AND OTHER BIRDS 141 



Gums that blossom in mid-winter, fuchsias, and 

 many other aliens could easily be grown in the 

 mild climate of Stewart Island. As on the west 

 coast of Scotland kowhai, cabbage tree, flax, 

 matipo, and manuka flourish with luxuriance, 

 so along the ocean edge of our Westland 

 National Park and where the warmth of the sea 

 allows no frost, many early flowering foreign 

 plants could be established.* 



For suitable food birds will travel consider- 

 able distances, and in search of it, will pass over 

 open stretches of treeless pasture lands. In 

 Napier itself the Tuis that in spring feed on the 

 nectar of the surviving kowhai trees, must fly one 

 or two miles at least. About Gisborne, where 

 in winter and early spring the Tui and Kaka 

 visit the blossoming eucalypts, these birds must 

 traverse eight or ten miles of open country, and 

 I never was in Ulva, that delightful islet in 

 Paterson Inlet, without finding Mr. Trail's 

 garden fuchsias alive with Bell-birds. 



The Bell-bird indeed is a species in disposition 

 most friendly to man, and with a little 

 encouragement would become a charming 

 addition to every country garden. On the nest 

 it is most extraordinarily fearless of man, and 

 the sites chosen are often within a few yards of 

 his dwellings. 



During the spring of 1911, of two nests under 

 observation in Stewart Island, one was in a 

 garden hedge between two houses, and within a 

 few yards of each. The other was actually in 

 a deserted out-house a site it might have been 



*Great care would, of course, have to be taken in no way to 

 modify or neutralise what is one of the features of the scenery of 

 the Sounds, the purely New Zealand character of its vegetation. 



