120 Bird - Lore 



blue, singing, the while, a clear gurgling medley of continued song, as though 

 nothing could exhaust its vitality. The Skylark has been introduced into 

 many parts of New Zealand and seems to prosper in the new land. 



The little New Zealand Kingfisher was a common bird in the Master- 

 ton district. It is much smaller than the Belted Kingfisher of North 

 America, and is dressed in a blue-green coat, a bufiy brown vest and a 

 white collar. Although fond of the vicinity of streams, it frequently strays 

 to a considerable distance from any water, where it no doubt finds enough 

 insect food to take the place of a fish diet. 



Many New Zealand birds of which the traveler reads and which he 

 fondly expects to encounter during his wanderings, are so rare or locally 

 distributed that it is well nigh impossible to have a glimpse of them alive. \ 

 For example, there is the Blue -wattled Crow of North Island, and its near 

 relation, the Orange -wattled Crow of South Island, which must be sought 

 in certain restricted districts. So also with the Huia, a bird even more 

 limited in range, being found chiefly in the mountains north of Wellington. 

 It is one of the peculiarly interesting birds of the region, and is highly 

 prized by the Maoris, who wear its tail feathers as emblems of chieftain- 

 ship. The most extraordinary thing about the Huia is the great difference 

 between the bill of the male and the female. The former has a comparatively 

 short, stout beak, while that of the latter is abnormally elongated, slender 

 and sickle-shaped. It is said that the male pecks the bark, into which his 

 inseparable companion then thrusts her beak to extract the grub. It is 

 with pain one learns that she does not, like a good and dutiful wife, divide 

 the morsel thus jointly secured, but swallows it entire and leaves her lord 

 and master to forage further. The Huia is a Starling, about a foot and a 

 half long, glossy black in color, with a broad band of white on the tip of 

 the tail. The face is ornamented with large rounded wattles of a brilliant 

 orange color, and the bill is light ivory in tone. 



Two other members of the Starling family which still occur in restricted 

 areas of New Zealand, are the Saddle-back, so named from the rusty patch 

 on the back of its black body, and the Jack Bird, which is colored a dark 

 brown, edged in places with rufous. The former is found on the Barrier 

 Islands off the Auckland coast, in the mountains back of Wellington, and 

 in a few districts of South Island; the latter is confined to the lonely for- 

 ests of the West Coast Sounds district of South Island. They are de- 

 scribed as noisy, eccentric birds. 



Two species of Cuckoos nest in New Zealand and migrate in opposite 

 directions for the winter. The Long-tailed Cuckoo, which is colored 

 strikingly like the Cooper's hawk of America, spends its leisure months of 

 travel in the South Sea Islands, while the gaudy little shining Cuckoo, 

 with its golden-green, iridescent back and its white, green-barred breast, 

 journeys over the waste of sea to Australia. Both species seem to have 



