26 
NATURE NOTES. 
pheasants’ eggs. Fortunately for themselves, too, these birds 
are of no use for human food. The tame and confiding blue 
ducks, that love mountain tarns and creeks half blind with 
vegetation, are rapidly disappearing. With the stocking of 
country and more frequent fires, the native quail has vanished ; 
its extinction has reacted on the quail hawk, which is a rare bird 
now. In like manner, the disappearance of the native rat that 
fed on the most of our forest trees has caused the whekan or 
laughing owl to become very scarce. 
Still, many rare and interesting birds remain with us, and 
perhaps the most beautiful of these is the pure white kotuku or 
heron. It is so seldom seen in the North Island that among 
the natives “rare as the kotuku” has passed into a proverb. 
Though it is described in the history of New Zealand birds as 
very shy and timid, upon the two occasions on which it has 
visited our lake I have been able to approach to within a few 
yards. The natives frequently follow this bird, as they know 
from experience that if disturbed from one lagoon or lake, the 
kotuku will take a route that never varies. In the old days the 
bird was eagerly sought by the natives, its long white fila- 
mentous dorsal plumes being used for the head ornamentation 
of chiefs. 
The swamp hen or pukako, though by no means rare, is 
another very handsome bird — the abdomen and back deep 
black, breast indigo blue, legs and bill red, and under tail 
coverts white. It becomes very tame if let alone, flirting its 
tail and showing the white feathers beneath as it walks daintily, 
with feet raised high at every step. Its food is chiefly the tender 
stems of the succulent raupo reed, and while eating, the morsel 
is held in one claw after the manner of the parrot. It may be 
seen devouring the standing corn too, and some years ago the 
swamp hens made the discovery that food was to be obtained 
from our oat stacks. With their powerful bills they used to pull 
straw after straw very carefully straight out, without breaking 
them, so as to obtain the grain at the inner end. 
The kingfisher is another common and beautiful bird, and in 
spring-time we are visited by two kinds of cuckoo, hailing, the 
one from Australia, and the other from the South Pacific 
Islands. Like their relative of Britain, they entrust the 
hatching of their eggs and the rearing of their 3’oung to a 
stranger — the little gre^’ warbler. Both seem to be endowed 
with a natural ventriloquism, their notes sounding “ at once 
far off and near,” and when their cries are first heard we know 
that once more spring has arrived. 
The history ot the little wax-eye, now very common with us, 
is rather remarkable. These birds appeared in the Nortli 
Island, says Buller, for the first time within the memory of the 
oldest natives in 1856. They stayed for three months, and 
proved of great service in preying on the aphis called the 
“ American blight.” During the next two years they were not 
