The Cagou

Queer Bird of New Caledonia

From Our Noumea Correspondent A “SHORT Guide to New Caledonia,” issued by the War and Navy Departments, Washington, for the use of American troops, while an excel lent publication, contains some minor errors. For instance, it dismisses the amazing cagou as “a small bird hopping along the countryside.”

This strange, flightless, though not wingless, bird is a gem of creation, as interesting and distinctive in its way as the New Zealand kiwi; it rightly is the subject of the Colony’s crest, and figures on the new stamps designed in London by Edmund Dulac. About the size of a grown farmyard chicken, with the build of a heron, blue-grey in colour and rais ing a fine crest when angry, it stalks, not hops, through the bush with a stately and heraldic gait, but can also run quite fast. Through the night it barks like a little dog.

This is the bird that, when chased, does what the ostrich is supposed to do, but does not do —it hides its head in the ground, or in a tuft of grass, with its rump in the air, wherefore it is not diffi cult to catch. Therefore, it is in danger of becoming as rare as the kiwi.

The “Guide” says that, both as regards hunting and fishing, American soldiers, encouraged to take exercise even in their leisure hours, are finding New Caledonia a game paradise.