Finding Out About Nature
by Phyllis Gant  illustrated by Eileen Mayo

When I was around ten years old, I wanted to be a naturalist when I grew 
up. I had learn about Sir Joseph Banks at
school, and I thought he must have been the best naturalist in the world. 
So I wanted to be a naturalist, too.
I kept a special nature study book, apart from the one I had to have for 
school. I wrote in it about the birds and
animals and plants I saw, and I did drawings. At that time, I lived on an 
island off the southern coast of Australia,
with my mother and father and three sisters.
But then I found out that I could never be a real naturalist, because a 
man who liked to look at my book said, "What - a naturalist who is too scared to 
handle spiders! Well! I never heard of a naturalist who was too scared to handle 
spiders!"
Of course, there are many kinds of naturalist. I know now that my being 
scared of spiders (just big ones) need not
have put an end to my wish to be a naturalist. But there it was - and I 
was very disappointed. Still, I kept my
interest, even though I no longer believed I could make it my life's work.
I didn't at all mind handling scratchy beetles. Many of them were pretty. 
My favourite was the Christmas beetle - some golden green, others a beautiful blue. My 
sisters and I used to 
gather them off the sheoaks. And if you held
them at different angles, you could see other colours on their wing 
covers. But spiders! I had watched them often enough. You could lift a piece of bark 
from a gumtree and find 
triantelopes running all over the place. And once,
with a long, thin stick, I had teased a trapdoor spider into shooting out of his 
burrow, full of fight, to see who was knocking.
The trapdoor spider in that part of Australia makes its nest on flat, dry ground, and 
makes a thin lid to cover it. Some trapdoor spiders make thick lids; but these are 
found on hilly ground. 
Trapdoor spiders are certainly poisonous, and it would have been foolish indeed to try 
to handle them.

Trapdoor spider

Anyway, I wouldn't have handled bullants, either, because they give a 
nasty sting. They are very fierce, and sometimes you have only to walk by their nests 
and out they rush. We soon got out of their way!
In summer, the butterflies were joyous things to see, with their gay 
colours. There were swallowtails and admirals and imperial blues, and others whose 
names I did not know or have forgotten.
On the island were different kinds of wattle, and heaths and orchids. We agreed that 
we never ever saw anything like them on the mainland. 

Swallowtail butterfly

Heaths were from purest white through shades of pink to true red. And some were very 
prettily 
spotted. They were strongly scented, too.
This was how we would find the wattle. The breeze carried its scent in 
the springtime. We scrambled through the
bush in search of the tree. Some wattle trees, of course, grew near by, 
and we gathered armfuls of the yellow
blossom. But our mother was rather superstitious and did not care to have 
it in the house. It is supposed to bring bad
luck. Of course, there are now many wattles in New Zealand, and in other countries, 
such as South Africa.

Greenhood orchid

We liked to chew the gum that oozed out of the trunks and branches of the trees. But 
sometimes someone would splutter, "Ugh! That bit's got an ant in it!" and spit it out.
There were many kinds of orchid - sun (crimson and blue), rock, hare, 
golden moth, spider, greenhood, tiger, pink
fingers and ladies' tresses. I was very pleased when people asked to see 
my collection of pressed orchids. New
Zealand has fourteen kinds of sun orchid, some of them Australian. And 
there are New Zealand species of spider
orchid and greenhood, too.
In our orchard there were flocks of budgerigars (which we called shell 
parrots) , rosellas, lorikeets, parrakeets and
king parrots. They came to feed on the fruit. But some birds attacked the 
fruit because they were thirsty. Others, like
the little lorikeets, came for the nectar from the blossom, especially 
the gum blossom. Australian birds are brightly-coloured, with lots of red, green, blue 
and gold. But they do not make the tuneful sounds of New Zealand birds.

Rosella

My father rigged up a long rope from the back veranda down through the orchard. On it 
he tied old cans and cowbells and some pieces of broken mirror. When the rope was 
pulled, the bells rang, the cans clanged, the mirrors glinted. And the birds got a 
fright and flew away. But soon they got used to the disturbance, and flew no further 
than the big pine trees around the house paddock. There would be absolute silence for 
a few minutes, and the air would seem to be very still. Then in hundreds, perhaps 
thousands the birds would start screeching and shrieking again and then, in a mass of 
colour, they would fly back to the orchard.
Soon we were pulling the rope almost all the time. At last, the birds 
took no notice at all, and even perched on the
rope. Then my father fixed a repeating rifle in such a way that when the 
rope tightened the trigger was pulled.
Dead bird bodies were left on the ground. You could feel the still fear in the silence 
that followed. 
After the screeching,
after the sound of the rifle and the cries of the birds, the whirring of their wings, 
it was very 
quiet.

