RECONSIDERATIONS 371 



Other evidence of the non-stop character of the blackbird and thrush 

 movement is the scant attention accorded to it. Had these birds, for 

 instance, stocked Waiapu to the limit of winter food-supply snails, 

 worms, and insects ere proceeding to Poverty Bay ; had they stocked 

 Poverty Bay to its limit of food-supply ere proceeding to the Wairoa, 

 and so continued southwards down the coast, the striking contrast 

 between districts swarming with birds and districts entirely void of 

 them must have been appreciated by the most unobservant ; local papers 

 would have been full of letters from sentimental folk regarding the sing- 

 ing of feathered choristers from the homeland. There would have been 

 bitter complaints from the resident growers of small fruit, for the black- 

 bird and thrush by no means confine their depredations to cherries ; 

 every crank in the community would have been in favour of importing 

 owls, hawks, eagles, and for aught I know, boa-constrictors, vampire- 

 bats, and tigers to cope with the pest. The fact is, that our acclimatised 

 birds have stolen upon us. Their advance has been so gradual, and at 

 first so thin, that except for an observer here and there it has remained 

 unnoticed, unchronicled. In a practical community little or no attention 

 has been excited by the spread of imported aliens until, as has usually 

 happened, they have become a nuisance. 



About the chaffinch facts of a similar complexion are available. This 

 species, it will be remembered, moving at first by the coast-line and 

 afterwards by a river-bed route, had been first seen in Poverty Bay and 

 later in the Wairoa before the earliest specimens reached Tutira in the 

 beginning of the present century. Its arrival had been confidently 

 anticipated ; an especially keen watch had been kept there and elsewhere 

 for the bird. Following its discovery at the apex of the Poverty Bay 

 plain, I spent several weeks of two winters' quail and pheasant shooting 

 in the Hangaroa district, five or seven miles inland from the coast as the 

 crow flies. There were no chaffinches there when they had already 

 reached Wairoa on the coast. There were still none to be seen at 

 Hangaroa when the birds had penetrated Tutira, had passed through 

 Petane, had moved onward as far as Havelock North. The trek, follow- 

 ing the river-bed route, had struck the coast and then hung closely to it. 

 It appears, indeed, to have been a mere lance-head thrust into the 

 unknown. 



The chaffinch, like the blackbird and thrush, passed through Tutira 

 long before the limit of food-supply was reached. Small travelling 



