﻿jBfrti = Lore 



A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 

 DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS 



Official Organ of the Audubon Societies 



Vol. VIII November — December, 1906 No. 6 



The Wry-bill Plover of New Zealand 



By EDGAR F. STEAD, "Christ Church, New Zea'and 



With photographs by the author 



IN the central portion of the South Island of New Zealand is a large tract 

 of flat country known as the Canterbury Plains. Stretching along the 



seacoast for over a hundred miles, the plains run back to the foothills 

 some forty miles inland. There the ranges rise, one behind the other, in 

 rough, broken country, extending over to the west coast, forming the 

 Southern Alps. Now the tops of these ranges are, nearly all of them, over 

 five thousand feet high, and are, in winter, thickly coated with snow. In 

 the spring and through the summer, come the warm, rain-laden northwest 

 winds, melting the snow and sending thousands of small cataracts leaping 

 down the steep mountain -sides, carrying with them the stones and broken 

 rocks from the barren slopes above. Along the gullies and the valleys the 

 streams collect, forming large rivers, which, scarcely less turbulent than 

 their tributaries, still roll the stones along, through wide sunny vales and 

 dark rock-bound gorges out to the plains, and then straight to the sea. 



The accompanying photograph of the Rakaia river, taken below the 

 gorge, is typical of most of the Canterbury snow-fed rivers. On the right 

 and left can be seen the level plains, with the hills beyond. The terraces 

 here are nearly one thousand feet deep, and the river-bed one and one-half 

 miles across. In the gorge, the sides of which may be seen, the river is 

 under two hundred yards wide. Where the river widens out from below the 

 gorge to the sea, the shingle* carried down by the floods is banked up, and 

 the shingle-beds and sand-spits thus formed are ideal bird haunts. Shags, T 

 Gulls, Terns and Plover are to be found there during the summer, the first - 

 named nesting in the trees or cliffs along the river-banks, the others making 

 their nests on the shingle. 



*The round, water-worn stones, with most of the sand washed out, which form 

 the larger portion of the river-beds. 



t Phalacrocorax carbo is with us largely an inland bird, frequenting fresh-water lakes 

 and rivers. 