Kookaburra

 We had heard of kookaburras killing snakes, and one day we watched one do this. The 
kookaburra flew up on to the bough of a tree, the writhing snake held in his strong
beak. He jerked his head from side to side, banging the
snake against the bough. Kookaburras eat lizards and, I expect, small snakes.
 The kookaburra is also known as the laughing jackass,
and so it is sometimes called Jacky. We used to imitate
the kookaburras' laugh and wait for their answers. We 
kept this up until we or the kookaburras grew tired of the
game. Some days they wouldn't play at all.
 But my sisters weren't keen to go trailing off after things.
So mostly I went by myself. They were all right if things
were handy. But they wouldn't look far. They got impatient. So I would just as soon be 
by myself.

Wedge-tailed eagle

Once I saw a wedge-tailed eagle. It sat on a branch of a tree that I had to walk 
under. I was scared, because it was watching me, and it looked very fierce. The wedge-
tailed eagle is among the world's largest eagles. I 
thought it might
easily pick me up in its beak and carry me away to its nest for food. And, indeed, as 
I hurried 
past, the eaglehawk,
as it is called by most Australians, stretched its great wings, bent its head, and 
fixed me with its 
eagle eye . . .
My father heard a lyrebird when he was working in the bush. He didn't know it was a 
lyrebird at 
first. He was working
with a crosscut saw, and he said to himself, "Who else can be working in this bush 
with a crosscut 
saw?" For that
was the sound that came to him. Then it sounded like a butcher-bird.  

Lyrebird

Then my father was sure he heard a stockwhip crack. 
He was very puzzled. After a while, he realised it was a lyrebird. He knew that the 
lyrebird very cleverly imitates other sounds. But at first, of course, you don't think 
of this.
The lyrebird kept on and on with all sorts of imitative noises, even 
barking like a dog. It gave, then, its own lovely
song, and finished with the clicking and whirring sounds that always mark 
the end of its performance.
My father crept through the bush, trying to see the lyrebird, but he 
could not find it. I went in search of it, too, and I
couldn't find it, either.
I looked for bird's nests, not because I wanted to take them or get the 
eggs, but to see how and where they were
built. Willy wagtails make their nests of spider-webs. Some
honeyeaters build nests of sticks which swing from strong threads tied to 
leaves and twigs. Other kinds of
honeyeaters make nests that are wedged into the forks of scrub. Swallows 
and fairy martins have nests of mud. They
look like tunnels or bottles, and are built in earth-banks or under the 
caves of houses and farm buildings.
 We watched the spiny ant-eaters hunting ants with their funny, snuffling snouts. I 
remembered to give them their proper name, echidna, in my book. They whisked the ants 
up on their sticky, ribbon-like
tongues. Or they tore into
rotten logs after grubs, sending
dirt and bits of wood flying.
We had to laugh at the frantic way they went to work! 

Spiny anteater

Sometimes they would burrow straight down into the ground, their spines and hair full 
of dirt, and let the soil fall in on top of them.
There were lots of koalas on the island. They were often called "monkey 
bears", or just "bears", but they are not
bears at all. They are marsupials. The early colonists in New South Wales 
called them monkeys. The name "koala"
is from an Aboriginal word meaning "no drink", or "does not drink". And 
they don't need to drink, as they get all the moisture they need from the dew on the 
gumleaves, and from the leaves themselves.
I'm afraid the people on the island did not regard the koalas as the dear 
little pets that most townsfolk think them. The
koalas eat vast quantities of gumleaves, and the islanders declared that it 
was plain that the "bears" killed the trees.

Koalas

They pointed to belts of gums which were white and dead. But 
biologists who came across from the
mainland said that the koalas did not cause the death of the trees.
The islanders did not believe them. They put corrugated iron around the 
gums near their homes to stop the koalas
from climbing up to the leaves, At night you could hear the sound of the 
koalas' claws on the iron as they tried to
climb over it. Then they would go away. When many of the koalas died of 
starvation and disease, the islanders were
glad. They didn't dare kill the koalas, for they are very closely protected. There 
were, and still are, very heavy penalties for 
harming them.
Hunting, in the past, and disease, have made the koala very nearly extinct. 
There are now none in New South Wales
or in South Australia, where there were once many. You will find them only 
in the south and south-east of Victoria,
and in Queensland.
They get comfortable in a forked branch of a tree, and sleep during the 
day. They wake up late in the afternoon to
feed. But you can often see a koala clambering around the branches in the 
daytime. Such a restless one sometimes
deliberately annoys his sleepy neighbours.
When the young koalas are big enough, their mothers carry them on their 
backs. A mother koala will go for a walk on
the ground with her baby on her back. Sometimes a young koala will think 
he is big enough to climb alone. I've seen
mother koalas looking really cross as they bustle after their independent 
youngsters. And the young, like naughty
children, lead their mothers a dance!
The crying of a young koala separated from its mother is like the crying of 
a human baby. I remember my father
going out one night with a lantern to search for what he thought was a baby 
that had been left in the bush. A playful
little one gets a clip in the ear sometimes from a peevish father koala. 
The males are often bad-tempered, and I'm afraid we children sometimes teased them by 
poking at them with sticks and branches.
The koala would strike at the branch with his powerful claws. Sometimes he 
would grasp the stick and hang on. Or,
having had more than enough, he would start climbing down, growling. Then 
we would run away.
My father was cross one morning to find a tunnel dug under a fence he had just put up 
on a hillside. 

