668 



Trcuisactions. 



lieight it maintained when I saw it, and my own myopic eyes, 

 was most distinctive : — 



The call 



'W 





i 



^ 



It opened on a sustained and swelled g sharp, which was deliberately slurred 

 up to d, on which it abruptly ended, as represented in (1). I fancied I 

 could hear an oyertone of an octave in the q, but as the note impinges 

 very shrilly on the ear, with a burring throb somewhat like that produced 

 by two dissonant whistles simultaneously sounded, I conclude the overtone 

 to be either not quite an octave or a little over the octave — a semi- or 

 quarter-tone one way or the other. In ruder similitude, it sounds as though 

 the bird has a very quickly vibrating pea in its whistle. Happening to 

 snap a dry branch with a sounding crack, off flew the cuckoo, uttering 

 the danger-cry shown in (2) above. These notes are simple whistles, 

 sounded in quick legato — that is, the notes blend without being slurred. 

 I saw the bird several times afterwards, but never very clearly. Once 

 two birds sat high in a totara, when I heard the subdued conversational 

 notes — 



On the 3rd January, 1910, I heard the cry (1) from a clump of bush 

 at the head of the Little Akaroa Valley, several miles distant in a direct 

 line from the Stony Bay Valley, so that this year the cuckoo was not mi- 

 common on the Peninsula, though I was told it was several years since one 

 had been seen in the Stony Bay Bush. 



The cuckoo was again present in December, 1910. I heard it only 

 on two or three occasions, and on one of these the call was f/ slurred to h : — 



S^"^. 



'^^^ 



I secured a pretty variation of the song of the supposed hedge-sparrow 

 recorded in 1908 : — 



S^'CL. 



3 



> ^ 



^P^ 



;t- 4r # 



^ 



I record it as it has been suggested that the bird may be a native — the brown 

 creeper {Finschia novae-zelandiae — toitoi) — though I am doubtful. 



Fantails and grey-warblers have been very plentiful in the eastern parts 

 of Christchurch this season ; wax-eyes not so plentiful. I have never before, 

 in the bush or elsewhere, heard the fantail so full of song as during April 



