12 Bird-Song : and New Zealand Song Birds 
of birds are common enough in other parts of the world. In 
England, both the nuthatch and the golden-crested wren join 
parties of tits and creepers in quest of food (OC, pp. 13 and 92) 
the corn-bunting joins with larks or yellow-hammers during 
winter, (ib. p. 415), rooks and starlings, too, associate 
(ib. p. 14). I have seen a bell-bird associating with white-heads 
not without occasional disagreements. ‘‘If we do not much 
wonder, ” says White (WS, p. 417) “to see a flock of rooks 
usually attended by a train of daws, yet it is strange that the 
former should so frequently have a flight of starlings for their 
satellites. Is it because rooks have a more discerning scent 
than their attendants, and can lead them to spots more pro¬ 
ductive of food ?.Perhaps, then, their associates attend 
them on the motive of interest, as greyhounds wait on the 
motions of their finders, and as lions are said to do on the 
yelpings of jackals. Lapwings and starlings sometimes asso¬ 
ciate.” The Rev. J. Milford adds a note to this,—“.this 
is the case with other birds. The short-eared owl often accom¬ 
panies flights of woodcocks in this country. In Greece, the 
cuckoo migrates with the turtle-flocks, thence they are called 
trigonokracti, or turtle-leader.” In New Zealand the seagull 
associates with man if the man be behind a plough, and the 
tom-tit itself is often the familiar of the man with a spade. 
During three weeks on Kapiti Island in 1916-17, the most con¬ 
stant songster, and the most ubiquitous, was the cheerful white- 
head. It is gregarious, moving in flocks of from four or five 
to a dozen or twenty. In the karaka groves on the seashore; 
in the steep, rugged, scrub-shaded creek gorges; in the 
secluded, deep, but open forest-grown inner valleys; on the 
moister heights where mosses and hymenophyllum were masses 
of glistening green, on the gentler slopes and occasional flats 
beneath tree-ferns and Maori cedars; above the tangled brakes 
of looping supplejack and barbed lawyer; there the white-head 
was to be seen and heard, in little flocks of from three or four 
to a dozen or more; restless, twittering, singing, never still, 
never silent morning or evening, and only subdued, not sup¬ 
pressed, at mid-day, when most other birds are quiet in the 
