OOLOGY OF NEW ZEALAND. 225 
planned to check the increase of these favourite rodents ; but 
hare-hunting by harriers is an offence that can only be wiped 
out by poison or other ready means of death. 
The harriers pair early, and the short squeal heard in the first 
few days of August is a premonitory symptom that family cares 
will engage attention as sure as spring comes round. 
Their favourite nesting-places are amongst the rank grasses 
that thickly cover river-bed flats, the edges of swamps, amongst 
tall tufts of tohe-tohe (Arundo conspicua) and flax bushes, some- 
times on rather open land not far from the margins of meres or 
lagoons. I have found the nest but rarely on high ground. It 
is nearly always built on the ground, strongly but roughly made 
of coarse grasses; very often tohe-tohe and raupo (Typha angus- 
tifolia) form part of the material. It is carried up to about a 
foot in height, with a flattish top. I have known a nest to be 
placed on, or rather in, a bunch of tohe-tohe :—“ It may appear 
hardly credible, but above the gorge of the Ashburton we have 
found the nest partly built with sprays of the thorny discaria 
and the dead flower-stems of the large Alpine form of Aciphylla 
colensot ; above this dreadful bed of thorns grass was carefully 
placed. We have known the selected site of a breeding place 
abandoned after considerable progress had. been made with the 
structure. A pair made use of the same nesting-place year 
after year.”—( Out in the Open.) 
The eggs are three or four in number, smooth, dull, white ; 
when blown and held up to the eye against the light the interior 
shows a deep green. They are oval, sometimes conical or 
ovato-conical, usually measure one inch eleven lines in length, 
with a breadth of one inch six lines; these dimensions are some- 
times exceeded. November and December are the months for 
breeding. It is generally distributed, and may be found on the 
islands that lie off the coast of New Zealand as well as in the 
Alpine country of the interior. 
Family Strigide—Ovwls. 
Genus—Athene. 
Athene Nove Zealandie, Gm. 
Morepork, Ruru.—This owl, far better known by sound than by 
sight, now occurs much less frequently than it used only a fewyears 
since. The ceaseless destruction of timber trees, the burning and 
clearing of great forests, has driven it from its accustomed haunts, 
whence, as soon as the shades of evening closed in, it issued forth 
with its well-known cry of Morepork! Morepork! Morepork! This 
familiar call, borne on the soft night air, was pleasant to listen 
to—now close at-hand with a kind of loud insistance of its de- 
mand, then dying away gradually with the bird’s noiseless flight, 
soon from a remote distance it could be only faintly heard likea 
dull oft-repeated murmur. 
Its breeding places are in hollow trees, fissures, or holes in 
rocks ; but I have a note of its breeding in an out-building of a 
farm in the Ellesmere district, Two or three eggs are usual to a 
