Sydney Porter—Notes on Neio Zealand Birds



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establishment of the cold storage houses in the cities, men would go

out and kill birds in hundreds, sending them to the refrigerators to be

brought out and used as required. Many people would send in several

months’ supply at a time.


It is little wonder then that most of the larger New Zealand birds,

if not extinct are nearly so. Only a few of the endemic birds have been

able to hold their own against the advance of civilization. The Pipit,

the White-eyes, and the Purple Swamp Hen are about the only birds

which are seen in the vicinity of human habitations.


By the lovely Lake Waikaremoana, with its equally beautiful name,

“ Little Ocean of Rippling Waters,” which lies over two thousand

feet above sea-level, I found my heart’s delight.


It was by these incomparable blue waters, surrounded by steep

mountains clothed to the water’s edge with the most magnificent

virgin forest, that I first heard the chorus of Bell-birds and Tuis which

so charmed the early explorers and settlers and which is heard in so

few places to-day on the mainland.


To attempt to convey to the reader’s mind but the slightest

impression of the grandeur of Lake Waikaremoana would be impossible.

Only those who have looked upon its beauties can realize that such

scenes are a reality and not the vivid imagination of an artistic mind.


To see the sun, as it sinks over the distant mountains, turn the

blue waters to pink and orange is a sight worth coming half round the

world to see. I thought that upon leaving the fair island of Dominica

I should never again see such an earthly paradise, but this surpassed

anything I had ever seen. Not only did the fascination he in the scenery

but it is one of the last refuges on the mainland of New Zealand’s

much persecuted avifauna. Here within a few yards of the govern¬

ment hostel one sees hosts of Tuis, Bell-birds, Tom-tits, Whiteheads,

and last but not least many of the magnificent Fruit Pigeons.


What a haven of refuge, what a feast to the tired eyes of the city

dweller. Upon arriving there one feels like a tired traveller who after

years of wandering has at last reached home.


Upon its placid waters flock, as soon as the shooting season starts,

hosts of persecuted waterfowl to find sanctuary in its forest-fringed

inlets, for the lake being so indented has nearly a hundred miles of



