THE WEK A RAIL. 
Oq/dromus australis. 
Plate XLII. 
Amongst all the birds met with in the province of Nelson, in New Zealand, none is so abundant, we are 
informed by Mr. J. Haast, who has written some interesting notes on the ornithology of that country, as 
the Weka Rail. 
The Wood-hen, as it is called by the colonists, “is found everywhere on the grassy plains and in the 
forests, as well as near the summits of the mountains amongst the subalpine vegetation. It is omnivorous, 
and seems to be the true scavenger of the country. It despises nothing. Bread, flour, bacon, yellow soap' 
and even the remains of its own kindred, are greedily devoured. They quickly find out a camp, where their 
instinct leads them in search of food. The woods resound with their call, which consists of two notes in the 
octave, of which the lowest is the first given. We caught a great many, as a valuable addition to our stock 
of provisions. The capture is generally made by means of a flax snare at the end of a stick, keeping behind 
it a smaller bird, at which they run pugnaciously; and even when there is no time to take them in this way, 
no small bird being at hand, they come to the snare, attracted by a branch rattled on the ground behind it' 
accompanied by an imitation of the notes of one of the smaller birds. We have even caught them by the 
hand, by simply exhibiting a dead robin. 
“The Weka lays four to five eggs, yellowish white, with chocolate-coloured spots, of the size of a fowl’s 
egg, in a nest prepared rudely with a few dead leaves and dried grass, in a flax bush. It breeds in the months 
of November and December, like all the other birds of New Zealand with the exception of the Kaka (Nestor 
meridionalis), which breeds only at the end of summer—say at the end of February and beginning of March. 
The Weka has great affection for its young ones, and it was often with the aid of one of them, which were 
easily caught, that we secured the parents. A "note of distress from the young bird invariably brings the 
old ones to its assistance, when they are easily caught in the snare held in readiness.” 
The Weka Rail is not unfrequently brought to England alive. Eggs of this bird have been more than on 
one occasion deposited in the Society’s Gardens, but we have not yet succeeded in inducing the reproduction 
of the species in this country. 
Some specimens of the Weka Rail are wholly of a much lighter, almost chestnut hue, varied with dark 
markings, like that figured on the right-hand side of Mr. Wolf’s plate. These birds have been regarded, 
perhaps correctly, as belonging to a distinct species, which Mr. G. R. Gray has proposed to call Ocydromm 
earli, after Mr. Percy Earl, to whom the British Museum is indebted for a specimen belonging to this form. 
