The Unburnt Egg, page 13
We passed a group of workers bent over their crops in a field. They were too far off to speak to, but when they saw us they straightened up to watch us pass. We waved and they waved back. Then a teenager among them dropped his implements and ran to join us. He reached us, panting a little, and smiled from ear to ear. His name, he said, was Samisoni—that is to say, Samson. He had very little English and we knew even less Tongan, but it transpired that he knew a track to the top of a large hill called Mount Sia Ko Kafoa. The hill was marked on my map but the way to the summit was not clear. It was a pleasant climb through plantations and scrub, and I noted more Tongan whistlers. Samisoni led, in dusty shorts and a faded yellow T-shirt, and we followed.
Back down at the main dirt road I saw one of the large brown skinks on the ground and raced about trying unsuccessfully to catch it. It climbed a tree trunk and moved on to a big overhanging branch. Samisoni quickly assessed the situation and clambered up the tree. As he moved on to the big branch the lizard went further out. Samisoni began to shake the branch. The skink was now on very thin twigs that were swinging wildly. Before long it lost its grip and fell to the road below. Although I was directly underneath I had to move frantically to catch the lively animal, ending up on all fours. The mysterious lizard was now in the calico drawstring collecting bag.
Later I caught a couple more of the brown skinks. In Samoa there was a large brown tree-climbing skink, Emoia samoensis, and I felt these Tongan skinks were the same or a close relative. Back in Auckland I checked the measurements and patterns of scales and concluded they were Emoia trossula, a species from Fiji described in 1986 and also known on the Cook Islands. My specimens were the first of the species to be reported from Vava'u.
George Zug and his colleagues collected more brown skinks in the region, studied previous museum specimens, and analysed DNA samples. The evidence finally showed there were multiple species. In 2012 the Tongan brown skinks were named Emoia mokolahi. The specimen Samisoni had helped me catch became a paratype for the species, a secondary specimen that backs up the holotype specimen that carries the new name. A Rarotongan specimen I caught in 1995 became a paratype of another new species, Emoia tuitarere, which the American team described in 2011.
Our accommodation on Vava'u was a modest guest house just south of Neiafu. A slim American woman, Virginia, ran the kitchen, her greying hair tied up in a bun. She had operated a restaurant back in the US and now, finding herself in Tonga, she was staying on for a while. Her main task was to organise the evening meal in the immense dining room, where attendance was boosted by visiting yachties. Large plates of food emerged from the kitchen over an hour or two and were passed around the large communal tables. You ate your fill for a flat charge of six dollars.
One evening Virginia announced that one of the dinner dishes was "millionaire's salad" made from fresh heart of palm. Earlier in the day she had seen some men felling a coconut palm and asked them to cut out the single growing tip buried deep within the crown. The Tongans, she said, didn't use this. With a salad dressing it made a crunchy accompaniment to the meal. You can get this dish in top restaurants in New York and London but you need to be a millionaire as the heart is sent fresh from the tropics and requires the death of a palm tree. There was a peculiar satisfaction in eating this pricey salad as part of a six-dollar meal.
At one location on Vava'u I managed to catch a small skink of a kind I had not seen before. It was a climber, heavily speckled rather than striped, and had a bright lime-green belly. It seemed to be Murphy's skink, Emoia murphyi. In 1991 I went to Western Samoa to carry out a reptile survey and stayed two days in O le Pupu-Pu'e National Park on the south coast of the main island, 'Upolu. There I caught a Murphy's skink basking on a tree trunk and it seemed to match the Tongan specimen. This is one of the lesser known Pacific reptiles, described in 1930 from a single skink collected in Western Samoa by the Whitney South Sea Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History and named for the museum's ornithologist, Robert Cushman Murphy.
