Two in the Bush (2 page)

‘It’s a small wading bird,’ he explained carefully, as to a mentally defective child of two, ‘and it gets its name from the fact that its beak is twisted to one side.
They’re only found in New Zealand and there are not very many of them left – I should think the total population is about five thousand but we haven’t done a proper count on them.
There’s a small colony of them just down the coast from here and I thought we could nip down and see them.’

The idea of seeing a bird with a beak that bent sideways, even to a naturalist in my condition, was irresistible, and so in a very short time we had left ‘the outskirts of Auckland behind
and were driving through the countryside. As we drove further and further a deep depression settled on me, for the landscape was exactly the pleasant, gently undulating type of countryside you can
find on the Dorset–Devon borders: lush green grassy hillsides, daisy-speckled with flocks of sheep; small, neatly hedged fields, with their windbreaks of small copses; even the birds that
flew up from the side of the road were starlings, blackbirds, thrushes, and high above us a skylark was hung, singing his evening song. To have travelled so far and so eagerly from England only to
find yourself in another England seemed to me a refinement of torture which – on top of the beer – was almost unendurable. By the time we were bumping down a rough track towards the
coast I was in a mood of black depression and was beginning to wonder why we had come to New Zealand in the first place. We might just as well have stayed at home if all we were going to see was
blackbirds and skylarks.

Brian eased the Land-Rover through a flock of sheep who scattered before us, their fleeces wobbling as they ran, and then brought the vehicle to rest by a hedge. Beyond the hedge spread an area
of rough, tussocky ground, beyond that a bare, flat area of dried mud, then a shingle beach and the grey uninviting sea. Normally, Brian explained, the Wrybills spent their time feeding on a long
shingle spit to the left of us, but at high tide when the spit was covered, they moved inland to the flat muddy area that we could see directly in front of us. We strained our eyes but as far as we
could see there was no bird life in sight. Brian, muttering the outraged mutters of an Organiser whose Organisation has broken down, moved slowly down the hedge and we followed him. A stiff, cold
breeze had now sprung up, accompanied by a mild drizzle, and I began to think longing thoughts of warm baths and soft beds. Suddenly Brian stopped and lifted his field-glasses.

‘Ha!’ he barked triumphantly,
‘there
they are. A little out of position, but they’re
there.’

He pointed and I focused my glasses at the area he indicated.

At first all I could see was a large expanse of uninspiring grey mud, apparently completely devoid of any life whatsoever. Then I saw what at first glance appeared to be a grey, gossamer-like
shawl of large dimensions, performing a sort of whirligig motion on the mud. On close examination this turned out to be a tightly packed conglomeration of small birds, all performing some strange
gyrations that kept them in almost constant motion yet on exactly the same spot. The range was too far to see exactly what they were doing, so we moved cautiously through the tussocky area of rough
ground that separated us from them, and eventually managed to get within about two hundred feet without apparently causing them the slightest alarm. Then we could see dearly what they were doing,
and it was one of the most extraordinary group actions I have seen performed by birds.

The wrybills were small (about the size of a ringed plover), bluish-grey on the upper parts and white below, with a white stripe across the forehead and across the top of the eye, and a very
neat black bib under the chin. The small beaks were all bent from left to right like a bill-hook, and this, for some extraordinary reason, combined with their neatly domed heads and dark eyes, made
them look as if they all had snub noses. But it was their actions that fascinated me even more than their unique beak formation. There were about fifty of them and they covered an area some thirty
feet by twenty, all facing into the wind and all standing on one leg. I noticed that each bird kept some twelve inches or so away from its neighbours. They would stand there, shuffling their
feathers and blinking, balancing their frail bodies against the wind, looking incredibly mournful. Then suddenly, and – as far as I could see – for no particular reason, one of them
would hop forward (still on one leg) some six inches or so. This would, of course, destroy the careful territory arrangement of the whole group, and so all the birds nearest to the one that had
moved would have to move too and, in turn, all the ones nearest to
them
would have to move, and so on. Thus, periodically, the whole conglomeration would be in motion yet the group as a
whole remained exactly where it was. However carefully I watched them I could not see any valid reason for this sudden outbreak of movement; they were not displaying, nor were they feeding. They
just stood there like a group of dispirited, poverty-stricken orphans, and every so often – to relieve the tedium – they would break into this weird game of hopscotch. Brian said it was
thought that the strange shape of the wrybill’s beak was to assist it in feeding. With this curious bent beak, it can slide it more easily under stones in search of the tiny crustaceans and
other sea life on which it lives.

