The Cuckoos: The Long-tailed Cuckoo 181 
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THE KOEKOEA’. 
BY BEN KEYS. 
The month of November has again wit¬ 
nessed the arrival in New Zealand oj 
those annua] visitors, the long-tailed 
cuckoos, as I am able to bear witness 
from having heard the nocturnal call 
here in Te Puke twice within the past 
fortnight. 
This cuckoo, the koekoea, is not to, be 
confused with the bronze or shining 
cuckoo, called by the Maoris pipiwharau- 
Ioa -\ Toth indeed belong to the same 
family, both are immigrants to. New Zea¬ 
land for the summer months, and both 
have the same parasitical habits; but the 
long-tailed cuckoo is s a larger bird, with 
Jess striking plumage, than its better- 
known relative. It is found in the South 
Pacinc Islands as far north as the Solo¬ 
mons, and why it should fly hither each 
year is one of the puzzles of natural his¬ 
tory ; but certain it is that with unfail- 
mg regularity November sees its arrival 
and February its departure. Its plumage 
markpi Iy ^ brown, streaked or 
marked with shades of the same colour, 
tl e tail-feathers being barred with light 
lail^th Z n ' ? ie bod y is ^nievvfiat 
the° In ' a song-thrush, but 
Orani T.f h 'V r f 
t s; Z/fLZ 
t on a t> “ 0tiler to , the ta8ks of incuba- 
who exl. "5™*. , th f,yoong interloper, 
nest hi. 1 ® K 8 ll - ul oceupiints of the 
nest soon after they are hatched. 
The Cuckoo and the Lizard. 
thJ'MioTO U whf cuckoo , is weil known to 
been srngularly inaccukte L lleij oW 
it tCk<X,ea m h g t in The >' usuall .V nail 
> the name kaweau or kawe- 
kaweau, is much more interesting, for it 
refers to the Maoris' belief concerning the 
origin of the bird. One use of the word 
kaweau or kawekaweau is as an alterna¬ 
tive name for the tuatara, that curious 
reptile once not altogether uncommon on 
the mainland of New Zealand, but how 
only found on a few islets about the 
Auckland province and on the Brothers 
and other islands in Cook Strait. The tua¬ 
tara, like the true lizards, was an object 
of intense horror to the Maoris, one 
reason of their aversion being the belief 
that evil spirits or atua took the form of 
these creatures when bent upon working 
ill to human beings. Now Kaweau, as a 
proper noun, was the name of a lizard- 
god, known in Polynesian mythology, the 
brother of two other gods named Tuatara 
and Mokomokopapa; and though the 
Maoris of New Zealand have, so far as I 
have been able to learn, no theory that 
the long-tailed cuckoo and the tuatara 
have anything in common, yet the univer¬ 
sal belief amongst them is that the bird 
is a transmutation of the mokopapa or 
ngarara-papa, the brown tree-lizard of 
the settlers. I have made many inquiries 
of the natives as to the origin of the 
koekoea, and have invariably been told 
that in the winter time it exists as a 
ngarara-papa, living in the dense copses 
and changing in the spring-time to the 
form of a bird. The pretty markings oil 
the skin of the brown tree-lizard are not 
unlike the plumage of the koekoea; and 
this fact perhaps caused the ancient Maori 
on his arrival in New Zealand, to retain 
the old Polynesian name kaweau for 
the bird (which, no doubt, was already 
familiar to him), but to attach his theory 
of transmutation to the ngarara-papa in¬ 
stead of to that other reptile which he 
-also named kaweau (and tuatara) after 
his ancestral lizard-gods. The tuatara is 
only found in New Zealand—it was not 
brought from Hawaiki by the Maoris, as 
they assert. Nor "was the mokopapa or 
ngarara-papa. 
Theory and Fact. 
1 cannot, from my own enquiries, offer 
ary explanation of the other name men-: 
tioned above—kohoperoa. But in con¬ 
sulting Williams’ “ Maori Dictionary ”■ 
I find there a reference to a word used 
by the natives of Tahiti, viz., “hope,” 