Wombat

In the night, a wombat had burrowed under it. Piles of soil were thrown out all over 
the place. The wire netting of the fence was damaged. My father said he would have to 
trap the wombat.
The wombat is an odd-looking animal, stumpy and thick-set. It is covered with short, 
close-growing hair. It has a snub-nosed face and cat-like ears. Like so many other 
Australian animals, it is 
a marsupial - that is, it carries its young in a
pouch. Wombats have very strong legs and claws, especially the back ones. 
They like to make their burrows in
hillsides and slopes.
"Now don't go wandering off and get yourself lost!" my mother would say.
She would cut me a piece of cake, and give me an apple to put in my bag 
with my notebook and pencils and jars.
She would make me put shoes and socks on because of the snakes. And I would 
go on expeditions looking for the
lyrebird, looking for the deer that ate the crops, or the big wombat, and 
gathering orchids.

Elephants Trumpet, Lions Roar!
Photographs by Helen Buttfield Story by James Dawson

The cavalcade of trucks, trailers and tractors turn off the street and 
rumble into the park. At once a group of boys drop
their bicycles and run after them. The circus has arrived!
Most of the cages have their shutters up, but from the gaily painted signs 
the boys can tell what animals are in them. "DANGER-GIANT RUSSIAN BEAR," says one, and 
"AFRICAN LIONS-KEEP CLEAR," reads another.
But there is no hiding the elephants. There they are - three of them, standing 
on the deck of a truck. They are waving
their trunks about to keep their balance, as the truck jolts over the 
gutter into the park.
All around, the circus is coming to life. There is a show
to go on at four o'clock this afternoon. The big top with
its two thousand seats has to be put up. Hundreds of pegs
have to be driven into the ground, saw-dust spread, lights
rigged, meals cooked. It seems
an impossible task, yet it is one
that the circus people have done
more times than they can
remember.
Tom, the elephant boy, quickly puts Jumbo to work, pushing
cages into position. She has the
best nature of the three elephants. It is easy work for her.
Before coming to the circus she
worked in the jungles of Burma,
hauling and stacking teak logs.
As the animal cages come to rest, one of the monkeys
cautiously pokes his head around the doorway of his cage.
When the cages are all in place, Tom leads jumbo back
to join the other two elephants. Soon all three elephants are chained to stakes driven 
deep into the ground.
Female elephants sometimes become very fond of their keepers. During a long train 
journey,
a keeper went to sleep next to
his elephant. It was a cold night.
In the morning he found that
she had covered him with straw
as he slept. Another keeper was not so lucky. He woke to find that his elephant had 
eaten his trousers!
The tiger blinks and prowls restlessly inside his cage. He is lonely for 
his mate who has been given to the Wellington
Zoo. The zoo's tigers escaped one night. All attempts to recapture them 
had failed, and so the police had to shoot
them.
Next to the tiger is the bear's cage, with its shutters still up. But he 
can be heard pacing up and down in the
darkness. His claws go click, click, click, on the hard wooden floor. He 
has never been trained, because he was too
old when he joined the circus. A trainer has to be very watchful when he 
works with bears. There is an old circus
saying: "Bear trainers never retire."
None of the circus animals makes more noise than the lions. They roar 
when they are hungry. They roar when they are angry,
or simply when they have nothing better to do.
Lions like being together. In the wild they live and hunt in prides of 
six or more, and they like lying close together, their paws
dangling through the bars of their cage. They eat sixteen pounds of meat 
a day, and on Sunday they have boiled milk and cod
liver oil to keep their coats glossy.
Just outside the lions' cage, the cheeky little rhesus monkeys perch on 
their piles of sawdust. They watch everything that
happens from a safe distance.
Jeffrey, the elephant trainer's son, walks along the line of elephants, 
offering them handfuls of hay. Munching away, they sway from side to side. This is a 
sure sign that they are contented. 
In places where there are no poisonous
plants, elephants can be turned out to graze like horses. But here they 
have to be chained up and fed on hay. They eat a ton in four or five days.
Looking after elephants takes a lot of time. Their feet have to be looked 
at all the time for stones, and twice a year
their great toenails have to be cut with a hacksaw and rasp.
New animals are always being born into the circus. Here is Michael, the 
son of the horse trainer, Dick, who shows off
a week-old Shetland pony.
Most of the circus caravans have now arrived, and are up in a 
half-circle around the big top. Behind one there is a terrible noise of barking and 
yapping, mixed with shouts 
of laughter. Tammy and Tanya, daughters of
the Lady Whip Cracker are playing with two of the performing Samoyeds. 
They come from Siberia, and they are very
quick to learn clever and difficult tricks.
But no one can stay away from Jemena, the baby elephant. Tammy is trying to teach her 
to shake hands with her trunk, but it is a bit too early for Jemena. 
There is still a month until her first birthday, but she
already weighs more than a ton.
It's nearly time for the show to begin, and Tom hurries over to the big top with one 
of the monkeys 
perched on his
shoulder. Mounted on Shetland ponies, the monkeys gallop around the ring in the Monkey 
Steeplechase. 
They cling
to the ponies' manes, while their beady little eyes dart from side to side.
Outside the performers' entrance, Dick waits with his horses for the Cossack riding 
act. Dick is in 
charge of all twenty
of the circus horses.
"It's a seven days a week job looking after them," he says. "I get up in the morning 
and feed all of them before I touch a bite myself. And I never get into town, except 
to order more feed for them - and they need 
plenty of that! Circus
horses have to be well fed if they are going to look well in the ring."
The Shetland ponies don't take up much of Dick's time. It's the other horses that take 
up his time.
"They each eat about ninety pounds of chaff a week," he says. "Then we give them 
fifteen pounds each 
of an oat and
bran mixture. We add two full eggcups of linseed oil to give their coats a glossy 
shine. I have a small forge, and I shoe them myself too. But circus horses don't walk 
on the 
roads often, so a
set of horeshoes will last about eight months."
Suddenly the sounds of band music blare from the tent. The horses toss their heads and 
the elephants 
push forward
jostling Tom in their excitement. "Down, Johora, eh girl," says Tom, laying his hand 
on Johora's 
great flank. The show
is about to begin.
to be continued

