A friend of mine has a theory
The State of the Heart & How the Boisterous Cries became Quiet.
Wes ðu hāl! (‘Be thou hale’- Old English)
I hope the Spring transformation has not been too turbulent for you dear reader. I have a well-stocked newsletter for you and thank you in advance for your engagement.
News from The Rooky Wood art studio:
🌲The painting above is one of three works I was fortunate to have selected for the Hawke's Bay Art Review which is on show at Creative Arts Napier. I have always found green seas ominous, and wanted to convey imminent danger along with the heart-break of abandonment on such seemingly heart-less islands as New Zealand’s. My subjects, of course, are my beloved Rooks and the story of their people is part of my own breōst-hord.
Hord means ‘precious hoard’ in Old English, and can apply to words, language, ideas or anything else of value. Breōst means breast, so heart treasure and so Breōst-hord can also mean Beloved.
In Fremde Land I tried to capture the style of a 19th century woodcut print and a sense of wonderment on that first day released into a strange land filled with mist and unknown plants. The animals are mainly European but I wanted to speak for our beautiful Aussies as well. What must it have been like for the few survivors of those 2-month sea voyages, in such terrible conditions?
An excerpt from “Birds, Beasts and Fishes- the first hundred years of the North Canterbury Acclimatisation Society” by R.C. Lamb. Page 47: “As soon as the rooks were ready for the sea voyage, arrangements were made with Messrs Shaw Savill, & Company for their shipment- the Company generously agreeing to transport them freight free. The ship Asterope, on which they were to travel, had not much accommodation for live-stock; hence only sixty birds (constituting the first batch) were placed aboard her, together with 30 cwt of food and a 400 gallon tank of water. She sailed from London on 22nd June, 1871 and at first all went well with the rooks, the man in charge of them being most attentive to them, and they themselves very lively as the Asterope made her way down the English Channel. But he was a landsman who had never been to sea before. Consequently when the ship ran into very rough weather in the Bay of Biscay, he became a cot case and was quite unable to leave his berth. The crew, having their duties to attend to, were unable to take his place, and so the birds were neglected and, from sheer starvation, began to die off fast. Worse was yet in store for them; for the Asterope, when rounding the Cape of Good Hope, shipped a tremendous sea which broke in the front of the poop and flooded the cabin wherein the hapless rooks were confined, drowning forty of them in one fell swoop. A further ten succumbed later from the ill effects of their drenching.”
The Hawke’s Bay Art Review will run until the 30th October- do pop in when you are in Napier- huge range of styles, mediums and subject-matter- lots to look at!
🌲Art from The Rooky Wood studio has been chosen by Flora and Fauna of Aotearoa for their latest article: Introduced Species are Part of our Diversity and I am thrilled to work with their ethos, which advocates for holistic and sustainable care of our environment and all its species: living sustainably, in harmony with nature with environmental responsibility through good stewardship.
🌲This last week I had the privilege of reviving a Rook called Pearl, who was found in Napier, poisoned by the regional council. The reason for the poisoning seems to have been the humans in the area didn’t like the noise made by the approx. 30 Rooks near the Botanical Gardens. The Rooks would have been nesting there for a few weeks. Mamas call out when the Dads bring food for them. Babies can sound like the Pitcairn Island Band (trust me I know this from raising Ru- it’s a very funny sound- my grandmother had the band’s album). Normally it’s a joyful, raucous, happy time of year. Now there seem to be only one or two survivors. I have been thinking about how the boisterous cries became quiet. Picture the scene in each once-hopeful nest.
I wonder if the local residents are enjoying their silence bought with such a ghastly end for the dear Rooks.
Recipe to Save a Life from Agonising Death
For any future soft hearts given the opportunity to save one of these beautiful birds from this terrible persecution, the recipe for the antidote to DRC1339/Starlicide:
With an eye dropper dose your patient with raw egg white mixed with Bentonite clay and a little water to bind the poison and take it out through the bowel, alternated hourly for two days with NaturoPharm Urinary-med treatments for the renal damage usually caused by the toxic compound. Watch that more treatments aren’t needed as Rooks can take up to 80 hours to die. Pearl began to come right after 24 hours and was able to take a mix of rabbit and heart meat mixed with Insectapro. I would like to thank the wonderful Naturopaths at Cornucopia in Hastings, Lee Cox for the egg-white suggestion, as well as our Creator for blessing me with success. This is Pearl with life restored:
Unless you’re used to looking deep into the bright, curious eyes of a Rook, and with love, I guess, to the heartless, it doesn’t matter how they expire.
🌲 Also last week I was fortunate to be interviewed by Paul Brennan at Reality Check Radio and got to air my thoughts and research on the Rook situation in New Zealand, with an entirely sympathetic and refreshingly current thinker. Big thanks to Paul and the RCR team for the opportunity. How wonderful to experience decent people in great media who are happy to allow ordinary folk to speak freely.
🌲 Next on the calendar is the Hawke's Bay Art Trail : The Rooky Wood will be holding a pop-up studio at Keirunga Gardens in Havelock North on the 9th and 16th of November, as well as a market stall on the 16th November at the Taikura Fete in Hastings. There will be an odd and eccentric collection of crow products on sale- exactly the sort of thing to buy for difficult relations at Christmas!
🌲 The 28th November sees the opening of Strange land, my third and final solo exhibition for this year, which will be held at Creative Arts Napier in the Small Gallery. More anon.
The theory
So I wanted to address the problem of shallow science. My friend, Johnny Ryan, had a think about the relationship between Man and Rook in Hawke’s Bay in the 1970s. In 1971, over 100 years after they were brought to New Zealand, Rooks were declared a pest. The problem seemed to be large populations of Rooks feeding on Man’s crops. To the untrained eye: Rook= bad, Man = innocent.
However a curious mind, what I would call a truly scientific mind, would never settle for a face-value conclusion, but would look deeper.
Johnny asked why did all the New Zealand Rooks crowd together and feed in such vast numbers when their counterparts in Europe tended to maintain smaller groups?
Does anyone remember that terrible pesticide called DDT? It turns out DDT was sprayed liberally by plane in Hawke’s Bay during the 1950s and 1960s to control grass grubs. With Rooks’ food poisoned throughout large tracts of land, it doesn’t take a big step to conclude that that is why Rooks during the 1950s and 60s occupied smaller and smaller DDT-free areas, resulting in denser populations with less food available, forcing them to eat crops or die.
Without Johnny’s thoughtful observation, the 1970s movers and shakers of Hawke’s Bay skittered around the surface of the face value: the poor old Rook suffered because of manmade chemical grass grub control, and was misunderstood and poisoned in his turn. As a consequence of being artificially forced into denser population groups, nearly 86,000 Rooks met their end by ingesting DRC1339/Starlicide.
It is deeply ironic that, over 50 years later, having removed Rooks (the original organic grass grub control mechanism brought here by the settlers for this purpose) the rural sector are now whining about a $2 billion grass grub problem. DDT failed them because of its toxicity. Chlorpyrifos and Diazanon seem destined to do the same, leaving AgResearch and its contemporaries to return to their laboratories to brew new potions which, by definition, must be toxic to life forms. Meanwhile the remnant of the beautiful Rook-people languish in their eradication classification, awaiting the big green waves of DRC1339. You would think by now the penny might have dropped around agrichemicals and health.
This being an obscure topic, on behalf of these birds, it would be wonderful should you consider sharing my friend’s theory with others. Difficult to argue one’s case in council without help, when you’re only a Rook.
ic þe þancas do (I thank you).
Until next time.
kate from The Rooky Wood
