The Bush Robin had a pale yellow breast, and his dominion extended from
the waterfall, at the bottom of which lay a deep, dark, green pool, to
the place where the _rimu_ tree had fallen across the creek.

His life was made up of two things; hunting for big white grubs in the
rotten barrels of dead trees, and looking at the yellow pebbles in the
stream. This last was a habit that the wood-hen had taught him. She was
the most inquisitive creature in the forest, and knew all that was
going on beyond the great river, into which the creek fell, and as far
away as the Inaccessible Mountains, which were the end of the world: not
that she travelled far, but that all wood-hens live in league, and spend
their time in enquiring into other people's business.

The _tui_ and the bell-bird might sing in the tops of the tall trees,
but the Bush Robin hardly ever saw them, except when they came down to
drink at the creek. The pigeons might coo softly, and feed on _tawa_
berries till actually they were ready to burst, and could not fly from
the trees where they had gorged themselves--as great gluttons as ever
there were in Rome: but the Bush Robin hardly knew them, and never spoke
to them. He was a bird of the undergrowth, a practical entomologist,
with eyes for nothing but bugs, beetles, larvae, stick-insects, and the
queer yellow things in the river.

Being a perfectly inoffensive bird, he objected to noise, and for that
reason he eschewed the company of the kakas and paroquets who ranged the
forest in flocks, and spoilt all quietude by quarrelling and screeching
in the tree-tops. But for the _kakapo_, the green ground-parrot who
lived in a hollow _rata_ tree and looked like a bunch of maiden-hair
fern, he had great respect. This was a night-bird who interfered with no
one, and knew all that went on in the forest between dark and dawn.

Then there was the red deer, the newest importation into those woods.
The Bush Robin never quite knew the reason of his own inquisitiveness,
and the roaming deer never quite knew why the little bird took so much
interest in his movements, but the fact remained that whenever the
antlered autocrat came to drink at the stream, the Bush Robin would
stand on a branch near by, and sing till the big buck thought the little
bird's throat must crack. His thirst quenched, the red deer would be
escorted by the Bush Robin to the confine of the little bird's preserve,
and with a last twitter of farewell, Robin wo