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made inquiries on the subject, and was informed by the natives that the Zoster ops had appeared in 
their district for the first time in 1863. 
As far as I can ascertain, they penetrated to Waikato in the following year, and pushed their 
way as far as Auckland in 1865. Major Mair, R.M., writing to me from Taupo in 1866, said : — 
“ It is now to be seen, in flocks of from 10 to 30, all over the Taupo and Rotoiti districts; and all 
the natives agree that it is a recent arrival in these parts.” Professor Hutton reports that in the 
winter of 1867 they had spread all over the province, as far north as the Bay of Islands, and in 1868 
he writes : — “ They are now in the most northerly parts of this island.” That they have continued to 
move on still further northward would appear to be the case from the following suggestive notes by 
Mr. G. B. Owen: — “On my passage from Tahiti to Auckland, per brig ‘.Rita,’ about 300 miles 
north of the North Cape of New Zealand, I saw one morning several little birds flying about the 
ship. From their twittering and manner of flying I concluded that they were land-birds, and they 
were easily caught. They were of a brownish-grey and yellowish colour, with a little white mark 
round the eye. I saw several pass over the ship during the day, travelling northwards. I arrived 
in Auckland a few days afterwards, on the 20th of May, when the so-called Blight-birds appeared 
here in such numbers, and I at once recognized them as the same.” Mr. Seed, the Inspector of 
Customs, has furnished me with the following interesting particulars bearing on the same point. 
When on an official visit to the lighthouse on Hog Island, situated about seven miles eastward of the 
Bluff, he was informed by the keeper that on one occasion a great number of these birds had killed 
themselves by striking against the lighthouse, either during the night or before the lights were put 
out in the morning, as he found them in scores lying dead in the gallery *. Mr. Seed could not 
ascertain positively the direction whence they came, but he understood that it was from the south- 
ward ; and other inquiries at the time led him to conclude that they had come from Stewart’s Island, 
the extreme southern limit of New Zealand. 
This tendency of migration northwards appears to me quite inconsistent with the idea of the 
species having come to us from Australia. 
Now let us ascertain something of its recorded history in the South Island. Mr. Potts, says, 
in a letter to me : — “ I first observed it (in Canterbury) after some rough weather, July 28, 1856. 
I saw about half a dozen specimens on some isolated black birch trees in the Rockwood valley in 
the Malvern Hills.” In the Auckland Museum there is a specimen of this bird, sent from Nelson 
by Mr. St. John (an industrious bird-collector) in 1856. The skin was labelled “ Stranger,” and 
in the letter accompanying it Mr. St. John states that these birds had made their first appearance 
in Nelson that winter (the same in which they crossed to the North Island), and that “no one, not 
even the natives, had ever seen them before.” 
On a visit to Nelson in the winter of 1860, I saw numerous flights of them in the gardens and 
shrubberies. The result of very careful inquiries on the spot satisfied me that since their first 
appearance there, in 1856, they had continued to visit Nelson every year, arriving at the commence- 
ment of winter, and vanishing on the approach of warmer days as suddenly as they had come. On 
every hand the settlers bore testimony to their good services in destroying the cabbage-blight and 
other insect pests. 
About the middle of June 1861, I met with small flocks of this bird on the Canterbury Plains, 
evidently on their passage northward. I first observed them in the low scrub on the broad shingle- 
* The fact that they continue their flight at night is very curious. I may mention that on a dark evening in August, 
about 8 p.m., I observed what seemed to he a large moth fluttering against the glass of a lamp-post on Wellington Terrace. 
Apparently stunned, or wearied out, it fell to the ground, and on picking it up I found it to he a Zosterops, which had evidently 
been attracted hy the gas-light. Its poor condition indicated that it was a migrant, doubtless a straggler from one of the 
flocks, large numbers of these birds having about that time made their appearance on the northern side of Cook’s Strait. 
