Oct. 15, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
633 
HABITS. 
All young wekas are wanderers and trespass¬ 
ers for perhaps a year after they are turned 
away from home, and during this time they are 
hunted and chased by every old weka that sees 
them, but especially by their own fathers and 
mothers. Fortunately the youngsters are gen¬ 
erally the best runners, so that they can get out 
of danger, but they are severely tested to prove 
their ability to obtain and defend a home before 
they are allowed to settle down and get married. 
There appears to be no fighting for wives, as 
is the case with most other creatures. Females 
seem to be plentiful, and fight among them¬ 
selves, and the fight between the males is dis¬ 
tinctly for the exclusive right to their feeding 
grounds. 
We have six or seven years’ experience of 
them now, and those living near the house are 
tamer than ordinary fowls. One pair has been 
with 11s for five years, and during that time I 
never saw them ten yards outside their boun¬ 
dary. The domains of two other pairs meet 
on a grass plot near the house, and on rare 
occasions the whole six of them may be seen 
within a few yards of each other, all on their 
own ground and respecting each others’ rights 
to some degree. 
If the female dies or is taken by a hawk, the 
male soon takes another mate, but if the male 
dies, the place is taken by another male and his 
mate. They take nearly a month to hatch, and 
for some time previously are very busy about 
the nest, so that it may be forty days before 
they bring the weakly little chickens to the 
beach, and all this time they are going back¬ 
ward and forward on the ground till they have 
a regular beaten track that I can easily follow 
if I want their eggs. I have heard that weasels 
and ferrets are famous trackers, and that either 
of them could find a weka’s nest. 
When I go to take the eggs, the hatcher, let 
it be either male or female, will not come off 
the nest, and will resist being pulled off with 
all its might. It will peck at my hand, but 
never severe enough to break the skin, so that 
it would not hurt a tough-skinned weasel very, 
much. I have also heard that a weasel has 
courage enough to attack a man. Wekas sleep 
in a warm place on the ground every night, and 
the ferret is a night hunter. I mention this be¬ 
cause even the most intelligent of our people 
attribute the destruction of the wekas to the 
poisoned grain laid for rabbits, and this after 
the wholesale importation of ferrets, weasels 
and stoats. 
NUMBER OF WEKA CHICKENS. 
Three young ones are the most I have seen 
in one family in Dusky Sound, but I got four 
eggs in a nest at Lake Te Anau, where web as 
were very plentiful before the ferrets came, and 
in the grasshopper days I counted six young 
ones on the middle dome. 
I brought with me from Dunedin a bantam 
rooster and two little hens. When I let them 
out of the box the weka, that was at my heels, 
set on them as he would on one of his own 
sort that he wanted to frighten, but the fowls 
took no notice of him. With all the weka’s 
reputation for fighting and bloodthirstiness one 
of those little hens will hunt him away from the 
food, and if he is in any way slow about going, 
will pull a mouthful of feathers out of him. I 
think the rooster got about one kick at each 
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