unable to fly. Either, therefore, the amount of 

 damage done by Stoats and Weasels has been 

 exaggerated, or of late years they have become 

 less numerous; the latter alternative is by no 

 means unlikely, for many aliens, to my personal 

 knowledge, after at first an immense increase in 

 a restricted area, later have spread over the 

 country side, and in some cases eventually 

 disappeared. A third possibility is this : that by 

 chance, I may have passed through an irruption 

 of Wekas, similar to that, which at Tutira, has in 

 my time more than once occurred. 



