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IF
New Zealand was a land of forests, it was no less a land of birds.
Undisturbed for centuries they lived in
such isolation that many species, like the almost legendary moa,
ceased to fly. Birds, ii truth, possessed the land. In the forests tuis and
mako-makos, pigeons, owls, parakeets
and kakas, fantails and cuckoos
abounded. Along the swamps, rivers, and lakes, ducks, herons, pukekos,
crakes, wekas, kiwis, and kingfishers
were plentiful. On the sea-coast were penguins, gannets, gulls,
terns, shags, and albatrosses.
So varied was this bird life that, during Cook's
visit to Queen Charlotte
Sound, as many eighteen
species were noted. Singing birds crowded the trees, and in a famous
passage Sir Joseph Banks, the
naturalist who accompanied Cook, described the beauty of the morning
chorus from tree-fringed shore: They strained their throat
with emulation and made,
perhaps, the most melodious wild music I have ever heard but with
the most tunable sound imaginable . . .'
The Maoris found this wealth of bird life valuable source of food. With
great skill the speared tuis, pigeons, huias, parrots, and other forest
birds with a twenty to forty foot speal tipped with a six inch barb of bone.
They hunted kiwis and wekas with the old breed of dogs they brought with
them from far-off Hawaiki. birds were frequently potted in their own fat for
winter stores, the feathers being used for making cloaks. But as the Maori
was careful never interfere with birds during the breeding seas they
continued to flourish until the arrival of the European saw the beginning of
the first serious onslaught on the forests.
An Etching showing forest veterans above
Paterson's Inlet Stewart Island.
A Steel engraving of a Tui
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Kiwis from a wood engraving,
'Canterbury Old and New' (1900)
A tree Fern
Title Goes Here
A Quaint version of a Moa. This
illustration was published in the 'Illustrated Sydney news'. (1865) |
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