While in Apia, the capital of Samoa, I had use of a large high-ceilinged dilapidated government house down a side road near the hospital. The houses in the street had large wild lush gardens, but enormous sawn-off tree stumps marked where trees had been felled by recent cyclones. From one such stump near my bedroom window a noisy bird screeched forth intermittently day and night. It turned out to be a banded rail, known locally as ve'a. Banded rails in New Zealand are restricted to swampy sites and so shy they are rarely seen, even by birdwatchers. On Pacific Islands they are much bolder and it was amazing to see this individual stalking briskly across the lawn and climbing among the tangled weeds on the tree stump to begin its screeching.
While making a pilgrimage to the grave of Robert Louis Stevenson at Vailima, just south of Apia, I followed the wellmarked jungle path up the hill and spotted a large brown Samoan skink. These skinks escape disturbance by climbing upwards and I had made many fruitless attempts to seize one before. This unlucky individual made the mistake of climbing a shrub that ended at about my height, and after a short dash across a clearing I managed to grab it.
During my last few days in Apia I walked the streets to count mynas. These birds were introduced, no doubt from nearby Pacific islands, after being brought to Fiji from India to control insect pests. The jungle myna was established at Apia before 1965 but now the common myna, the same species as is found in New Zealand, was present too, first recorded in 1988. I closely observed over 200 mynas and found that thirteen percent were common mynas.
In 1998 I was back in Apia. This time I checked the identity of just over 600 mynas around the town and found that seventy-one percent were now common mynas, the newcomer. The presence of the two species is like a natural experiment. Common mynas appear to be winning the competitive struggle between the two birds in the Apia area.
In 1993 I went to the French territory of Wallis and Futuna, which had had no published survey of reptiles. The two islands, which lie west of the Samoas and north-east of Fiji, are 230 kilometres apart and were then connected by a onehour flight in a de Havilland Twin Otter of New Caledonia's airline, Aircalin.
In the sleepy village of Fiua on Futuna many of the gardens had low walls. As I walked quietly along the road an unusual lizard sunning on a white-painted wall caught my eye. There was nobody about so I dropped my daypack and crept towards it, hoping to catch it. Warmed by the shimmering heat, the skink darted away.
I was surprised to look up and see an elderly woman a few feet away. She began talking excitedly in the local language, waving her arms and tucking stray wisps of hair behind her ears. I spoke French to her but she looked back blankly and called out in the direction of a banana grove. Presently a shy young woman emerged from between the plants, her dress soiled from gardening. I was able to tell her where I was from and what I was doing. She translated into Futunan for the older woman and the information was shouted up and down the street, for by now half the village was lining the road. In my experience, Polynesian villagers generally seemed to regard lizards as of no consequence, merely a plaything for children. That an adult should spend time scrabbling about catching them must have confirmed for many the unfathomable ways of Europeans.
After interest died away I was given leave to search all the nearby walls and gardens. After forty-five minutes I had caught three of the lizards, which seemed to be Murphy's skinks. I was the first to report this species from the island, although I found that two museums in Europe had unreported specimens that had been collected earlier. It turns out that the species had been named in 1899 by a German herpetologist based on two specimens from Tonga. The 1930 description of Emoia murphyi from Western Samoa was unnecessary. We must now call the lizard by its older name, Emoia tongana.
On both Wallis and Futuna I received assistance from French expatriate officers in Le service de l'économie rurale et de la pêche. On Futuna I was invited to a party one evening and met about half of the sixty or so Europeans on the island. Several tried to explain a political problem that had been developing between the three sources of power on Futuna—the customary chiefs, the Catholic church and the French administration. My French couldn't cope with the details and I understood the situation only when, during a stay in Nouméa on the journey home, I read an article about it in the local newspaper.
Two foreign priests had persuaded the two kings of Futuna, who each held sway over half the island, that a recent damaging earthquake in which five people were killed had been caused by a lack of respect for the Sabbath. The kings ruled that commercial transactions and public recreational activities such as picnics and sports matches were prohibited on Sundays. The French administration opposed this because church and state were separate in the French Republic and all its citizens, including Futunians, were free to do what they wanted on Sundays.
