208 TUTIRA 



the Pied Stilt (Himantopus leucocephalus), and the Paradise duck 

 (Casarca variegata). 



Three or four pairs of the first named were induced to settle 

 during a windy spring when several hundred acres of ploughed ground 

 in the Waterfall paddock lay bare as sand-dunes beneath continued 

 nor'-westers. Since that date the Dottrel has regularly reappeared each 

 spring, nesting sometimes on tilled ground, sometimes on short grass. It 

 may therefore be that by the chance combination of ploughed land and 

 a windy spring a permanent change in the habits of the species has been 

 induced a change which may save it from local extinction, for it cannot 

 be doubted that in the crowded future the coasts of Hawke's Bay will 

 become less safe ; apparently, however, on dry pumiceous lands there 

 is sufficient food-supply of the sort desired ; the Banded Dottrel follow- 

 ing the plough and harrow may become a common species perhaps 

 where before it was unknown. 



We owe the appearance of the Pied Stilt to another station 

 "improvement" the great drain, to wit, cut in the 'nineties through 

 the big swamp. The northern bay of Tutira lake has from that time 

 begun to silt up ; there has appeared a strip of muddy beach, a bank of 

 sand, an area of shoal water. These conditions, though on the smallest 

 scale, have on several occasions attracted pairs of Pied Stilt, eggs have 

 been laid, and nestlings reared. 



The Paradise duck bred with us for the first time after the great 

 flood of 1917, when enormous deposits of silt covered Kahikanui Flat : 

 of the fifty or sixty which remained during that winter, several pairs 

 reared a brood. They have continued to breed on the station ever since. 

 Given the chance of extension of range, it has been taken : Dottrel 

 passing overhead have spied out naked soil ; Pied Stilt sand ; Paradise 

 duck fresh feeding-grounds. 



A dozen breeds have more or less successfully adapted them- 

 selves to change of environment. They have at any rate not lost 

 everything by the alterations of the last forty years. Often, though 

 not always, the harm done has been greater than the benefit gained, 

 yet the species to be named have survived, and I believe will 

 continue to do so even under the more severe ordeal of intensive land 

 culture. 



Of all the birds on the run, the Native Pipit or Ground lark 

 (Anthus Novce Zealandice) has been the greatest gainer by change. 



