The Owl That Fell from the Sky (13 page)

Foster Bay's sea snake

New Zealanders have a limited choice of exotic pets. While pet shops in New York, Paris and London offer gerbils, hamsters, monkeys and pythons, in New Zealand these animals are banned to prevent new species establishing in the wild and adding to the country's already long list of unwanted organisms.

As it happens New Zealand, like Ireland, is one of only a few moderately large countries that, because of their isolation as islands, have failed to be colonised by land snakes. Most New Zealanders, if asked, would count it a blessing to be in a snake-free country. The country's strict laws against exotic animal imports, together with a degree of snake paranoia, mean that even public zoos are prevented from exhibiting snakes. Not even a single neutered individual of a non-poisonous species is allowed.

Most New Zealanders, therefore, never see a living snake unless they travel abroad. When I visited curatorial colleagues at the Australian Museum in Sydney they must have thought it amusing when, despite being a professional herpetologist and a grown man, I showed child-like eagerness for them to open up a terrarium and let me hold a harmless American corn snake they kept in captivity for use in educational programmes.

Given the dogged determination to keep snakes out of New Zealand, there exists a great irony that was brought home to me forcefully in the first month of my employment at Auckland Museum: the warmer northern end of New Zealand is host to three species of sea snakes. Carried down by currents from the tropics, these snakes occasionally wash ashore and most are alive when found.

Any snake is a frightful affront to a snake-free country, but to compound the impertinence these sea snakes would have you go a long way to find animals whose venom is more toxic. They belong to the dreaded family Elapidae or closely related families. These are the “front-fanged snakes”, all of them venomous. For education the Australians import American corn snakes, belonging to the slightly more lovable family Colubridae, because so many of their own native snakes are elapids.

 

 

Not three weeks into my curatorial career, I took a telephone call about a live sea snake that had been found washed up at the high-tide mark in Foster Bay, near Huia in Manukau Harbour west of Auckland city. That was Friday. Apparently it remained alive in a plastic bucket until Monday, but it was dead when brought to me on Wednesday. It was a yellow-bellied sea snake,
Pelamis platurus
, beautifully patterned and about 630 millimetres long.

In this snake the upper half of the body is dark, almost black, and the lower half yellowish. The two colours meet abruptly at a straight line along each side. The tail is yellowish with a striking arrangement of large dark spots. The head is long, eel-like, and the snake's large mouth is filled with small needle-like teeth for seizing fish.

Sea snakes are elegantly adapted for aquatic life. Their tails are shaped like paddles and they swim like fish, with sideways, rather than up and down, movements of the tail. Between breaths, valves on their nostrils seal to prevent water entering. Land snakes have enlarged scales on their belly to help provide traction as they slither. Not needing this, yellow-bellied sea snakes have the same small scales on their belly as on their back and sides.

Yellow-bellied sea snakes became the first marine reptiles recorded in New Zealand when, in 1837, three were seen at Hokianga in Northland. Their presence is not surprising. These snakes live throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans and are said to be the world's most widely distributed snake. They are known to breed off the coast of eastern Australia, and being truly pelagic—living in open sea—they produce live young at sea rather than laying eggs. Yellow-bellied sea snakes may be seen thousands of kilometres from land, and often congregate among floating seaweed and other debris miles out at sea. Here, or in the shadow of the snake itself, small fish seek shelter and can end up as prey.

Yellow-bellied sea snakes are weak swimmers and tend to move passively in surface currents, which is probably how they turn up in mainland New Zealand's cool waters. They are reported to cease feeding in sea temperatures below about 18° Celsius, which means much of New Zealand is unsuitable for them most of the year. Fortunately for snake-fearers, they never come ashore unless they are sick or accidentally beached during storms: nearly all specimens recorded in New Zealand are washed up, indicating they are in distress.

On average about one yellow-bellied sea snake a year is reported to Auckland Museum or the local media. In the 1990s I began to compile records of the snakes' occurrence in New Zealand, assisted by newspaper reports going back several decades and specimens held at museums. Altogether I obtained more than sixty records, which showed the species is a relatively regular visitor to the north of the country. As the snakes escape easily from nets, those found will be only a fraction of the true number that arrive. Mostly they wash up singly, but in March 1985 four were found on Tokerau Beach in Northland.

