In the Haunts of New Zealand Birds 119 



Moas, including such immense creatures as the Elephant Moa, with its 

 enormously heavy legs and its little head reaching to a height of some 

 thirteen feet, has become extinct in comparatively recent times, as the 

 discovery of feathers, skin and eggs attests. An interesting chapter in the 

 history of living forms is furnished by the numerous flightless birds of New 

 Zealand. Isolated upon these islands, without enemies save a few Hawks 

 and Owls, with little to stimulate them to put forth their best efiforts, 

 they gradually lost the power of flight through disuse of their wings and 

 became an easy prey to the rude implements of savage men. 



Let us now leave these mountain wildernesses of the far south where 

 the wild Black Swans of Australia utter their hoarse, high trumpeting, as 

 they fly over the lake, and the showy Paradise Ducks call in tones of 

 exultant freedom, wandering amid the grassy mountain meadows, — let us 

 desert these splendid solitudes for a glimpse of the haunts of birds in the 

 North Island. I have in mind a charming retreat on the shore of Port 

 Nicholson, just opposite the city of Wellington, where the native bush 

 has happily been preserved, and where birds still gladden the woodland 

 with their calls. Near the bay shore I caught the liquid roll of the Bell- 

 bird from the hillside; the Pied Fantail fluttered merrily about me, and 

 the tremulous pipe of the Gray Warbler came plaintively from the scrub 

 manuka and bunches of toi-toi grass. Here also the Tui, or Parson -bird, 

 sang its loud and varied strains. I could never be sure of the song of 

 this species, for it mimics all the birds of the grove. The Tui, which 

 belongs in the same group of Honey-eaters in which we found the Bell- 

 bird and Silver-eye, is about the size of a Blackbird. The male is of a 

 burnished greenish black color, with white wing-patches and white tufts 

 on the throat like a parson's collar, whence its English name. The female, 

 which is olive-brown in color, lacks the white plumes. Turning into the 

 thickets where the Tuis and Bell-birds were singing, I found myself in a 

 tangle of verdure; tree-ferns with quivering fronds of green were lifted 

 on high and drooping gracefully above the shrubbery; great beech 

 stumps were festooned with clinging rata vines; cordylines or cabbage - 

 trees, with pointed, ribbon-like leaves clustered in bunches on their bare 

 trunks, combined with the other foliage to make a scene of tropic 

 splendor. 



In the bush near Masterton, situated in one of the interior valleys north 

 of Wellington across the Rimutaka Gorge, T found some new birds, in com- 

 pany with many heretofore observed. The Tuis called from the totara 

 trees, their voices mingling with the whisper of the wind in the branches; 

 the dainty strain of the Grey Warbler enlivened the thickets, and the thick - 

 billed North Island Thrush uttered his call note in the shrubbery. I lis- 

 tened here for the first time to the song of the European Skylark, and saw 

 the ecstatic minstrel soaring and climbing until it was a mere point in the 



