GazriEs.— Notes on some Changes in the Fauna of Otago. 815 
bird everywhere. Early settlers whose eultivations were in the bush (and 
almost all cultivation in the early days was confined to bush clearing) had 
always the greatest difficulty in saving their crops of wheat. For this lively 
roguish little bird defied all scarecrows, and even shooting them was found 
to be an endless and expensive job, for, though a few might be killed at a 
shot, the flock just rose and settled down again immediately a few yards 
off. I have known patches of wheat rendered utterly valueless by this now 
harmless bird; so rare and scarce have they become that I notice that 
country settlers near bush now have quite a warm side to the little green 
parrakeet and often make household pets of them. 
The kaka (Nestor meridionalis), too, is a parrot that has almost passed 
away. In the early days they were always abundant everywhere, and were 
constantly shot for the pot by the settlers. At certain seasons they lived 
on the black pine-berries, and their presence on any tree could always be 
detected by the cracking of the stones of the berries overhead and the falling 
of the broken shells, even though the usually noisy screeching kaka was 
sitting close and still. In such a case it was almost always possible to 
Secure as many as you wanted, even though there was only one on the tree 
or in sight, for all you had to do was so to fire as only to wound the first 
one, when he would set up such a screeching and cawing as would soon 
assemble all the kakas for miles round, when you could knock over as many 
as you wanted. Though always obtainable, the kaka was more plentiful at 
certain times than others, but whether he migrated or not, or where he 
migrated to, I know not. It was a general belief amongst early settlers 
that the. kaka did migrate—it was thought to the woods on the west 
coast—but no authentic information was ever obtained that I have heard 
of. Some years they appeared in the settled parts of the provinee in 
flocks positively of hundreds. One year especially I remember (I think 
it must have been 1855 or 1856), they came in such numbers as to 
amount almost to a plague. Nor did they confine themselves to the 
bush, but everywhere, in open or in bush alike, on stacks, on fences, or 
on the ridges of houses, you would see them perched in rows as close as 
they could sit. I have seen them sitting on a post-and-rail fence in 
the Tokomairiro Plain so close together, that new arrivals had to fight 
for perching-room, and by shooting along the line of a fence you could 
knock over half-a-dozen at a shot. The destruction which they caused that 
year to stacks and to thatched houses, tearing them open with their power- 
ful bills, was something enormous. I remember settlers used to discuss 
how they were to protect their property against this serious pest, which it 
was believed would increase every year as the area of grain culture 
extended. But curiously enough, the following year to that there were 
