107 
The Honey-eaters : The Blight-bird 
also shews method of suspension. The top figure is a double 
nest from Russell's Flat, Canterbury: it was rather crus ec 
when packed for post. I received the nest in 1922. 
The blight-bird is supposed to have come ongma y ion 
Australia, and that, too, in comparatively recent years T e 
recorded occurrence, by 1882, “of no less than eight instances 
of occasional visitants from Australia and Tasmania, wio e 
W T L Travers in that year (Tr„ Yol. 15, 1883, p. 179), “gives 
strength to the supposition that they were aided in their 
transit by strong north-westerly winds. In this connection 
may mention that the common sparrow has recently found its 
way to the Chatham Islands [536 miles eastwards of Lyttelton 
in the South Island] without man’s intervention, no doubt 
assisted across the intervening waters by a ™rth-wes, f i e ’ 
and although both Mr. Wallace and Dr. Buller treat Zoste p 
lateralis [Z. caerulescens ] as a true New Zealand form ■ 
it pretty certain that we owe its presence here and m t 
Chathams to a similar cause. The enormous ^crease in the 
numbers of this bird which has taken place both m Austra 
and New Zealand, is evidently due to a corresponding increase 
in the quality of suitable food provided by the introduction 
into both countries, of various kinds of succulent frults ’ 
of a great variety of foreign insects. The Maoris. 
that it is a stranger [the word tauhou means stranger j 
of apparently recent appearance in these islands. 
In liis history, Buller (BN, Yol. 1, p. 78) still considers the 
bird an indigenous species, that began to migrate norwards 
in 1856, establishing itself m the North Island m , 
which date onwards it has bred and resided there as well as 
in the south. The coming and going of the bud, on 
Buller lays stress, is still a characteristic, but one it has 
common with the grey warbler; at certain times o > 
neither is seen or heard around human habitations. , 
observed it in Canterbury in 1856, after rough weather and 
it was apparently first seen m Nelson m the samei y • 
indigenous, it is hardly likely that it would start coming 
only so recently as 1856. 