The Reef Heron

Reef heron

If we were to hide with field-glasses behind a handy clump of reeds on a tidal mud-
flat or a rocky shore, sooner or later we would almost certainly see a reef heron, or 
blue heron, as it is sometimes called.
It is taller than the gulls, and its features are a battleship grey. It 
stands as still as a stuffed bird in a museum; but, if
we watch carefully, we see that every minute or so it moves a pace or two 
forward to keep up with the retreating tide.
Through our glasses we may note its strong greenish-yellow legs and 
wide-splayed toes, well suited both for standing
on this soft and muddy estuary, and for clinging to rocky perches. We can 
see also its long neck, which it holds in a
Z-shaped curve drawn into its shoulders when it rests, while its strong, 
tapered, yellow bill is poised above the shallow
water.
Suddenly its sharp beak is thrust forward, its Z-shaped neck rapidly 
straightens, and then comes back. It makes
hardly a ripple in the water, but very quickly it has caught and 
swallowed its fish. The heron's fishing has begun. It
busily darts its bill now here, now there, until its hunger is satisfied. 
At last it stops, ruffles its feathers, and settles
down once more with head and neck hunched into its shoulders. Suddenly we 
rise and disturb the heron. With a
hoarse cry, it launches itself into the air, and flies across the bay.
The reef herons live along the rocky reefs and shingly or muddy tidal flats of the 
North Island, and 
round the Cook Strait area. They are less common today than the white-faced heron, 
which they
used to outnumber.
For breeding, the reef herons like dark corners and ledges in rocky cliffs. But some 
build their 
nests in the hollowed roots of gnarled pohutukawas that grow along the coast. One pair 
of herons
nested for years on the landing-stage of the Rangitoto beacon in Waitemata Harbour. 
Sometimes a dozen 
pairs of herons will choose to nest among the caves and rocks of a small island.

White-faced heron

Let us visit one of these nesting-places. It is Rabbit Island, off Mount Maunganui. As 
our launch approaches the island, a crowd of noisy gulls rise and circle round us. 
With our glasses we can
see nests and sitting birds scattered among the flowering ice-plants which cover the 
tops of craggy rocks. Five herons, keeping watch on a reef, fly off as we approach.
We land in a pebbly cove, and work our way along under the low cliffs. Round one point 
we disturb a 
heron from a half-built nest on a sheltered ledge. The bird flies away with a hoarse 
croak, and
so we may examine her nest, which is merely a rough platform built of dry sticks.
Farther along the coast we are lucky enough to get a glimpse of a sitting bird on the 
next nest, 
before she too sees us and flies off. In this nest are three pale-blue eggs lying in a 
small hollow
among the twigs and sticks. We hurry past to let the parent bird return to her task.
In the next nest, deserted for a moment, we find one egg, yet unhatched and two gawky 
chicks covered with thin, long, yellow down, and with beaks and feet that appear far 
too big for their tiny bodies.
We could visit islands like this in many other parts of the world, for the reef heron 
does not belong 
only to New Zealand. It is found in Australia, in the East Indies and southern Burma, 
in southern
Korea and Japan, and in many of the Pacific Islands where it is white in colour, not 
grey, as in New Zealand.
photographs by G. J. H. Moon

