Page:Bird-lore Vol 08.djvu/233

 The Wry-bill Plover of New Zealand By EDGAR F. STEAD, "Christ Church, New Zea'and With photographs by the author IN the central portion of the South Island of New Zealand is a large tract of flat country known as the Canterbury Plains. Stretching along the seacoast for over a hundred miles, the plains run back to the foothills some forty miles inland. There the ranges rise, one behind the other, in rough, broken country, extending over to the west coast, forming the Southern Alps. Now the tops of these ranges are, nearly all of them, over five thousand feet high, and are, in winter, thickly coated with snow. In the spring and through the summer, come the warm, rain-laden northwest winds, melting the snow and sending thousands of small cataracts leaping down the steep mountain -sides, carrying with them the stones and broken rocks from the barren slopes above. Along the gullies and the valleys the streams collect, forming large rivers, which, scarcely less turbulent than their tributaries, still roll the stones along, through wide sunny vales and dark rock-bound gorges out to the plains, and then straight to the sea. The accompanying photograph of the Rakaia river, taken below the gorge, is typical of most of the Canterbury snow-fed rivers. On the right and left can be seen the level plains, with the hills beyond. The terraces here are nearly one thousand feet deep, and the river-bed one and one-half miles across. In the gorge, the sides of which may be seen, the river is under two hundred yards wide. Where the river widens out from below the gorge to the sea, the shingle* carried down by the floods is banked up, and the shingle-beds and sand-spits thus formed are ideal bird haunts. Shags, T Gulls, Terns and Plover are to be found there during the summer, the first - named nesting in the trees or cliffs along the river-banks, the others making their nests on the shingle. the larger portion of the river-beds. t Phalacrocorax carbo is with us largely an inland bird, frequenting fresh-water lakes and rivers.
 * The round, water-worn stones, with most of the sand washed out, which form