|
[Editor: You can see tui in Auckland suburbia, but in Heathcote there are none. With the Port Hills on our doorstep, Peter McKie uses poetry to ask why this is so and to tell us how to bring them back. He sent his poem in to us with the following note:
"I have written many poems and limericks over the years, and wonder if there is a place for a poet's corner on our website. Here's one I wrote in 1999, for a competition. No prize, but I still enjoy reading it. A lady had written that people were monitoring one tui in Akaroa, possibly the only one on Banks Peninsula.
I love our native birds, and am greatly saddened by the carnage our first settlers made of our splendid flora and fauna. By 1900, only 1% remained of the original bush that covered our peninsula, but now it's back up to 15%!"
Maybe we could invite budding poets to contribute to a section of the website, even school children. Perhaps we could elicit some verse and prose from Heathcote School! Use the Send Us Your Story page to share them with us.]
TAHI TUI
 She said there is only one upon these hills,
Only one, on Banks Peninsula.
Where once they thrived, so numerous, their bills
Had plucked the fruit in forests of totara,
And fed on insects and nectar abounding there.
Now the Tui song is scarcely heard.
Men have come to fell, and burn, and clear,
To graze their flocks where should be bush and bird.
Still, there are stands of native bush around,
Where you can walk, and wonder how it was,
And hidden gullies waiting to be found, of
Ancient flora, resisting the broom and gorse.
Here you still may hear the bellbird sing,
Those chiming notes that Cook and Marsden heard.
And that once-grand dawn chorus, a glorious thing,
Still rings, but where's the song of parson bird?
The wood pigeons are here, the kereru,
Also restricted, their habitat near gone.
Their swishing wings in flight, and landings too!
They are about, but the tui is alone.
In Auckland, in suburban Avondale,
I saw a tui in a roadside tree,
Feeding, where traffic fumes and noise prevail;
In Suburbia! It surprised, it delighted me.
There, the native trees still clothe the ranges,
And propagate throughout the city's sprawl.
But here, from hills to sea, on these dry plains,
The timber-seeking settlers took near-all.
Timber mills were built, and railways too,
Totara, rimu, matai, kahikitea-
All fell, and patchwork farms and pine forests grew.
Tree stumps, still unearthed, tell what was there.
Did they, our forbears, not appreciate
The flora here? Their efforts, so intense,
To fell and burn and clear, without debate.
Our forests had no guardian, no defence.
Expelled for macrocarpas, poplars, oaks.
We relish now the exotic Autumn shades,
And need the sheep and cattle and wheat. But, Oh
Are forests just for timber, and profits made?
Well now, at last, in this century's opening days,
There is a groundswell of passion, to restore
The native wealth to wetlands and waterways;
Let-live again the life that was here before.
Groups, like Forest and Bird, are there on days
Of planting native trees; and our council
Are calling us to "Come, and bring a spade.
We've twenty thousand seedlings - a forest to build."
Parts of the brown, bare Port Hills they're transforming,
Whole valleys of Matai and Totara; a home,
A bounty of berries and nectar for those returning,
Recreating the habitat that's their own.
She said there is only one upon these hills,
One tui, in Akaroa: will it survive?
Let the forests flourish again, Oh may they be filled
With the tui's call. Yes, may the tuis thrive.
Peter McKie, 1999
Note: In 1996, the Forest & Bird Society said the tui could be extinct on Banks Peninsula, "..where until the early 1970s they were numerous and widespread...There is now just one tui in the area - in Akaroa - whose life is tracked anxiously from garden to garden by its guardians."
|