Elephants Trumpet, Lions Roar!
Photographs by Helen Buttfield
Story by James Dawson

"Walk up, walk up, ladies and gentlemen! See the Fearless Lion Trainer step 
into a cage of snarling, fe-rocious lions!
See the Little Educated Dogs, Dino and Eddie, sharp as tacks with their 
clever tricks! See the Wild Cossack Riders
straight from the Russian Steppes, in yet another dazzling performance! And 
see the Incredible Elephants waltzing
around the ring! It's all here, boys and girls. Just a few cents to see the 
greatest, most fan-tas-tic Show in the Southern Hemisphere. Walk up, walk up. The Show 
is About to Com-mence!"
The big top is quickly filling up. Inside, the audience sits packed 
together on the wooden seats. They are munching
popcorn and toffee-apples, their eyes on the great empty cage that fills 
the whole ring. From the lion wagon at the
side entrance, comes a deep rumbling roar.
It is too much for little Panya, the stray who joined the circus only a 
month ago. She breaks her lead and runs to the
tent, poking her nose between the flaps to see what is happening inside.
With a clang, the door of the lion wagon is pulled back, and six lions and lionesses 
run into the ring. For a few minutes, they run around the high steel cage.
Then, cracking his whip, Captain Peterson steps into the cage. At once they snap to 
attention and climb on to their stools. Oh, they look so tame as he puts them through 
their tricks, but just let a careless or foolish visitor try to pat one through the 
bars of their cage, and he'd have his arm badly bitten - or worse. If Captain Peterson 
did not have that mysterious something that all animal trainers have, the lions would 
long ago have tried to tear him to pieces.
Again and again during the act, Captain Peterson cracks his whip, yet never 
really touches any of the lions with it. He
doesn't have to, for in a strange kind of way they have come to think of 
him as their leader. It is Captain Peterson who talks softly to them, feeds them and 
even scratches 
them behind the ears. Because he understands and likes
them, the lions trust him and are happy to follow his orders.
Lions are now trained by gentle methods, but, not so long ago, circus 
people used to treat them very badly. They would fire guns and beat
gongs, and, when the lions were nearly driven mad, the trainer would put 
them through their act at the point of a red hot iron.
No animal is exactly like another. If you watch lions carefully, you will 
see that some will do little more than sit or stand on their stools,
while others will do quite difficult tricks. Their trainer decided long 
ago which were the bright pupils, and then taught them harder tricks than
he did the others.
Pasha can balance better than the others. He carefully walks along a narrow bar held 
up by two stools. Captain Peterson trained him to do this by putting 
small pieces of
meat along the bar so that he had to walk out on it to reach them. As the meat was 
moved further 
along the bar,
Pasha had to walk out further to get it. Finally, the meat was placed on the other 
stool, and Pasha 
had to walk right
across the bar to get it. Now he does it without the meat. He gets that after the 
show!
A good trainer always teaches animals tricks that are close to their normal movements 
and actions. In 
their wild
state, big cats often walk out along the narrow swaying branches of trees; they can be 
taught to walk 
along a narrow
bar. Wild horses stand up on their hind legs to fight; they can be taught to "dance". 
Seals often 
balance fish on their
noses, before flipping them down their throats; they can be taught to balance balls 
and juggle them. 
All it takes is
patience, patience, patience.
Everyone laughs when Lorraine puts her performing Samoyeds, Dino and Eddie, through 
their paces. No other animal in the circus enjoys performing as much as these dogs do. 
They tumble in and out of barrels, through hoops, clowning and falling over each 
other. But things begin to go wrong when Dino refuses to imitate Eddie and jump over 
the stick Lorraine is holding.
"Jump, Dino!" she says for the third time. She begins to get angry. This is the cue 
signal for Gary 
the clown to run
slip-slopping on in his oversize shoes.
"Excuse me," he says, raising his hat, "why don't you say please? Please Dino, jump!"
And, with a wave of his tail, Dino jumps.
But who's that running in to sit on Dino's stool? None other than Panya, 
looking a bit sheepish, but determined to be
in on the fun.
Gary scoops her up and carries her out to the sound of the audience's 
laughter. Panya will get her chance soon enough.
The dogs leave the ring and the horses, stars of the circus since the days of the 
Ancient Romans, come on.
Adele rides into the ring on the back of Queenie, the rosin-back. As the 
horse runs faster, Adele stands on Queenie's 
broad, swaying back. She now takes three Indian clubs and begins to 
juggle with them. The movement of the horse
makes her go up and down, but she does not fall.
Rosin-backs get their name because their backs are sprinkled with 
powdered rosin (or resin) to provide a grip for the
performers' feet. They are among the most reliable, safe and friendly of 
all circus horses. As a rosin-back canters around the ring, it must never change 
speed, never jump about, and never 
stop until it is given the signal to do so. If it
does anything unexpected, the performer will lose his balance and fall 
off.
Still juggling, Adele canters out of the ring, as Dick gallops in on his 
well-trained stallion. He gives an exhibition of
voltige riding. One moment he is in the saddle, the next moment he lands 
on the ground and begins jumping from one
side of the horse to the other. Now, he is hanging beside the horse's 
belly, and then, gripping a sabre between his
teeth, he goes right under it. The audience roar their applause as Dick 
gallops from the ring.
The finale for the horses is the pyramid, with two of the steadiest  stallions 
carrying three performers around the ring.
The pole that Adele is holding goes down to a strap linking the two 
horses' saddles. The pole helps her to steady
herself; the strap keeps the two horses cantering close together.
Outside, it is growing dark, and the performance is nearing its end. But 
there is still one act to go. Captain Peterson is on again, but this time with his 
three performing elephants. 
A hush falls, as the great beasts lumber into
the ring and go round it, trunk to tail. Captain Peterson moves to the 
centre of the ring, and, as a waltz tune is played
over the loudspeaker, the three animals move in a circle as though 
dancing. The waltz ends, and they lie down in the
sawdust, as if they are going to sleep.
Then, at the crack of the whip, Johora gets to her feet and climbs over 
Jumbo.
Elephants enjoy their act more than any of the circus animals, except the dogs. They 
also make up and practise
tricks for themselves. Chimpanzees are the only other animals that do 
this.
Now Abu and Jumbo move to the side of the ring to watch as Johora goes 
through her balancing act. First she stands
on her hind legs, then on her forelegs. Her most difficult trick of all is to balance 
on her forelegs without using her trunk.
As the audience applaud, the three elephants line up, lift their left forelegs and, 
throwing back their trunks, trumpet a
salute. Captain Peterson takes a bow, but Jumbo grips him tightly by the arm as he 
goes to take another, and hurries
him out of the ring. It is time for their reward.
And what are the elephants to be rewarded with? Peanuts? Buns? Apples? No, it is bread 
they love. A whole loaf for
each one, still inside its brightly-coloured wax paper wrapper!
Inside the big top, the National Anthem has finished and the audience are pouring out 
of the tent into the evening.
Already the tent hands are moving in. They take out the seats, let down the great 
canvas tent, fold it up and pack it away. Another show has finished - roll on to the 
next!

