344 TUTIRA 



In them the emancipated alien finds admirable accommodation for 

 rearing his young. About such spots he thrives and multiplies, de- 

 vouring during summer-time insect life, seeds and berries, formerly 

 the exclusive property of native species. With the waning of the 

 year, these fine-weather quarters are vacated ; striking a road, sparrows 

 follow it to the nearest homestead. There the company, or such of 

 them as there is feeding for, remain till spring-time, when once again 

 they move abroad. 



Thus, according to the season of the year, sparrows spread abroad 

 or closely congregate ; when attention has been directed to the matter 

 the double movement can hardly be missed. It is only, indeed, 

 obscured by the rapid increase of fledglings in early summer, by the 

 unostentatious plumage of the breed, and by the indifference with which 

 so common a species is viewed. What I have myself seen occur on 

 Tutira I believe took place when the birds debouched on to the plain 

 of Hawke's Bay. They had become accustomed during their long trek 

 to breed far from the dwellings of man, outside his pale of protection. 

 As winter approached, however, their instinctive dependence on their 

 human hosts reawakened : the birds flocked from the wilds into the few 

 far-scattered homesteads. Arriving thus in swarms where few or none 

 had been seen before, it is not surprising that settlers viewed "their 

 enormous numbers" with "considerable alarm," the birds must have 

 seemed to be appearing as if by magic. 



Nowadays I find the winter numbers of the sparrow depend on the 

 changing necessities of station management, on the amount of oats 

 grown, and on the number of contract plough-camps, where teams are 

 fed, where there is always grain spilt from nose-bags or unfinished in 

 feeding-troughs. Probably a chart would show pretty accurately the 

 relation of the sparrow population to the price of wool in London : with 

 prices good more ploughing is done, more horse-feed grown ; with prices 

 bad, less. Like his fellow-mortals in New Zealand, the species is affected 

 by events taking place at the other end of the world events which he 

 cannot control and for which he is in no degree responsible. 



The sparrow, however, by no means has everything his own way 

 on Tutira. Although indigenous to Britain, heavy rain does not suit 

 him ; no creature, indeed, can look more woe-begone than a wet sparrow, 

 with unpreened, unoiled, and draggled plumage. Our local birds are 

 from time to time decimated, I may almost say annihilated, by the 