One king duly backed down but the other would not. Unbeknown to me, an ultimatum from the administration to lift the prohibition had expired on the fourth night of my stay. The recalcitrant monarch stayed firm so the administration disconnected power to his part of the island. I went to sleep unaware that youths were smashing every window in the town's administration building a few kilometres away and entering the home of the administrator, where they struck him.
On Sunday morning, François, an English teacher, collected me in his beaten up car to go birdwatching. It was raining heavily as we headed towards the airstrip, stopping at bays so I could scan with binoculars and count wading birds. There was a hole in the floor of the car through which I could see the muddy road. At the airstrip we were watching kingfishers along the perimeter road when a small plane emerged from low cloud and landed. There were only a few flights a week and this one was unscheduled. In the distance we saw people emerging from their homes and running towards the airport building to find out what was happening. There had been more trouble. Five gendarmes had flown in from Wallis after youths had entered the gendarmerie, near where I was staying, and threatened the French gendarme and his local staff.
That evening I needed a walk. As I set off towards the town a Frenchman called out from a window. Hadn't I heard about the trouble? The agitators might take hostages. I should stay indoors. Later there was a knock at the door of the small apartment I was renting for the week. It was the landlord, a member of a wealthy pro-French Futunian family. I eventually understood he was worried about damage to his property and wanted me to keep the porch light on.
The next day was my last on Futuna. It was raining but I walked to town to see for myself the damage to the administration building, where only a few nights earlier I had stepped over the low gate and been able to catch house geckos attracted to the outside lights. Some bystanders told me that two men had been arrested and taken to New Caledonia. Later, back at the airport on Wallis, I saw a military transport plane standing to one side. It had brought soldiers from Nouméa but in the end they were not needed. The second king lifted the Sunday prohibitions. He and his fellow king then invited the administrator to drink kava with them and pardon the aggressors.
Rarotonga revisited
An old jar in the collection storeroom contained four birds preserved in alcohol. The lid was rusty and the fluid was the colour of dark urine. After animals are preserved in spirit, fat often leaches into the fluid, discolouring it. Working at a large stainless-steel sink, I got the lid off. When I ran the tap and poured the yellow alcohol into the sink, it immediately went milky as the dissolved fat formed an emulsion with the tap water. The birds tumbled out, along with a square of paper on which was written in pencil "T.F.C. Rarotonga".
I had just begun my career at Auckland Museum and was rehousing the collection of land vertebrates that were preserved in alcohol. Wet collections are vulnerable to drying out so this was a top priority. The specimens needed to be transferred to fresh alcohol in new jars with rust-proof plastic lids. A proportion of the specimens had never been registered. I needed to decipher any labels, assign registration numbers, and record collecting details in the numerical register and on catalogue cards.
Rarotonga is the main island of the Cook Islands group, in the tropical Pacific 3,000 kilometres north-east of New Zealand. The "T.F.C." presumably referred to Thomas Frederic Cheeseman, the curator of Auckland Museum from 1874 until he died in 1923 in his late seventies.
I submerged the birds in a basin of tap water to rinse them, left them a while in a plastic funnel to drain, and then squeezed each one gently between paper towels to remove excess liquid. After this I placed the birds into new jars with fresh ethanol that had been diluted with tap water to seventy percent. In the crystal-clear liquid the birds looked a picture—if you like that sort of thing—with their plumage fluffed out and details such as the scales on their legs and feet clear to see.
When, a decade later, I went to the Cook Islands to survey its reptiles, my interest was renewed in the birds I had rehoused earlier. What were these drab grey medium-sized birds? They looked to be songbirds. It seemed most likely they were 'ioi, or Rarotonga starlings, Aplonis cinerascens. I measured the lengths of each bird's wing, tail, beak and lower leg. All measurements closely agreed with some published figures for the Rarotonga starling.
