AND OTHER BIRDS tw 



flying in and out of the manuka spinnies and 

 often to be seen gently scraping and raking the 

 ground. Although still, as in autumn, notice- 

 able on high altitudes, very many Bush Creepers 

 were now to be met with on the forest's lower 

 border, and even on the flats. The Rifleman was 

 no longer chiefly on the higher lands, and the 

 nest, of the birds photographed, cannot have been 

 more than 50 feet above sea-level. Even the 

 ubiquitous Wekas seemed to have concentrated 

 themselves along the edges of the bush, and about 

 the flats; and although at the hut itself, where, 

 in the autumn there had been four or five, there 

 were none, the breeding season would account 

 for their absence from that particular spot. 

 They were still, I believe, mostly rearing their 

 families and keeping their chicks in seclusion. 



There can be little doubt that the Kiwi had 

 come down to breed in the lower lands; and 

 lastly each of the several pairs of Orange 

 Wattle Crows seen in springtime and early 

 summer, were noticed within a few score feet of 

 sea-level. 



The Fern Bird alone seemed to have felt no 

 desire to move. He was, as formerly, plentiful 

 in the clumps of red tussock, along the margins 

 of the deep half-choked peat burns and in the 

 stunted thickets of box-leaved koromiko and 

 grass tree; and it was this spring I discovered 

 him to be very common in the stunted wind- 

 blown manuka on the very edge of the open 

 moors of the mountain tops. 



There had occurred between March and Sep- 

 tember a sort of two-fold movement, local and 

 general, the more stay-at-home species having 

 merely moved downwards from the high bush 

 country towards the valley, the flats, and the 



