Page:Bird-lore Vol 05.djvu/128

 In the Haunts of New Zealand Birds its

effect of a chime of tiny silver bells. This favorite of New Zealand's songsters is a member of a family well represented in Australasia and Polynesia, the Melaphagidze, or Honey-eaters, a group characterized by the sharp. slender, moderately curved bill and grooved tongue.

Of other native birds, none interested me more than the Fantails, New Zealand claims two of these bird mites, members of the Old World Fly-catcher family.—the Pied and the Black Fantail. It was the latter bird which I encountered in the Bishop's grove—a tiny puff-ball with expanded wings and tail, slaty black in color, with a dark brown tinge on the wings and back and a touch of white on the ear coverts. A squeaky, rickety call served in lieu of song, but the little creature was vain as a Peacock, and strutted about with its conspicuous tail expanded to the fullesr extent, If anything could make me believe in disembodied spirits entering birds and seeking to converse with men as they do in the myths of eld. it would be the actions of the Black Fantail. Flitting through the air with short. jerky motions, hovering about and following as if determined to alight on my shoulder, calling in its friendly, though unmusical tones, one of these little creatures seemed so determined to communicaie with me that it became positively uncanny, Although. on many future occasions, I had opportunity of observing the extreme tameness of the Fantails, I never saw another one so persistent in its efforts to establish friendly relations

The little Gray Warbler, which also attracted my attention amid the Bishop's tree-ferns and pittosporumsi is one of the most fascinating creatures in the New Zealand groves I had not been in the colony a day when, in an Auckland garden, a note reached my ears, so plaintive and tender, so varied and sustained, that I was incredulous about its being the voice of a bird, It seemed almost weirdly human. yet so ﬁne and dainty, so slight and timid, as to resemble the piping of a woodland elf rather than the whistle of a bird I was unable to detect the minstrel at the time, but in the Bishop's grove I traced it up and found a diminu- tive little creature most unostentatiously dressed in grayish brown above and paler gray below, with a trace of yellow on the abdomen It was an alert, restless bird, ﬂitting amid the foliage and uttering a fine. high twitter. Every now and then it would sing that wonderful song like some timid creature experimenting with a quavering, high-pitched pipe on various notes of the scale.

The Gray Warbler belongs in the same family with the Nightingale and other European songstersAthe Old World Warblersﬁa group which is not represented in America It builds a wonderful pensile nest not unlike that marvel of bird-architecture, the home of the California Bush- tit, but with a larger entrance, The Maoris are fond of this little creature and have many songs and traditions in which it figures.