^°lgo7^"] P>'Oin Magazines, &c. lOQ 



many kinds are excessively numerous. The Stewart Island 



Shag, with its beautiful white breast, can, in Stewart Island, be 



no enemy of the fisherman. One hears the Morepork at night, 



and to finish my by no means exhaustive list, the White Heron 



(Egret) is still said to be found in one spot, at any rate." — N.Z. 



Herald, 25 2/07. 



* * * 



The Call-Bird. — Under this imaginative title a writer (W. 

 H. Sherrie) contributes an article to The Argus of ist June, 

 1907. He says, truly enough : — " There is nothing in what may 

 be termed the instinctive phenomena of Nature that is more 

 mysterious and startling to the imagination than the common 

 enough habits of wild birds, and more especially those of the 

 migratory order. The more one studies the habits of birds the 

 more v.-onderful the perfectly natural seems. It is the nature, 

 for instance, of the Nightingale to spend the greater part of the 

 year in the jungle fastnesses of the Gold Coast country, and 

 other regions unfamiliar to the majority of mankind ; to visit 

 certain parts of Europe in the spring for breeding purposes ; 

 and to arrive and depart with a regularity that is positively 

 mechanical in its consistency." But there is a savour of un- 

 certainty when it is stated that on " the same day of the same 

 month of each year the advance guard of the Nightingale tribe 

 may be looked for in England ; and their legion of followers may 

 be expected to come in more straggling order when the sanc- 

 tuary for the season has been located by the scouts." 



" There is much in common between the Nightingale and the 

 Snipe families. They each have their ' call-bird,' which stands 

 in the same relation to the order as the ' scout ' does to the bee 

 colony. The ' call-bird ' of the Snipe makes its wonderful 

 journey to Australia — probably all covering the 10,000 miles 

 from Siberia in the course of two or three weeks — generally 

 about the middle of our spring, and may continue right on to the 

 interior of the continent before landing. There may be two or 

 three or more of these birds. They seek flat, moist country, 

 where there is swamp and grass and reeds and the conditions 

 are specially adapted for their curious methods of feeding by 

 suction. The strangest thing about the Snipe is the mysterious 

 manner in which the 'call-birds' are followed by the rest of the 

 family or not according to what has happened to the leaders. 

 The average eager sportsman who goes forth with the object of 

 achieving the inglorious distinction of securing 'the first Snipe 

 of the season,' and having the marvellous feat duly recorded in 

 the local newspaper, probably knows nothing of what is involved 

 in the enterprise. The man who has studied the habits of 

 the bird, no matter how eager he may be to shoot some of the 

 spring visitors before his neighbours succeed, will always re- 

 strain his ardour in regard to the first few members of the family 



