Ports.—New Zealand Birds. 179 
in the Canterbury Museum. This summer the blight bird is far less abundant 
than it has been for several years, the exceptionally severe winter of 1872 having 
greatly diminished its numbers. Birds of this species, dead and dying, were 
often observed after storms of snow-sleet, or even cold rain ; this tenderness 
of constitution is a strong argument in favour of the opinion of the writer, 
that the Zosterops is but a recent settler amongst us. 
No, 36.—KEROPIA crasstrostris, Gray, 
Pio-pio. 
Thrush. 
[Notes of a Paper forwarded to the Linnean Society.] 
In writing on the natural history of our birds, the bewailment of their 
lessened numbers has come to be a matter of course, the rapid settlement of 
the country has, in the case of the thrush, limited its range greatly, few birds 
having retreated with so much haste before the efforts of the cultivator. 
Let us take a section of this island, say one hundred miles in width, 
including Banks Peninsula, and stretching from the eastern to the western 
shore, this will afford some information as to its present habitat. 
Within tbis range at one time, the pio-pio might be found in any bushy 
place, not too far from water, where belts of shrubs afforded shelter and 
abundance of seeds; ten years at least have passed since we heard of its 
occurrence in this neighbourhood (Governor Bay); on Banks Peninsula proper 
it is now scarce; in the bush-dotted gullies of the Malvern Hills, the 
Thirteen-mile Bush, Alford Forest, and many other localities, it was not very 
uncommon ; now, let an enthusiastic naturalist traverse these places in quest 
of our feathered philosopher, he will find it has become a rara avis indeed. 
We must pass through these portals of the mountains, the river gorges, 
to catch sight of the thrush hopping about the openings of the bush, much 
after the fashion of its English namesake ; but even here its numbers have 
become woefully diminished ; four or five years ago, on either side of the 
Upper Rakaia, where the bushes descend the mountain slopes, these birds fairly 
teemed in their favourite haunts, but they are already becoming rare. They 
may be seen about the bushes that skirt the cold streams of the Havelock, the 
Upper Waimakariri, and the Bealey; through the romantic gorge of the Otira 
to the more level ground that stretches away to the Teremakau it may be 
frequently seen, always appearing to prefer the timbered forests, the mixed 
scrub, made-up of moderate sized bushes of Coriaria, Olearea, Veronica, and 
Coprosma. j 
As we reach the western coast, about the Arahura river it was, three 
years since, most abundant. Last December we searched one of their 
former favourite haunts, a large island in that river more or less covered 
