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Updated: May 23, 2025
Young cuckoos and kingfishers are the quaintest of young birds. Their plumage does not come out a little at a time, as in other nestlings, but the sheaths which surround the growing feathers remain until they are an inch or more in length; then one day, in the space of only an hour or so, the overlapping armour of bluish tiles bursts and the plumage assumes a normal appearance.
Kingfishers fished in quiet pools. But the real interest of the river, its real life, lay in its fish. What piscine tragedies it conceals, with those murderous, greedy, and powerful assassins, the bull-trout, pursuing fish, as I have seen them, almost into the landing-net! What joyous interludes where, in a sunny shallow, tiny baby trout played tag while we sat and watched them!
Even the wild ducks ascend to the topmost pools, and are constantly in flight down the narrow winding vistas of grass, water, and trees, which they, like the kingfishers and water-hens, seem to think are set out for their especial pleasure. This is supposed to be a "business" country, but one wonders why new wants which accompany any change of daily habit are so slowly realised.
At a distance of less than half a mile, on some ornamental water near the river, an even more unexpected increase of the bird population has been noted. A pair of kingfishers nested and reared their brood in an old gravel-pit, while several nests of young dabchicks hatched by the pool.
Every thing was calm around us, and we remained silent, awed by the majesty of nature. The stream flowed on in one single sheet; creepers hanging from the tree-tops drooped down into the water; while kingfishers skimmed from one shore to the other, and humming-birds, with their varied and shining plumage, fluttered about the flowers.
Thirty-five to forty species of granivorous birds, among which we occasionally find in winter that rare Arctic bird, the Evening Grosbeak. Of the Zygodachyli, fourteen species, among which is found the Paquet, in the southern part of the State. Tenuirostres, five species. Of the Kingfishers, one species. Swallows and Goat-suckers, nine species.
The impossibility that the boy should have got so far on foot made Laetitia doubtful of his veracity, until she heard that a gentleman had taken him up on the road in a gig, and had driven him to a farm to show him strings of birds' eggs and stuffed birds of every English kind, kingfishers, yaffles, black woodpeckers, goat-sucker owls, more mouth than head, with dusty, dark-spotted wings, like moths; all very circumstantial.
Every bird of the rarer kinds that is killed, such as humming birds, orioles and kingfishers, means the death of several others that is, the young that starve to death, the wounded that fly away to die, and those whose plumage is so torn that it is not fit to put in a fine lady's bonnet.
But the story must be reserved for another time, until we are able to do justice to it. At last the Lily is lying right off the beach of Te Pahi township, and her whistle is echoing among the woods on the ranges above, scaring the shags, kingfishers, and rock-snipe on the oyster-beds and beaches.
Then there were little kingfishers and starfish studding the soil. But where life abounded most was in the air. There thousands of birds fluttered and flew of all kinds, deafening us with their cries; others crowded the rock, looking at us as we passed by without fear, and pressing familiarly close by our feet.
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