Bird-song and New Zealand song birds, written by Danish born Johannes Carl Andersen, is a collection of chapters about native and introduced birds and their song in Aotearoa New Zealand. These chapters are grouped by the bird’s taxonomic classification - the passerines, the parrots, the warblers, the cuckoos, the crows and includes musical notation and written notes in a subscriber’s copy.
Each chapter includes the scientific name, the most common te reo Māori names in use for the species and their English common name. The book includes whakatauki and Māori mythology about birds represented in the text including kotuku, pīpīwharauroa and tūī. While there is some attempt to include te reo in the text, Anderson relied heavily on English translations.
At the time of writing, Johannes Carl Andersen was the first chief Librarian, Alexander Turnbull Library and Andersen includes a number of collected items from local schools across the country that have been sent to him by school children, including Papakura and Eastern Hutt schools. Andersen mentions that he is in touch with “60,00 school children by means of the School Journal.” In a short aside from birdsong the author discusses the findings from these children including the double nest of a fantail and double eggs (“having one shell inside the other”) of hens, ducks and blackbirds.
Andersen discusses the loss of bird song in New Zealand and the beginning acts of conservation that would save some species but too late for others. Andersen condemns the acts of hunting of native species when numbers of individuals were low. The text includes excerpts from Buller about a failed Huia collection trip where Buller captures a pair of whitehead, a species that Buller himself had not heard on the mainland in ten years.
The species was extinct on the mainland and only existed on offshore island sanctuaries until populations were released in the early 2000’s, nearly 80 years from the time of Andersen’s writing, at Hunua and the Waitākere Ranges with birds sourced from Tiritiri Matangi. These little birds are also the only host for the long tailed cuckoo in the North Island.
Andersen explains the effects that these santancturies will and continue to have but notes that they came too late to prevent the extinction of the Huia.
The book is dedicated to two conservationists, Guthrie-Smithand Potts and the schools that aided his research. Guthie-Smith and Potts residences, Tūtira and Ōhinetahi respectively and their arboreta are now gardens that can still be visited by the public.
Further reading
N. Leuschner, 2013 [updated 2020]. Whitehead. In Miskelly, C.M. (ed.) New Zealand Birds Online (Leuschner). www.nzbirdsonline.org.nz
P. J. Gibbons. 'Andersen, Johannes Carl', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1996. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/3a15/andersen-johannes-carl (accessed 12 May 2022)