Of thirty-nine specimens whose length was reported or that I could measure in museum collections, all were adults. They ranged from 510 to 1,155 millimetres long.

Although they are so extremely toxic and possess a big mouth—all the better to latch on to fingers—yellow-bellied sea snakes are relatively unaggressive, and if suffering cold-shock on a New Zealand beach will be in no mood to bite. They are not a significant threat to New Zealanders and the only known harm has been a persistent headache caused to legislators. Wildlife laws from the 1950s protect all naturally occurring—that is “native”—reptiles, yet our native sea snakes were overlooked when new biosecurity and organisms acts of parliament were passed into law in the 1990s: the legislation has sanctions against all snakes, naturally occurring or otherwise. Moves are afoot to rectify this legislative conflict.

In the Chinese Lunar Calendar, 2001 was a Year of the Snake. The New Zealand postal authorities wanted a stamp issue that featured snakes and contacted me about marine reptiles. Six stamps were released; they featured four turtles and two sea snakes found in New Zealand waters. One snake was, of course, the yellow-bellied sea snake; the other was the much rarer banded sea krait,
Laticauda colubrina
, which has been recorded in New Zealand fewer than ten times. To mark the Year of the Snake the two snake stamps were also issued as a special miniature sheet highlighting Chinese symbols and calligraphy. I was glad to help promote the message that New Zealand is not quite as snake-free as people imagine.

Acknowledgements

For companionship, inspiration and encouragement in the great task of developing natural history collections, I thank the technicians and volunteers who have worked with me on the Auckland Museum land vertebrates collection, my curatorial colleagues past and present at the museum, and curatorial friends and acquaintances at other museums, both in New Zealand and overseas. It has also been a privilege to work beside the other hands-on staff who make museums tick, including librarians, receptionists, display staff, conservators, educators, and maintenance and security staff.

I thank the many museum staff who have assisted my research on museum objects by providing information or giving access to objects in their care.
The Bird Collectors
by Barbara and Richard Mearns was a tremendously helpful source of biographical information on historical figures connected to natural history museums. I thank Liz Clark for sharing information on Rajah's life before he arrived at Auckland, and the Fanua family for hospitality in Tonga.

I wish to acknowledge a contribution to the cost of my side trip to Florence—in search of the birds exchanged with Enrico Giglioli—from the bequest of the late Dora Blackie. I am grateful to Nigel Prickett and Tony Whitaker for helpful discussions on various points. I appreciate Mary Varnham's expert attention in improving my prose and I thank Mary and the other staff at Awa Press—Sarah Bennett, Fiona Kirkcaldie, Kylie Sutcliffe and Ruth Beran—for the transformation of the book from concept to reality. Views expressed in this book are my own personal opinions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian Gill is the curator of land vertebrates—birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals other than whales—at Auckland Museum in New Zealand. His research has included studies of New Zealand cuckoos, song birds and extinct birds, and field surveys of reptiles and birds on Pacific islands. In 2010 he received the Ornithological Society of New Zealand's Robert Falla Memorial Award.

 

Also by Brian Gill

New Zealand's Extinct Birds
with paintings by Paul Martinson

New Zealand Frogs and Reptiles
with Tony Whitaker

New Zealand's Unique Birds
with photographs by Geoff Moon

Further reading

“Biological messages in a bottle”, Nicholas Arnold:
New Scientist
1783
, 1991.

The Bird Collectors
, Barbara Mearns and Richard Mearns: Academic Press, London, 1998.

Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum
, Richard Fortey: Harper Press, London, 2008.

Edward Gerrard & Sons: A Taxidermy Memoir
, P. A. Morris: MPM Publishing, Ascot, Berkshire, 2004.

“Friedrich-Carl Kinsky (1911–1999)—His life and contributions to bird study in New Zealand”, (S.) J. A. Bartle and J. C. Yaldwyn:
Notornis 48
, 2001.

A Gathering of Wonders: Behind the Scenes at the American Museum of Natural History
, Joseph Wallace: St Martin's Press, New York, 2001.

