202 — Transactions.— Zoology. 
PLaTYCERCUS NOVH-ZEALANDIE, Sparrm.—Red-fronted Parrakeet. 
The Hon. W. Fox, who has just returned from a trip through the 
Canterbury district, informs me that the farmers have suffered this season 
a visitation, tens of thousands of these birds having descended on their 
ripening crops of corn and proved almost as destructive as an army of 
locusts. It is difficult to account for these occasional irruptions in such 
numbers, in the case of a bird not otherwise plentiful. 
SrRINGOPS HABROPTILUS, Gray.—Owl Parrot. 
Until within the last few years the kakapo abounded in the Urewera 
country, and the natives were accustomed to hunt them at night with dogs 
and torches. The Maori proverb, ** Ka puru a putaihinu" relates to the 
former abundanee of this bird. The natives say that the Kakapo is 
gregarious, and that when numbers of them congregated at night their 
noise could be heard to a considerable distance. Hence the application of 
the above proverb, which is used to denote the rumbling of distant thunder. 
It is said that the kakapo is still abundant on the wooded ranges of the 
Kaimanawa, in the Taupo district. 
Hatcyon vacans, Less.—New Zealand Kingfisher. 
Reverting to an old controversy between Captain Hutton and myself,* 
in which I maintained the piscivorous habits of our kingfisher, under 
certain conditions, I may add to the argument the following note lately 
received from Captain Mair :—‘ The kingfisher is found in all the mountain 
streams of the Urewera and Bay of Plenty districts. It subsists largely on 
small fresh-water fish (mohiwai of the natives), also on flies, moths, and 
beetles. Referring to your interesting account of its nesting habits in the 
‘Birds of New Zealand,’ I may mention that I have found three or four 
pairs building in close association in a clay bank, and that on one occasion 
I counted ten pairs boring in the standing trunk of a dead and decaying 
rimu. I have never found more than five eggs in a nest." 
ZOSTEROPS LATERALIS, Reich.—Silver-eye. 
I have lately had an opportunity of examining a beautiful series of 
the nests of this species, and through all the variety of individual form 
and structure they preserve two essential features—namely, the large cup- 
like cavity with thin walls, and the admixture of long hairs in the lining 
material. I have already mentioned! the circumstance of pigs’ bristles 
being pressed into the service in a part of the country not much frequented 
by horses or cattle ; and in one of the nests forming the above series, the 
proximity to civilization was proclaimed by a lining consisting of the flaxen 
hair from a child’s doll! 
“ The Ibis," Jan., € * Trans. N.Z. Inst.,” VL, p. 129 
t “ Trans, N.Z, Inst.,” VIIL, p. 183. 