The Gannet
photographs by Christopher Robertson

High above the sea glides the gannet. Its wings, which are very white in the sunlight, 
do not move. 
Suddenly it sees a fish and down it dives. At first its wings are half-open, but just 
before it
strikes the water it stretches its wings out straight behind, so that the bird is 
shaped like a 
torpedo. With a small splash, the gannet disappears and, in a few moments beneath the 
water, it
catches and swallows its food of small fish or squid. Only if the fish is large will 
the gannet bring 
it to the surface and swallow it.
The gannets, as a species, are the champion high-divers among birds. Their thick mats 
of feathers, 
internal air sacs and streamlined heads and bodies protect them from impacts of up to 
ninety
miles an hour, when diving. They are related to the pelican, which is also a good 
high-diver. Terns 
also dive for food from the air, but not from such great heights.

Gannet's-eye view of Cape Kidnappers.

Gannets usually circle up to a hundred feet above the sea, and their eyes are so keen 
that they can 
see fish below the surface. At most times, gannets fish alone, or in small numbers, 
scattered
over a wide area, but, when fish are in a shoal, large numbers of birds may gather in 
one place and 
dive headlong down out of the sky, one after the other.
Gannets' favourite nesting-places are small islands out at sea, but the most famous 
colony in New 
Zealand is at Cape Kidnappers in Hawke's Bay. As it is the only colony on the 
mainland, Cape
Kidnappers has become well-known through being much photographed, and not many people 
know that greater numbers of gannets nest at other places round the coast. There are 
large breeding-grounds at the Three Kings Islands, Gannet Island, off Kawhia, and 
White Island, the volcano 
in the Bay of Plenty. Other colonies are at Poor Knights Islands, the Hauraki Gulf, 
and islands off Great Barrier Island and Muriwai Beach.

Gannets "lunging", as they argue over nest site.
ABOVE. Chick hatching
RIGHT. Five-week-old chick.
BELOW. Ten-week-old chick with parent.

There are no large colonies in the South Island, but a few birds have 
nested at the Nuggets in Otago, and there is said to be a nesting place on lonely 
Little Solander Island in Foveaux Strait.
There are not many gannets at these places until the spring, when each 
pair of gannets chooses a site. Their nests
are low mounds of neatly-arranged seaweed cemented with guano and built 
so that they are just outside the reach of
the neighbours' beaks. The birds' guano kills all the vegetation, and the 
colonies are quite bare except for the birds.
On warm days the smell is very strong.
The main egg-laying months are September to November. In each nest one 
thick-shelled, chalky-looking egg is laid, and, during the six weeks before it 
hatches, both the male and female sit. From 
time to time the
parent birds "change guard" with much bowing, crossing of beaks, and neck-stroking. 
Gannets do not 
get on well with
their neighbours, and they often lunge angrily at them.
The new-hatched chicks are black and naked, but they soon grow a dense coat of white, 
powder-puff 
down. This is
shed later for dark-grey feathers with white tips, very different from the gleaming 
white feathers, yellow heads, and black-tipped wings of the parent birds.
About February, the first of the young birds begin to fly, and the late ones continue 
to leave the 
nesting-places until
the end of April. Most of the young birds fly to eastern parts of Australia, where 
they stay for at 
least two years. Then
they return to New Zealand to their home colony to breed. No one is sure whether the 
adult birds 
leave the coastal
waters of New Zealand.

