An Early New Zealand Settler Talks about Birds



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will always find one or two pairs with you. Of course they are after

the grubs and insects you disturb in the soil. Every spring when I

start digging in my garden I have scarcely begun when I feel sure

the same birds come year after year ; one seems on the look out, and

you will hear a very cheerful cheep 44 Here he is again ”, and you will

hear his mates answer and come at once : very seldom more than two

pairs, and often only one. I am sorry to say they fight a lot, so perhaps

that is why you never see many together. It is strange, being ground

birds, that they have been able to hold their own. They are a much

finer looking bird than the imported Skylarks, and it is a pity they

have no song. Their nest is built on the ground, and is similar to

that of the Skylark, but I have noticed they always pick the side of

a hillock to insure the nest keeping dry and not so liable to be trampled

on by animals, a thing I have often seen happen to the nests of other

Larks. Their plumage is not very striking, but they are very trim and

neat, and they look very dainty hopping about.


Another native ground bird, which I am sorry to say has died out,

is the native Quail. Between forty and fifty years ago, on the Ashhurst

flat (opposite Manawatu Gorge), the native Quail were in their hundreds,

and many a scare I have had from them while running in the early

morning to get our cows. You could not see them when they were

hiding. Nature making them the same colour as their surroundings,

you would be on the point of walking over a mob when all of a sudden

a whirl almost in your face : this first explosion seemed a signal for the

rest, the mob would whirl away one at a time. Very seldom would

you see two rise together, although there were generally about twenty to

thirty in a mob. It used to make my heart jump every whirl, just as

if they had been fired up with a spring, and their swiftness of flight

was wonderful, but they never seemed to fly far. Sportsmen who

could shoot them on the wing were considered first-class shots in the

early days of muzzle-loaders.


The native Quail was very similar to the imported Australian

Quail in size and shape, only the New Zealanders were lighter in colour

and much more plump. I have read quite lately in a book of New

Zealand birds that it was through being slow fliers they had been shot

out, falling easy victims to shooters. It quite amused me, for whoever



