THE INVASION FROM THE SOUTH 337 



flocks visiting the hill-tops, flying in ordered companies, moving in the 

 busy alert manner of the breed, probing the turf for beetle grubs. 

 Still, however, not a pair remained to breed, each year the flocks 

 deserting us before the nesting season. They had not yet adapted 

 their habits to novel conditions : they still returned to breeding 

 quarters suitable to the gregarious or semi-gregarious habits of the 

 breed. 



At first their colonisation of the run was confined to visitations 

 during autumn and winter upon the approach of spring the flocks 

 returning to breeding-areas more or less protected and countenanced by 

 man, to cliffs such as those of Roy's Hill, to escarpments such as the 

 Bluff in Napier. Later they began to breed on Tutira not far from the 

 shed and house, choosing as nesting-sites pollarded willows and the dense 

 decumbent thatch of cabbage-trees. Lastly, quite away from mankind, 

 they established themselves amongst the dead timber of station forest 

 reserves. 



Rabbits were purposely freed near Carterton in the Wairarapa ; 

 they are known also to have been furtively brought into Hawke's Bay 

 at a very early date, and there also liberated in an attempt to ruin the 

 squatters ; they were on the Apley Run, for instance, as early as the 

 'sixties. After fifty years Mr Bernard Chambers of Te Mata still 

 retains an indignant recollection of those days. 1 



The earliest rabbit known near Tutira was the celibate who, in the 

 early 'eighties, travelled about Tangoio in the company of a flock of 

 "wild" turkeys. From then onwards during the 'eighties and 'nineties 

 there were rumours of rabbits, and traces of rabbits, the scrapings and 

 droppings of wanderers from the pairs purposely put down with intent 

 to harm the sheep-farmers. Fortunately, however, where a few pair 

 only of any imported creature are scattered over a wide expanse, increase 

 is prevented by normal wear and tear of life. Native birds of prey, 

 harriers, wekas, and moreporks (Spiloglaux NOVCB Zealandice), are quite 

 capable of holding in check limited numbers of aliens, although in the 

 face of a real invasion such puny barriers are unavailing. The rabbit at 

 first failed in Hawke's Bay, not, as is often believed, because the earliest 

 known specimens were of some less prolific strain, but for the same 

 reason as the blackbird and thrush failed the numbers liberated were 



1 He writes I give initials only " It was a fellow named J P who put rabbits 



on the station the damned scoundrel." 



Y 



