132 Bird-Song : and New Zealand Song Birds 
he borrows he makes so entirely his own, that it becomes more 
than mere imitation. Even when imitating human speech he 
adds embellishments. 
The tui seems to be the last bird to make himself heard in the 
nightfall. One particular evening in midsummer, December, 
1910, I sat at the edge of the bush at Stony Bay listening to the 
vesper-bells of the tui. One might almost suppose it a curfew; 
for at eight o’clock all was silent in the shadowy vale. At a 
quarter past eight a love-dreaming tui called, and broke into 
melody, the first notes slurred, softening away into the sweet¬ 
ness of the bubbling whisper-song. A bird answered with 
g c g e d from one part of the shadow, and from another came 
the kree kraw krurr, as of some listening humorist. Another 
chimed, and that was the last bird-sound from the bush. Moths 
had begun fluttering in the deepening twilight, and beetles low 
in the luxuriant cocksfoot and fog kept up a most insistent 
under-hum on / (bass), some flying high and tapping on the 
leaves of the quiet trees. A few drops of rain fell, and few as 
they were, their beating on the thousand leaves emitted a faint 
murmur as of wind. The leaves were unruffled; there was no 
wind whatever. At 8.35 came the first cry of the ruru, and at 
at 8.40 a weka prophesied rain, which came before morning. 
As he is the last bird to be heard in the evening, so is he the 
first in the morning; though in the old days it was the kaka that 
harshly called the bush from sleep. Far from harsh is the 
morning-call of the tui. Captain Cook’s description of the song 
before dawn has been quoted; and I was at Kapiti, first in 
December, 1916, and January, 1917, and many times 
since, in the hopes that the song he heard at that time of 
the year over a hundred years ago in Queen Charlotte 
Sound, I might hear on the opposite side of the Strait at 
Kapiti. I heard the song, but only as the ghost of the echo of 
the great harmonious chorus it must have been. At about three 
o’clock in the morning, whilst darkness was still deep, came the 
common call (26), repeated at intervals, one bird starting, 
another replying from a distance, and another, till the dark 
wooded hill-sides and valleys seemed peopled with musical 