We watched the cold, shuffling, hopscotching crowd of wrybills for about an hour, and during that time there had been immense activity within the group, yet the group as a whole had hardly moved
more than a yard or so from where we had first seen them. Fascinating though they were to watch, time was getting short and so we reluctantly climbed back into the Land-Rover and drove back through
fine drizzle into Auckland. I felt strangely comforted by my sight of the wrybills; they were, I felt, an omen that perhaps we were going to see some interesting things in New Zealand after
all.

Geysers, Wekas and Kakas

The next morning we rose at what I considered to be an inordinately early hour (I was suffering from the effects of ‘the swill’) and we had soon left Auckland
behind and were driving through the English-looking countryside, with the usual depressing glimpses of blackbirds, thrushes and starlings to enliven the landscape. Brian drove and did it, as he did
all things, extremely well. Over the weeks that we were to get to know him, my liking and respect for him grew daily. He was quiet, resourceful and, above all, knew his job backwards. His chief
concern was that what was left of New Zealand’s indigenous wildlife should not become extinct owing to sloppy or insufficient conservation laws or measures. As we drove along he explained to
me the problems facing the Wildlife Department in its efforts to salvage what was left of the New Zealand fauna.

The first thing to remember, he explained, was that New Zealand – geologically speaking – is a very young country and so the majority of the rock formation is extremely soft. In
places you can, literally, crumple the rock up in your hands. This soft rock is covered by a thin layer of topsoil, held in place by forests in most areas, and on the hilltops by various grasses.
The first to come to New Zealand were a race called the Moa Hunters, so called because they appear to have existed, to a large extent, by killing and eating the now extinct gigantic ostrich-like
bird called the Moa. The Moa Hunters did not do tremendous damage to the forests, though they burnt and cut a certain amount. Then the Maoris arrived and proceeded to exterminate the Moa Hunters.
The Maoris did considerably more damage to the forests and grasslands by burning and cutting. Then came the European and he carried on the good work with such thoroughness that soon vast areas were
denuded of forest and grass, and great bald patches of erosion started to appear. One of the first things the early settlers did (and certainly one of the stupidest) was to start introducing
animals and birds, mainly from the ‘Old Country’. Up until then nature (who, by and large, knows her job pretty well) had worked out a nice balance of the fauna. There were no mammals
except a few bats, a few species of small, colourful and harmless reptiles, and a host of lovely birds. New Zealand, before the coming of man and particularly the European, was a paradise for
birds: thick forests, grasslands, abundant insect life and virtually no predators. Into this harmonious paradise the European introduced blackbirds, thrushes, starlings, mallard, Mute Swan,
skylark, pheasant, greenfinch, hedge sparrow, house sparrow, chaffinch, goldfinch and yellowhammer, to name only a few European species, together with more exotic ones like Indian mynahs,
white-backed magpies, rosella parrots and black swans. Not content with this act of criminal stupidity, they introduced the following mammals: red deer, fallow deer, Japanese deer, Virginia deer,
bush wallabies, chamois, moose, sambar, possum, thar, wapiti, javan rusa. In the meantime, of course, the settlers continued to cut down the forest and overgraze the hillsides. So, with their
habitat being decimated, and faced with competition from strange, introduced creatures with which they had never had to contend before, it is small wonder that a number of wonderful New Zealand
birds became extinct and that all the other species, by and large, started to decline. Many unique bird species inhabited small islands off the coast and, even when unmolested, their total
population could never have been very high. Many of these were exterminated by the deliberate or accidental introduction of cats that ran wild, or of sheep and goats that also became feral and
devoured the vegetation, thus destroying the birds’ habitat. Even now, Brian told me, the Wildlife Department was having an uphill struggle to try and rid the islands of these pests before
some species of bird life gave up the unequal struggle. As we drove along Brian kept pointing out to me various examples of the sort of thing he meant, to underline his points.

