(PLATE 28, FIG. 2.)
_Coturnix Novae-Zelandiae_ Quoy and Gaimard, Voy. Astrolabe, Zool. I.
p. 242, pl. 24, fig. 1 (1830--"Il habit la baie Chouraki (rivière
Tamise de Cook), à la Nouvelle-Zélande"); Gould, Syn. B. Austr., text
and pl. fig 2 (1837-38); Buller, B. New Zealand, p. 161, pl. (1873);
Hist. B. New Zealand, 2nd ed. I, p. 225, pl. XXIII (1888); Grant, Cat.
B. Brit. Mus. XXII p. 245 (1893).
This Quail, though a typical _Coturnix_, is easily distinguished from all
other species. The male has the upper-side almost black, each feather
bordered and indistinctly barred with rufous-brown, and with a wide, creamy
white shaft-line. The throat and sides of the head are rufous-cinnamon, the
feathers of the chest and breast at their basal half buff with a broken
black cross-bar, the distal half black, with two pale buff spots near the
tip, or with a continuous white border.
This sole representative of the "gamebirds" in New Zealand was in former
days very numerous in both islands, but especially so in the South Island,
wherever there was open grass-land, but is now evidently extinct. Its
disappearance is apparently not due to excessive shooting, but rather to
the introduction of rats, cats, and dogs, and last, but not least, to
bush-fires and to the regular burning of the sheep-runs, according to Sir
Walter Buller. No doubt the establishment itself of extensive sheep-farms
in the once, more or less, uninhabited grass-land was ominous for the
future of the Quail.
It is not quite clear when the Quail disappeared. The last on the North
Island was shot by Captain Mair at Whangarei in 1860. Specimens were
recorded in 1867 and 1869, but were apparently not procured. In Haast's
"Journal of Exploration in the Nelson Province" it is said to be still very
abundant in 1861 on the grassy plains of the interior.
Sir Walter Buller mentions two specimens said to be from an island in Blue
Skin Bay, shot in "1867 or 1868." In his Second Edition of the Birds of New
Zealand he informs us that it was found occasionally in the South Island
down to 1875, but in the "Supplement" he speaks of a specimen said to have
been shot in 1871, but adds, "There is no absolute evidence of it," and "if
true, this individual bird must have been about the last of its race."
Therefore, evidently the note about 1875 was erroneous. {184}
The statement of Mr. Cheeseman, that he took eggs on Three Kings Islands is
erroneous. The eggs belonged to a _Synoecus_, and the egg given to Sir
Walter Buller is now in my collection.
I have, however, also two eggs of _Coturnix novaezealandiae_, brought home
by Dr. H. O. Forbes. They have a brownish-white shell, covered and washed
all over with deep brown patches and lighter brown underlying markings.
They show distinctly the character of Quails' eggs, but, besides being much
larger, are easily distinguished from eggs of _Coturnix coturnix_. They
measure 34.3 by 25 and 34.5 by 21.3 mm.
Of birds I have in my collection: One [male] ad. Shot at Whangarei, North
Island, by Major Mair, in 1860. (This is the specimen figured in the Second
Edition of the "Birds of New Zealand." I bought it with Sir Walter Buller's
collection eighteen years ago. By a curious _lapsus memoriae_ Sir Walter
Buller, in the "Supplement," p. 35, in 1905, states that this bird was in
his son's collection.) One [female] ad. and one [male] in the first year's
plumage, shot by Messrs. Walter Buller and E. French near Kaiapoi, South
Island, in the summer of 1859.
Seven specimens are in the British Museum, the types in Paris, three in
Cambridge, a pair in Christchurch in New Zealand, some in the Canterbury
Museum, and doubtless many others, most of which have never been recorded.
{185}