318 TUTIRA 



for three seasons. Each of these female birds had a beat from which 

 she never wandered, for pea-fowl are too large not to be dangerously 

 conspicuous. The plumage of the male, indeed, may account for the 

 fact that hens only have reached Tutira ; male birds migrating may 

 have been at once destroyed in consequence of their brilliant trains. 

 Persecution of strangers, and especially of conspicuous strangers, is one 

 of the minor factors by which nature emphasises limitation of range. 

 The handsome native Paradise duck (Casarca variegata), for instance, 

 which until 1917 but rarely visited the run, used to be unceasingly 

 persecuted by hawks (Circus Gouldi) working in parties of three and 

 four, whilst it is scarcely an exaggeration to state that the first arriving 

 rabbits and hares were plucked alive. 1 Pea-fowl have never been 

 domesticated on the run ; the birds reaching it from time to time were 

 stragglers from a flock belonging to a settler twenty miles distant. 



Pheasants have been imported into Hawke's Bay by private enter- 

 prise, by the Hawke's Bay Provincial Council, and, I believe, by the local 

 Acclimatisation Society. Though never plentiful even in the 'eighties, 

 it was possible to obtain three or four brace of cock birds in a day. 

 They are now so scarce that, but for their crowing during earth-tremors, 

 we should scarcely know of their presence on the station. Pheasants 

 are either peculiarly sensitive to vibration or particularly noisy in 

 their comment on it, for earth-tremors of even the faintest kind are 

 invariably registered by the cock birds, tremors so slight as to be 

 barely sensible even to persons perfectly quiescent ; if by comparison 

 of watches it is discovered that pheasants have in several parts of the 

 run simultaneously chirruked, it is safe to infer that a slight shake 

 has taken place. 



A brace of partridges were sprung by myself and partner in 

 September of '82, during inspection of our eastern boundary. They 

 had been liberated on Moeangiangi by its then owner, Mr John Taylor. 



Of alien insects on Tutira before my day, the mason fly (Pison 

 pt*umosus), the black cricket (Gryllus servillei), and the honey bee 

 were the most remarkable. The first-named, believed to have reached 

 New Zealand in chinks and knots of Australian lumber, was noticed 

 by the late Mr J. N. Williams in the late 'sixties. Unlike the black 



1 After the great flood of 1917 a large flock of Paradise duck remained for months about 

 the mud-submerged flats in the vicinity of the lake. During that time the harrier hawks 

 became used to them. As a strange species they no longer attracted particular attention. 

 Now in 1920 the few pair that remain to breed are left comparatively unmolested. 