Gannets "changing guard".

The Pied Stilt

The pied stilt is a wading bird, with long pink legs and black bill, a 
black nape and black wings and back. Otherwise, its plumage is pure white.
In October and November, the stilts throughout New Zealand are either 
nesting or preparing to nest. Let's visit their
nesting place near a sluggish creek in North Auckland which reaches the sea through a 
tidal lagoon. As we wade across to the dunes, two stilts rise from the lagoon edge and 
circle over us, yelping like puppies. Their pink legs trail behind their tails, and 
the sun catches their snow-white breasts.
One stilt, further away, is waltzing across the sand with one wing trailing 
and the other held awkwardly aloft, crying as
if sorely hurt. This is a well-known trick with nesting birds. Through our field 
glasses we are just in time to see 
his mate, who has been crouched behind a
pile of seaweed. Both birds rise and fly over us, "dive-bombing" us, as they pass.
By now, every stilt in the neighbourhood is aroused, but we make for the 
pile of weed, where we find four black-spotted, dark stone-coloured, pear-shaped eggs 
in a circlet of dried seaweed which serves as a nest. On this sunny day, there is 
little chance of the eggs becoming cold, but we hurry on, in 
case they should become fried in their
shells from the heat of the sun before the parent bird can shelter them 
again.
At Rotorua, where stilts are breeding on the lakeshore, we find more nests, 
ringed about with yellow sulphur crystals,
within a yard or so of bubbling pools. Here we see a chick, new-hatched 
from the egg. Just like a day-old calf, it seems scarcely able to support its downy 
body and oversized head on its knock-kneed legs. But it rapidly learns to fend for 
itself, to peck insects from the lake margin and to crouch still among the stones when 
danger is near.
Farther south, we find more stilts with nests beside the soggy banks of 
sluggish, inland streams, and others on the gravel beds of the Manawatu and other 
rivers of Hawke's Bay and Wellington. 
Across Cook Strait, we make for Canterbury and then Otago, where stilts have nested 
between the lupin patches on the shingle-covered river flats from
the Alps to the sea.
After Christmas, family parties of stilts, like holidaying human families, 
make for the river-mouths and coast. There
they gather in large flocks, feeding on the mudflats. Young birds, now in full 
feather, and flying strongly, have greyish heads in place of the adult's jet-black 
nape. All over New Zealand, stilts move seaward after the breeding season, and many 
fly northward to spend the winter in the milder climate of North Auckland. In short 
stages, they trek up the coasts, sometimes flying by night when the moon is full, when 
we may hear them yelping overhead.
In March, the stilts gather on the Manukau Harbour. I well remember a visit to the 
mudflats there many years ago, when sportsmen used to shoot the godwit in the autumn. 
On my way to the sea, I met an old friend, an aged, bearded Norwegian, with his gun 
over his shoulder, a hare in his bag, and a tale of woe on his lips.
"You won't see any birds," he told me "barring the seagulls and 'barkers'." "Barkers" 
was his name for stilts, and
they were no friends of his, for they would startle his game before he 
could get close enough for a shot. He thought
them useless, inquisitive birds.
But I was interested in stilts, so I made my way to the mudflats, where 
some hundreds of stilts were lined up on
sandbars waiting for the tide to fall. Among them were many youngsters 
hatched during the previous summer, who
had probably flown hundreds of miles in their first few months of life. As the tide 
fell and bared the mudflats, they scattered, prodding for food and yapping 
occasionally. They sometimes joined the other birds of the flats - godwits, gulls, 
Caspian terns, and dotterels.
So, the stilts spend the winter. They feed on the mudflats when the tide is low, but 
they retreat to high sandbanks when the tide is high. Sometimes, they fly across the 
land from feeding place to feeding place, or from east coast to west coast, to benefit 
from the differing tides. Before November, in ones and twos, or in small parties of a 
dozen or so, the stilts depart for their far-flung nesting grounds.

ABOVE. Pied stilt on nest.
BELOW. Pair of pied stilts at their nest in the shingle of a North Canterbury river-
bed.