‘Look at that,’ he would say, pulling up by the side of the road and pointing at a hillside, which, denuded of grass and in consequence of topsoil, had started to avalanche the soft
rock into the valley below, ‘that’s a bit of overgrazing. They’re not supposed to graze sheep over a thousand feet, but they do. Then you get
that:
grass goes, topsoil
goes, rock crumbles and swoosh! Straight down into the valley. This causes a flash flood further down which rips the topsoil off the valley surface where it
should
have been safe.’

Or again, he would stop by the edge of the forest and show us where the young saplings had been ‘ringed’ by the introduced deer, that is to say they had nibbled the tender bark off
right round the trunk of the tree, thus killing it. But probably the most ironical sight he showed us were the telegraph and electricity poles, each wearing, halfway up, a sort of collar of zinc
nailed to the pole.

‘That,’ said Brian, ‘is for the possums. Some bright cove thought that possums had nice skins so he’d start up a fur business. He imported his stock from Australia and
started. The business failed, of course, so he let the possums go. They’re now a major pest. Not only do they eat hell out of the trees – they eat the buds and new shoots as well as the
bark – but they took to climb­ing the electricity poles and getting themselves electrocuted and plunging whole towns into darkness. So they had to fit these metal collars on the poles so
they can’t climb up.’

By ten o’clock we reached a small town that lay on the edge of Lake Whangape, where we were supposed to meet Chris Parsons, the producer, and Jim Saunders, the cameraman. But as we drew up
outside a small café near the lake there was no sign of them and Brian scowled at his watch.

‘Can’t understand it,’ he said worriedly, ‘they should have been here by now.’

‘Perhaps they’ve gone down to the lake?’ I suggested.

‘They may have done,’ said Brian doubtfully, ‘but I said we’d meet them outside this café. Anyway let’s go and have a look.’

We left the Rover and made our way to the top of the grassy hillside that looked out over the lake, and in the bright sunlight, under a clear blue sky, it was a gorgeous sight. The lake itself
was really like two or three large lakes, joined together by fairly narrow ‘necks’ of water and dotted with a variety of tree- and reed-covered islands. The gently undulating
countryside around the shores of the lake was vivid emerald green, studded here and there with stands of poplar trees that were just starting to be toasted by the sun to a rich gold. But it was the
surface of the lake that caught and held my attention, for on it floated such a vast concourse of black swans that I was speechless at the numbers. Some swam singly, others in great flotillas, and
periodically a group of them would take wing in a leisurely fashion and fly after their reflections across the smooth surface of the water. There were so many of them that it was impossible even to
try to make a rough count of their numbers; everywhere you looked there were swans swimming or flying, so that the whole surface of the lake was in constant motion. How such a vast concentration of
birds found enough to eat, even on such large stretches of water, was incredible.

‘We reckon,’ said Brian laconically, ‘that there are about ten thousand swans on this lake. Periodically, of course, we organise shoots to keep their numbers under some sort of
control, but it’s an uphill struggle.’

‘I supposed if it wasn’t for such vast quantities of these Australian interlopers the lake would be full of New Zealand duck?’ I asked.

Brian shrugged.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it would be a good lake for duck, but that’s the trouble with New Zealand, as I told you. We introduced these damned things and now they’ve got out
of control. This is one of the department’s biggest problems.’

The first black swan had been imported to New Zealand from Australia in 1864 and, judging by the surface of the lake lying below us, they had done no mean task of establishing themselves in
their new environment. The main trouble with these beautiful and graceful swans is that they feed close to the shore – mainly on aquatic plants – and naturally they can reach these at
greater depths than the ducks can. So, by starving the ducks and by fouling the water and the shoreline, they drive the ducks away. On the lake below us there was not a single duck, nothing but
black swans as far as the eye could see.