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Sydney Porter—Notes on New Zealand Birds



coast-line. On one morning alone, I was told, three hundred Black

Swans found refuge from their slayers.


Long may the remnant of New Zealand’s unique avifauna find

a shelter from the ruthless world in its forest glades but, alas ! even

around this fair spot, settlement grows and timber companies obtain

leases to chop and burn the forest; the fires, through carelessness,

penetrate far into the protected areas-—a good thing, say the New

Zealand farmers, to see such rubbish burnt, for to the average farmer

the magnificent forest is known as “ rubbish ”. It is difficult to imagine

the type of mind which would rather see thousands of acres of treeless

land enclosed with barbed wire fences than see the forest glades of

unsurpassing splendour as one sees them here.


Little Barrier Island is to the ornithologist visiting New Zealand,

what water is to the tired and thirsty traveller in the desert. This

wonderful island off the coast of New Zealand in the blue Pacific

Ocean is perhaps unique in the world. In the virgin forests which cover

the island from the sea-shore to the summits of the highest peaks

in the centre, some of the world’s rarest birds find their last refuge.

Here species banished years ago from the mainland live out their lives

in the seclusion of the forest untouched and unafraid of man as they

did in the long distant ages before the Australasial regions were

discovered by the white races.


The New Zealand Government, as if to atone for the terrible massacre

of the bird life on the mainland have set aside—for all time let us hope

—this almost inaccessible island for the preservation of the native

birds. The proclaiming of this island as a sanctuary came only just

in time to save such vanishing species as the Stitch Bird, the North

Island Bobin, etc., for it was on Little Barrier, or to give it its Maori

name, Hauturu, meaning “ the resting place of the winds ”, that many

rapacious agents of skin collectors in Europe made their last attempt

to obtain skins of the vanishing New Zealand birds.


This race of collectors is fortunately dying out, in Europe at least.

These men were collectors of bird skins on the same lines as one collects

stamps, if a bird was rare or nearly extinct so much the better, there

was more joy in possessing the skin. Agents were sent to obtain the

last survivors of the race, for to them it mattered little if the birds



