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coast. When on the wing the long neck is doubled in, forming a protuberance in front, and the 
legs are trailed behind. When hunting for food among the rocks they walk briskly, with the body 
horizontal and the head drawn in, ready for action. 
It is found all round the coasts of the North Island, but appears to be more plentiful on the 
eastern side. 
It does not, as a rule, leave the coast, but a pair was seen on the Taupo Lake in October 1875, 
and I observed one on the wing at Lake Rotoiti in October 1884. It is tolerably common along 
the shores of the Bay of Plenty. My son found these birds particularly plentiful during a visit to 
Raglan in the summer of 1883-84. He writes : — “ On one occasion I saw as many as seven flying in 
company. They kept well together, and about four feet above the water, performing their flight by 
a regular slow flapping of the wings, never swerving to one side or the other, and presenting a very 
curious appearance with their heads drawn in upon their shoulders.” 
They appear to become attached to particular localities ; and I remember a pair of them 
frequenting a rocky point in the Porirua harbour for several years. Another pair took up their 
station on the rocks near the Hutt Road in Wellington harbour. These birds, which were always 
a source of interest to me when travelling on this road, have attracted the notice of others, and are 
thus pleasantly referred to by Mr. Edward Wakefield, in a “ Science Gossip ” article, in the ‘Wellington 
Evening Press ’ ; — 
“ Railway passengers, as a rule, do not take much notice of objects which they pass. They read 
papers or books, or stare at one another, or most commonly gaze into space in a melancholy way, 
evidently thinking of nothing but how soon the journey will be over. Yet it is often worth while to 
look out of window and observe natural features or peculiarities, if only for a moment or two, as the 
train creeps past them. We wonder how many travellers by the Hutt train have seen what I have 
seen, namely, a pair of Herons which frequent the rocks on the harbour beach about niidway between 
Ngahauranga and Petone. These beautiful and uncommon birds have been there for months past 
and they seem to have taken up their abode there permanently It is usually regarded as an 
extremely shy and wary bird, having its wits wide awake against danger on all sides, and rising 
heavily and flapping a circuit out to seaward long before man can approach it. But circumstances 
seem to alter its habits. I have read somewhere an account by a traveller and a naturalist who said 
he had seen Blue Herons on an island off the Australian coast so numerous and so tame and fear- 
less that he could, and did, knock them over with a stick. Many birds, of course, which are not in 
the least shy when first found in lonely places, become so as soon as they know what a cruel destruc- 
tive animal man is. I can remember when Shags and Sandpipers in New Zealand were so unsophis- 
ticated that they would allow themselves to be caught by the hand, and even Redbills would let us 
come so close that we could kill them with stones. Thus there is nothing in the story of the Blue 
Plerons’ tameness on a desert island at all incompatible with their present reputation for wariness. 
The boldness of the pair I have seen near Petone is more remarkable, because not only do trains pass 
close to them many times a day, but the Hutt road is only distant from their haunt a few chains, and 
fishermen, children, and other intruders are always about. It seems to me a most extraordinary 
thing that these shy birds should remain there day after day, week after week, month after month, 
disturbed as they often must be by various visitors to the beach, without apparently betraying the 
least uneasiness But to me the poor, harmless, beautiful comical creatures are very charming 
on their own account, popping about among the rocks, pecking here, stalking there, prying into a 
crevice a little further on, attitudinising gracefully on a rock close by — surely, surely, they ai’e 
interesting enough in themselves, well worth observing, and — oh, ye pothunters — well worth pre- 
serving also ! ” 
Mr. Layard writes from Levuka: — “I have just obtained (2nd November) a pair of young ones 
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