The only excuse for molesting the wood-pigeon is that he is very good to eat. The kaka parrot, too, another woodlander, makes a capital stew. Neither victim offers the slightest difficulty to the gunner--I cannot say sportsman. Indeed the kaka will flutter round the slayer as he stands with his foot on the wing of a wounded bird, a cruel but effective decoy-trick. Another native bird easy to hit on the wing is the queer-looking pukeko, a big rail with bright-red beak and rich-blue plumage. The pukeko, however, though he flies so heavily, can run fast and hide cleverly. Moreover, in addition to being good for the table, he is a plague to the owners of standing corn. In order to reach the half-ripe ears he beats down the tops of a number of stalks, and so constructs a light platform on which he stands and moves about, looking like a feathered stilt-walker, and feasting the while to his heart’s content. Grain-growers, therefore, show him no mercy, and follow him into his native swamps, where the tall flax bushes, toé-toé, and giant bulrushes furnish even so large a bird with ample cover. When, however, a dog puts him up, and he takes to the air, he is the easiest of marks, for any one capable of hitting a flying haystack can hit a pukeko. Very different are the wild ducks. They soon learn the fear of man and the fowling-piece. They are, moreover, carefully protected both by law and by public opinion among sportsmen. So they are still to be found in numbers on lakes and lagoons by the sea-coast as well as in the sequestered interior. Large flocks of them, for example, haunt Lake Ellesmere, a wide brackish stretch of shallow water not many miles from the city of Christchurch. But in such localities all the arts of the English duck-hunter have to be employed, and artificial cover, decoys, and first-rate markmanship must be brought into play. The grey duck, the shoveller, and teal, both black and red, all give good sport. Strong of flight and well defended by thick, close-fitting suits of feathers, they need quick, straight shooting. A long shot at a scared grey duck, as, taking the alarm, he makes off down the wind, is no bad test of eye and hand. In return, they are as excellent game-birds dead as living. This last is more than can be said for the handsomest game-bird of the country, the so-called paradise duck. Its plumage, so oddly contrasting in the dark male and reddish white-headed female, makes it the most easily recognised of wild-fowl. It also has developed a well-founded suspiciousness of man and his traps, and so manages to survive and occupy mountain lakes and valleys in considerable flocks. Unlike the grey species which are found beyond the Tasman Sea, the smaller and more delicately framed blue duck is peculiar to the islands. It is neither shy nor common, and, as it does no harm to any sort of crop, law and public opinion might, one would think, combine to save it from the gun and leave it to swim unmolested among the boulders