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before us, fluttering away on the shingle as if wounded and in the last 

 extremity. " There's a nest somewhere," said my companion, " and she 

 is decoying us away from it," We humoured her maternal instinct, and 

 after preceding us for a dozen yards or so she rose in the air and flew off. 



Whilst resting after breakfast on the lateral moraine of the Tasman 

 Glacier at the southern end of the Murchison Valley, on the 19th November, 

 1910, we were much pleased by the actions of a paradise duck and drake. 

 A clear, gentle stream flowed along the foot of the moraine at our feet, and 

 the duck waded fearlessly backwards and forwards not more than 15 ft. 

 from us. She approached nearer and nearer each traverse, until she was 

 no more than 8 ft. away. As she moved she constantly emitted a quiet, 

 pleasing sound, the quack (though the term is too hard) of the paradise. 

 After a time she rejoined her mate on the gravel beyond the stream, 

 where they both settled down to sleep in the morning smi. We were de- 

 lighted with their tameness : it gave us excellent opportunity of noting 

 and admiring the beauty of their plumage. This Murchison Valley was 

 extremely quiet : it has never been ent; red by stock of any kind, and bird- 

 life was also very scarce at the time of our visit. Besides half a dozen 

 paradise ducks, we saw only two seagulls, and heard the keas above men- 

 tioned. At dawn of the 19th, too, away up at the Murchison terminal, 

 we heard a blackbird in the Malte Brun scrub, and lower down two more 

 blackbirds and a ubiquitous chaffinch — an extremely common bird. 



I was at Stony Bay, near Okain's, Banks Peninsula, late in December 

 of 1909, and a solitary pair of paradise ducks had nested and brooded in 

 the valley— a most unusual occurrence. 



The blue duck {Hymenolaemus malacorhynchus — whio) is now rare, 

 even on the river-beds away in the mountains, where it was formerly 

 extremely common. It is loo good a table-bird to escape the common 

 run of rabbiter and station hand. I saw none in 1909 ; but on the 15th 

 November 1910, whilst riding down the Jollie, I made the acquaintance 

 of a pair. They were floating down the rapid stream, bobbing about on 

 the broken water, apparently entirely at the mercy of the current ; but by 

 some dexterous movement both shot sideways out of the swift water into a 

 comparative still stream behind a big rock. Here they dived and probed 

 with their beaks for a time, when one made a dash at the rock, moimted 

 half-way to its top, but slipped back into the water. It made a detour, 

 and soon both were seated on the rock, preening their feathers. I dis- 

 mounted, hoping to obtain a nearer view, and the birds allowed me to 

 approach to within a few yards. In colour they were slaty blue, almost 

 the colour of the water ; their breasts were bronze ; their bills pale 

 yellow, almost white. Their note was a highly pitched cry — hardly a 

 whistle : — 



One of them uttered the cry in (1) three times whilst they were in the still 

 pool diving and probing. It is a rapid vibrato, not a trill, and the duck 

 thrusts out its neck when uttering the cry. It was varied as in (2). the 

 quality of the note being the same. 



We saw two grey ducks, but they were silent. 