It seems Cheeseman was in Rarotonga from May to July 1899 to collect plants. In a letter of April 15, 1898 to a Mr F.J. Moss living on the island, Cheeseman stated: "The authorities of Kew Gardens are pressing me to undertake a botanical investigation of the Cook Islands ... almost nothing is known in Europe of the plants of the group. ... I should probably bring either my wife or sister with me, to attend to the drying of the plants, so as to leave my whole time free for collecting. ... I am supposing that I and my wife could obtain decent lodgings with some of the European families—for I do not know whether you have the convenience of an hotel." This was Cheeseman's only excursion beyond New Zealand. It culminated in his report "The flora of Rarotonga, the chief island of the Cook group", which was published in 1903 in Transactions of the Linnean Society of London.
I was excited to find that Auckland Museum's library held a diary Cheeseman kept of his Rarotonga trip. It was a pleasure to read—neatly and charmingly written. Cheeseman had made inland excursions with a lad called Josephus. After one such trip on Friday, June 23, Cheeseman wrote: "On the way back Josephus shot two specimens of the Ioi bird." The diary also referred to Cheeseman having a tank of formalin in which specimens could be preserved. It all fitted in with the jars of grey birds.
As one of Cheeseman's curatorial successors I was delighted to visit Rarotonga almost exactly a century after he had, and for similar scientific reasons. I too kept a diary.
Tuesday, September 26, 1995 (New Zealand). A friend picked me up at noon and drove me to Auckland Airport with my pack, carry-on bag, and plastic tube containing devices for snaring lizards. During the four-hour flight we crossed the Date Line, arriving Monday after dark. How nice it was to step out into warm evening air. In the arrivals hall a man on a platform played an electrified ukulele and sang a pan-Pacific pop song. A young woman gyrated in a bikini top and grass skirt, smiling incessantly at the queuing passengers. At the exit an official asked each passenger for the name of their accommodation and pointed to waiting hotel staff. Paul, from my motel, stepped forward and placed an ei of scented flowers around my neck. My fellow patrons and I were soon whisked by minivan along the dimly lit coast road to the lodge. It was ten p.m. I unpacked, and feeling now a little oppressed by the heat and humidity swam in the motel pool. It was lit invitingly by submerged lights.
Tuesday, May 9, 1899. Left for Rarotonga on the steamer Ovalau, casting off from Queen St. Wharf [Auckland] at quarter to nine pm. Only six passengers on board—Madame Arnaud and her daughter, two Tahitians returning to their country after a visit to New Zealand; Mr Hemus, in the employ of Messrs Donald & Edenborough; another passenger, whose name I failed to learn; and myself and wife. The night was fine but dark, and after the steamer had rounded the North Head we both returned to our cabins.
Wednesday, May 10. A beautifully fine day, with hardly a ripple on the water. Numerous albatrosses and Mollymauks [sic] followed in the wake of our vessel, and an occasional black petrel was also seen. ...
Friday, May 12. On awaking in the morning found that we were running before a strong S. W. breeze, with sails set to help us on. Towards night the wind drew more into the west, raising a beam sea, making the Ovalau roll rather disagreeably. ...
Tuesday, May 16. Rarotonga was sighted about 9 o'clock. At first only the high central peak was seen; then two others appeared, standing off like two little islands. By eleven o'clock the shape of the island could be distinctly made out. About two the steamer anchored off Avarua harbour, situated at the northern end of the island. High and rugged mountains were seen to occupy the whole of the central portion, with deep gorges and ravines. Many of the peaks were rocky and one remarkable column of solid rock presented a very remarkable appearance as seen from the coast a little to the south of Avarua. It must be at least 200 ft in height. Except on these steep and rocky portions the whole island, from the sea beach to the crest of the hills, was covered with luxuriant forest. ...
The anchor had no sooner dropped than we were boarded by the health officer and the custom house officers. And then some score or two of stalwart Rarotongans—tall, lithe and well-built—climbed up on the deck to offer their services for the work of discharging the cargo. We were also surrounded by quite a fleet of little outrigger canoes—each paddled by a single man. The object of this visit was evidently fishing, for as each canoe drew up under our lee, the occupant quickly had his line and hook over the side. And notwithstanding we were anchored in ten fathoms [18 metres] of water, we could distinctly see the bottom, and even the fish swimming to and fro.
