SHOOTING IN NEW ZEALAND. 375 



found it proceeded from the cottage of an old pensioner, who 

 had a small government allotment of land, which he culti- 

 vated, and subsisted on the produce. He was absent at work 

 for some squatter, but his wife soon plucked and roasted 

 some pigeons for us, which perhaps hunger made me consider 

 the most delicious meal I ever made, and which we eat with- 

 out bread of any kind, and washed down with water from 

 the spring. She told us that they had resided several years 

 in this solitary hut, on the borders of the forest, with only 

 one neighbour near them, and that pigeons constituted their 

 chief food. 



We made many ineffectual attempts to penetrate the 

 gloomy shades of the forest, with the hope of picking up 

 some other specimens of ornithology, but were only suc~ 

 cessful in one instance, which was a parrot of dark dun 

 colour, with the exception of a reddish tinge on the breast. 

 Having as many pigeons as we could conveniently carry back 

 with us, and satiated our gaze upon the noble woodland 

 scenery, we returned to the banks of the stream, and killed 

 several more widgeon for our supper at Cole's Inn. 



On our way back the following morning to Auckland, we 

 arrived at a part of the road where the island forms a narrow 

 isthmus, of about six miles in extent, with deep indentations 

 or creeks on either side, which at low water are vast muddy 

 deposits, and where great numbers of curlew and dotterel 

 frequented as their feeding ground. Upon the change of the 

 tide these birds were accustomed to fly from one side to the 

 other over the intervening space, and a person, by conceal- 

 ing himself in some hollow or convenient spot, was enabled 

 to get some capital shooting at them, as they winged their 

 low and drowsy flight across the island, gorged with the 

 debris upon which they had been regaling in the creeks, 

 where, owing to the depth of the mud, it was impossible to 

 approach them. We adopted this mode of proceeding, and 



