In the Haunts of New Zealand Birds 115 



effect of a chime of tiny silver bells. This favorite of New Zealand's 

 songsters is a member of a family well represented in Australasia and 

 Polynesia, the Melaphagidas, or Honey-eaters, a group characterized by 

 the sharp, slender, moderately curved bill and grooved tongue. 



Of other native birds, none interested me more than the Fantails. 

 New Zealand claims two of these bird mites, members of the Old 

 World Fly-catcher family, — the Pied and the Black Fantail. It was the 

 latter bird which I encountered in the Bishop's grove — a tiny puff-ball 

 with expanded wings and tail, slaty black in color, with a dark brown 

 tinge on the wings and back and a touch of white on the ear coverts. 

 A squeaky, rickety call served in lieu of song, but the little creature was 

 vain as a Peacock, and strutted about with its conspicuous tail expanded 

 to the fullest extent. If anything could make me believe in disembodied 

 spirits entering birds and seeking to converse with men as they do in the 

 myths of eld, it would be the actions of the Black Fantail. Flitting 

 through the air with short, jerky motions, hovering about and following 

 as if determined to alight on my shoulder, calling in its friendly, though 

 unmusical tones, one of these little creatures seemed so determined to 

 communicate with me that it became positively uncanny. Although, on 

 many future occasions, I had opportunity of observing the extreme 

 tameness of the Fantails, I never saw another one so persistent in its 

 efforts to establish friendly relations. 



The little Gray Warbler, which also attracted my attention amid the 

 Bishop's tree-ferns and pittosporums, is one of the most fascinating 

 creatures in the New Zealand groves. I had not been in the colony a 

 day when, in an Auckland garden, a note reached my ears, so plaintive 

 and tender, so varied and sustained, that I was incredulous about its being 

 the voice of a bird. It seemed almost weirdly human, yet so fine and 

 dainty, so slight and timid, as to resemble the piping of a woodland elf 

 rather than the whistle of a bird. I was unable to detect the minstrel 

 at the time, but in the Bishop's grove 1 traced it up and found a diminu- 

 tive little creature most unostentatiously dressed in grayish brown above 

 and paler gray below, with a trace of yellow on the abdomen. It was 

 an alert, restless bird, flitting amid the foliage and uttering a fine, high 

 twitter. Every now and then it would sing that wonderful song like some 

 timid creature experimenting with a quavering, high-pitched pipe on 

 various notes of the scale. 



The Gray Warbler belongs in the same family with the Nightingale 

 and other European songsters — the Old World warblers — a group which 

 is not represented in America. It builds a wonderful pensile nest not 

 unlike that marvel of bird -architecture, the home of the California Bush- 

 tit, but with a larger entrance. The Maoris are fond of this little 

 creature and have many songs and traditions in which it figures. 