Tracks
by Phyllis Gant  illustrated by Eileen Mayo

When I was a child and lived on an island off the southern coast of 
Australia, one of the many things I liked finding
out about was tracks.
None of us on the island was very particular about which things we called 
tracks. We could mean the tracks people
travelled on, or where the animals regularly came and went, making a path. 
Or we could mean an animal's foot- or hoof-marks. Track could be a verb, too; 
something you did when you followed 
where an animal had gone, by the
marks it made on the ground.
The island itself was criss-crossed with tracks. There were no roads. The scrub had 
been cleared, leaving places wide enough for a horse and cart. Where there was no 
scrub, the tracks just went across the bare or reedy earth.
Many of the tracks were muddy in winter. They had deep ruts in them which 
filled with water as the rain kept pouring
down. The men cut tea-tree and bracken and laid it in the ruts, but 
sometimes the carts and buggies got stuck.
Sometimes you just couldn't get through at all. Then you had to wait for 
the tracks to dry out a bit.
In summer, many of these tracks were baked iron hard by the hot sun. Others 
broke down to powdery, dark soil, very
soft. You could sift it through your fingers, smooth and warm. Still others 
were sandy, pale sand, like the best sort of beaches.
I liked trying to identify animals and birds by their tracks. Big 
lizards, for example, such as blue-tongues or stumpy-tails, left swingy marks of their 
heavy bodies as well as of their feet. 
Small lizards left only footprints, and perhaps a tail mark.

Blue-tongued lizard. Length, 12 to 20 inches.

Snakes, of course, leave no footprints. If the soil is soft enough, the 
way they move along leaves wavy, ridged tracks,
with the soil or sand slightly heaped up on each outward ripple.
I followed tracks over quite hard ground, pretending I was as good at it as the black 
trackers. I practised being as alert and observant as I could possibly be. And I made 
up stories to myself about what I was doing and why I was doing it, such as that 
someone's precious child was lost and would die if I didn't find it quickly.
In this way I found where the deer went to drink from the stream. I hid 
down-wind from them to watch. I had
to wait a long time, and became very uncomfortable. But it was worth it.

Stilt. Body and tail, 8 inches Legs, 8 inches.

I could tell whether a buggy or cart or gig had gone along the track. 
Each left distinctive marks. The cart had the wider rim, and the buggy had the extra 
marks from the second pair of  wheels. Even if the back wheels completely covered the 
tracks of the front ones, the extra set made a deeper cut.
There would be interesting differences, too, because of the kinds of 
soil. Some dampish but firm soils, almost oily,
are rather like plasticine. And sandy soils when damp will hold an 
imprint well. But when you barely touch the crusty
little cliff, it crumbles. In these sandy soils, you could see the mark 
where the rim of the wheels joins on to the wood.
And the horses' hooves made fascinating patterns. Very few of the horses 
were shod. There was the nearly full,
slightly elongated circle from each hoof, the hind one halfway over the fore. A little 
heap of soil sloped back from each centre.
Looking carefully at the tracks of a saddle horse, you could tell, often, whether it 
was being walked, or ridden at a trot, a canter or a gallop. The marks are all 
different. I expect most country children will know.
By the waterhole was a heavy pattern of tracks. In winter, each deep hoof 
mark filled with water, and new ones
appeared further out as the waterhole got bigger. In summer, the dried-out 
holes baked hard. And, as the water
receded, new tracks went further in and around the wet edge.
Sometimes, in a bad summer with no rain, even the very middle of the 
waterhole was just mud. It was covered with
the tracks of the poor horses and cattle as they tried to get a drink. Once it dried 
right up. The tracks were thick, just a jumble, where the animals had crossed and re-
crossed the waterhole, before it was completely dry. Then you'd see a horse or a cow 
striking with a foreleg at the baked earth.
The sea birds left their three-toed or web-footed prints on the sand by the sea - 
plover and pelican, tern and curlew, dotterel and gull, crake and dabchick, molly-
hawk, gannet and stilt.

Pelican. Head and beak, 20 inches Body and tail, 36 inches.

In the bush, the long and narrow footprints of the bandicoot are 
distinctive because of its joined-up second and third toes. These are much smaller 
than the big toe. Bandicoots have their own little tracks in the bush, leading to 
their burrows. They hop like kangaroos, but they are no bigger than large rats.

Bandicoot and a diagram of its foot, showing the joined-up second and third toes. Head 
and body, 14 inches. Tail, 5 inches.

There were always plenty of rabbit tracks. You could even walk in them, on the dry 
hillside, by 
placing your feet carefully in the grooves. They weren't really wide enough for 
children's feet.
Now and then, I found the pudgy spoor of a wombat, or the clawed footprints of a koala 
which had 
climbed down from a gumtree to go walkabout. They do this once in a while, especially 
grumpy
old males.
And of course it could be pretty exciting to track human beings, even if I knew that 
it would turn 
out to be my father putting the fish-trap in the channel. Or, sneaking along into the 
orchard, with
only a bit of bent grass to go by, to find my sisters hiding under the drooping 
branches of the mulberry tree.


