Forget-me-not
Guest Blogger: Campaign Manager for the Grey Warbler & Broadaster, Graeme Hill
The only reason that the Grey Warbler is not bird of the year, every year, is that this soldier of our conscience is not often seen… yet it is common.
How can this be?
Grey Warbler
It is tiny and it gets mistaken for dust, or a bumblebee, but hear its song!
The Grey Warbler song is imprinted on all of our memories, and is more of a national anthem than, well….. our national anthem.
For years the humble Grey Warbler has been ignored, marginalized and even persecuted. One year it was depicted in a Forest and Bird illustration for Bird Of The Year coming LAST! We must all say… never again, never again.
Grey Warbler FACTS.
- New Zealand’s most successful endemic bird post-human invasion.
- New Zealand’s smallest bird (equal with the Rifleman)
- New Zealand’s most often heard endemic song
- Our hardest working bird. They rear cookoos as well as their own brood.
- It appears in more poetry than any other New Zealand bird.
- It is New Zealand’s best bird.
- No two Warbler songs are the same.
Jeremy Wells
This year I notice a lot of Birdy-come-latelies have muscled their way onto this poll with a flash-harry video.
Jeremy Wells is one.
His sycophantic production company, Great Brown-Nose Television, spent two thousand dollars on this phoney’s Spoonbill propaganda video ($1900 was Wells’ fee). Why? It’s all part of a publicity campaign to try to get you to watch his new TV show called Birdbrain on TV something, and it premieres October 3rd.
Do NOT watch this programme. It is full of lies and is a vehicle for Wellseyan self-aggrandisement. He slopes about in a nonchalant way, ignorant as sellotape. A sparkler and kazoo masquerading as fire and music.
Now… let us consider Jeremy Wells’ Spoonbilligerance.
He accuses the Grey Warbler of having no sense of humour. Rubbish. Warbler humour is not the Spoonbill’s “look at my wacky beak and John Cleese walk” slapstick. Warbler humour is far more sophisticated. More like Bob Newhart if you will. I have heard stories of people walking in the bush for hours trying to spot a Grey Warbler, then just as they stop and open their sammies for lunch…. there’s the song, piercing the air just over the shoulder. That’s irony. Hilarious.
Why Wells & the Royal Spoonbill?
Why does his support of this gawky, garish, honking, foreign tourist not surprise me? Because he sees himself as a Royal Spoonbill. It must have been tough for his parents coughing up all that dough to get him through Wanganui Collegiate… but here is a sweet ironic twist. He cannot now muster votes for his preposterous invading concern of a bird due to the fact that getting through to his old “mates” from Wanganui Collegiate is proving rather difficult. Most of them are off fox hunting and the rest are having jinkies at Balmoral Castle, where I noticed last time I was there, had a toll-bar for everyone from Charles down.
Conversely, my old mates are now all in jail in Kaikohe and they get a couple of calls a week, and every one of them is voting WARBLER! Hilarious.
Are other birds more worthy?
Others are certainly in vastly more plight, and they deserve an all-hands-on-deck approach to preserving them and their habitat. Please join and help Forest and Bird.
However, if we can recognise and appreciate the little, common and uniquely New Zealand things for their own beauty then appreciation of the others will surely follow. The Warbler is the song of our conscience. A herald reminding us all of their avian brethren and the battles they are facing. Its song a clarion call to arms.
You, reader, almost certainly have a tiny pair, both just the size of your thumb snuggling together for warmth in a tree near you tonight. They will be unthought of, and perhaps unvoted for, yet tomorrow they will gleefully colour the air with THE sound of New Zealand.
Vote Grey Warbler Bird Of The Year 2008. www.forestandbird.org.nz
VOTE WARBLER… the people’s bird. The BIRD’S bird.
Come forth that I may see thee.
My ears ensnare thy melody
The very heart of me.
– Legends of the Maori, Sir Maui Pomare
I hea koe i te tangihanga o te riroriro?
ka tanu ai i tetahi kawai huie mau?
Where were you at the singing of the grey warbler?
– Maori proverb
“Presently, from some manuka thicket, a sombre plumaged little bird will emerge, light on some topmost twig, and pour forth to three-quarters of the globe – for in his ecstasy he nearly sings a circle – this faint sweet trill that heralds fuller spring.”
Herbert Guthrie-Smith, 1910.
“The ghost of a kitten’s mew – the echo of dwarf violins played on the moon”
Allan Bell, Kaitaia 1911.
“Excellent bird the Grey Warbler bee,
As humble as a bumble he”
Ogden Nash
“Tussock and scabweed scuffed, grey far horizon hazed.
We walked until dusk
Saying nothing most of the way, bar the conversation of the Grey Warbler, somewhere
Elusive as the dead
Yet now at last I hear him.
Riroriro.. speak to me of yesterday and tomorrow.
Amongst this tussock tussock tussock. Lots of fucking tussock.”
Brian Turner from Volume 56 of the series “Thoughts on Tussock”
The ibis of Alexandria stands
Show me the library!, lost
Grey Warbler… most excellent bird.
Michelle Leggott Poet Laureate, from the anthology “I’ve got no idea what it means”
“The ghost of a kitten’s mew – the echo of dwarf violins played on the moon”
Noelle McCarthy 2009
I am the eggman,
I am the eggman,
Goo goo ga choo, goo goo ga choo.
John Lennon
