Greytown county almanac

Greytown, is my turangawaewae, the place where I stand, the place where I was born. Wellington and the Wairarapa are where my family settled in the nineteenth century, migrating from Christchurch in the South Island, intent upon moving in on land belonging to Maori. My ancestors walked the streets of Wellington, Pahiatua, Masterton and the shores of Paremata and Pahatanui, as I do now. I could have said that Greytown or Te Hupenui, is about an hour’s drive from Wellington, over the Rimutaka mountain range, that it was first settled by Europeans in 1854 on land bought from local Maori, that it was named after Sir George Grey, but I am more interested in saying something about Greytown's natural history, and what the Wairarapa was like before humans, Maori and Pakeha, arrived here. Scientists report from the evidence of pollen grains that before humans arrived here,  85-90% of New Zealand, including the Wairarapa, was covered with forest. Grassland or shrubland occurred,...

Here it is November already and I have yet to hear the shining cuckoo in Greytown. The Birding News Group reported a shining cuckoo in the Rimutaka Forest Park on September 21 and a friend reported them at the top of Wood Street in late October, which is about when I would have expected them here, as it has been late October in other years that I have first heard them. The extremely cold October weather may have deterred their moving south. Talking to someone recently, they said they did not realise we had cuckoos here in New Zealand. Indeed, we have two, the shining and the long-tailed cuckoo, both migratory. The long-tailed cuckoo will only usually be seen outside the deep bush while it is in transit in the spring and autumn, when they very often are found dead after crashing into a window. (As I was writing this I had an email from soomeone living nearby in the Waiohine Gorge saying they had a long-tailed cuckoo crashed into the window!) But the shining cuckoo is everywhere...