A Guide to Model Making and Taxidermy
, Leo J. Cappel: A. H. & A. W. Reed, Wellington, 1973.

“In memoriam: Ernst Mayr, 1904–2005”, Walter J. Bock:
The Auk 122
, 2005.

“The Kaikoura moa egg”, R. K. Dell and R. A. Falla:
Dominion Museum Records in Ethnology 2
, 1972.

Lost in the Museum: Buried Treasures and the Stories They Tell
, Nancy Moses: Altamira Press, Lanham, Maryland, 2007.

“Mr Cheeseman's legacy: The Auckland Museum at Princes Street”, R. Wolfe:
Records of the Auckland Museum 38
, 2001.

The Natural History Museum at South Kensington: A History of the
British Museum (Natural History) 1753–1980
, William T. Stearn: Heinemann, London, 1981.

“A new species of kiwi (Aves, Apterygiformes) from Ōkārito, New Zealand”, Alan J. D. Tennyson, Ricardo L. Palma, Hugh A. Robertson, Trevor H. Worthy and B. J. Gill:
Records of the Auckland Museum 40
, 2003.

“Obituary—Sir Robert Falla, KBE, CMG, MA, DSc, FRSNZ”,
C. A. Fleming:
Emu 80
, 1980.

Ornithology from Aristotle to the Present
, Erwin Stresemann: Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1975.

The Sacred Grove: Essays on Museums
, Dillon Ripley: Gollancz, London, 1970.

Sea Snakes
, Harold Heatwole: University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 1999.

Windows on Nature: The Great Habitat Dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History
, S. C. Quinn: Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2006.

Illustrations

Birds later used in the albatross diorama
vi

Auckland Museum; photograph by Graham Turbott,
circa 1960.

Cabinet of curiosities

The earliest illustration of a natural history cabinet; engraving from Ferrante Imperato's
Dell'Historia Naturale
: Naples, 1599.

Barn owl

From
A Dictionary of Birds
by Alfred Newton: A. & C. Black, London, 1893–96.

Kaikoura moa egg

An early depiction drawn on stone by J. Erxleben; lithography by M. & N. Hanhart; from
Memoirs on the Extinct Wingless Birds of New Zealand
(vol. 2) by Sir Richard Owen: Van Voorst, London, 1879.

North Island brown kiwi chick

Woodcut by J.G. Keulemans, from
Buller's Birds of New Zealand
, edited by E. G. Turbott: Whitcoulls Ltd, Christchurch, 1967.

Albatross diorama

Built by Auckland Museum preparator, Leo Cappel; photograph by Krzysztof Pfeiffer, circa 2007.

Thomas Cheeseman's first letter to Enrico Giglioli, 1877

Florence Museum archives; photograph by Brian Gill, 2007.

The Duke of Genoa's falconet specimen

Auckland Museum; photograph by Brian Gill, 2011.

Mud nest of the ovenbird

From
A Dictionary of Birds
by Alfred Newton: A. & C. Black, London, 1893–96.

Rajah the elephant transformed for display, 1936

Auckland Museum Pictorial Collections, C23255.

The Arctic group of musk oxen and polar bear

Auckland Museum; photograph by Fiona Kirkcaldie, 2011.

An early display label for Charles Adams' orang-utan

Auckland Museum archives; photograph by Brian Gill, 2011.

Eastern banjo frog

Line drawing © Donna Wahl, Australian National
Botanic Gardens.

Boy with Captain Cook's tortoise at the palace of Queen Sālote Tupou III, Nuku'alofa, Tonga

British Museum; photograph by Robert A. Lever, circa 1940s; © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Green turtle skeleton received from the Royal College of Surgeons, 1879

Auckland Museum; photograph by Brian Gill, 2011.

New Caledonian postage stamp with gecko

Courtesy iStockphoto.com.

Yellow-bellied sea snake

Line drawing from
Brehms Tierleben
–
Allgemeine Kunde des Tierreichs
by Alfred Edmund Brehm, Eduard Oskar Schmidt and Ernst Ludwig Taschenberg: Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig, 1882–84.