28 An Early New Zealand Settler Talks about Birds


is responsible for this statement could never have seen one in flight.

I noticed when they first introduced the Californian Quail in our district

our native Quail disappeared very quickly. I think they must have

been robbed of their natural food and starved out. The imported

Quail thrived so well that it was not long before you could see them in

big mobs. I have seen them from fifty to a hundred in big droves,

so what hope did our native birds have ?


The Owl, or Morepork, used to interest me a lot, and when I was

a school boy roaming about the bush near my home I used to see

lots of rat skins on the ground. I knew the Moreporks killed the

native bush rats [Maori Rat—there is no rat indigenous to New

Zealand. —Ed.] and ate them. The peculiar thing about these skins was

they were always turned inside out and with no flesh on them, and not

a sign of a break in the skin. One day our school master, who was just

out from Scotland, and a naturalist, asked if we had noticed the rat

skins, and I told him I had. He said it was a puzzle to naturalists

how the Moreporks turned the skin inside out without breaking the

skin (the head was always missing), and it is still a puzzle to me.


In my younger days I spent a lot of pleasant hours eel fishing

and Duck shooting along the lagoon and on the river-bed flats. On

still, moonlight nights, when waiting for Ducks, I have heard the weird

scream of some small animal up in the air and then a rat would come

falling through space with a Morepork following it. It would scarcely

hit the ground before the bird would have it again up in the

air and would keep at it until the rat was stunned or dead. Of course

the Morepork would not have a chance with a rat in the ordinary way,

but Nature supplies it with a light body, strong swift flight, and good

claws and beak, which gives it its power over its victim.


On very dark, calm nights when I have been eel fishing I used to

hear queer whispering noises, and wondered what they could be ; I

thought at the time it must be bush rats, but years after I found out the

noise was made by the courting Moreporks. Of course they did not

live entirely on rats and mice. I have seen one in the day time in the

dense shade of the bush with a Sparrow in its claws. What drew my

attention to it was the noise of a big mob of Sparrows all round it. I

do not think it bothers much about our small native birds, at least



