BIRDS-NEW CALEDONIA L. Macmillan Page 107 TAO AREA: COASTAL NW. MOUNTAINS, (MT. PANIE AREA). 29th July to the 1st. August, 1939. CUTTING AND CLIMBING TO SUMMIT OF MT. PANIE, (5500ft. app.) Weather: Sun and cloud and odd showers, mostly fine weather. Habitat: Up to 600 ft. Noulie forests with open scanty grass and bracken fern in between. Mt. Panie Eastern or coastal face. 600 to 1500 ft. A tall dense mountain forest with trees up to 50 ft. in height and with little underbrush on the ground. 1500 to 3000 ft. A slowly stunting and less dense tree growth of trees of only 15 ft. in height and with a dense inbetween growth of pandanus, cane-grass, ferns etc. 3000 ft. to 4000 ft. Fewer trees and slightly taller and a less dense inbetween growth with more true mountain plants appearing. In the valleys in this area the trees though not plentiful were tall and generally speaking the area was much more suitable for bird life. 4000 to 4500 ft. On the ridges a low dense scanty growth of 90% pandanus with only low trees of ten feet or so in height, in the valleys a dense growth of ferns and taller trees. 4500 to the summit at about 5500ft. A true mountain forest with a not very dense growth of undertrees but a fairly dense ground brush of ferns only 2 ft. in height thus leaving an open type of forest, with a distinct and level upper leaf canopy at about 30ft. Much flowering types of trees and shrubs orchids and epiphytic ferns and growths, many species of moss and lichens etc. Very strangely from 5000 ft. to the actual summit the forest is solid stand of kauri pine, a smallish hard wooded slow growing red species. At 5000 ft. it forms about 60% of the tree growth, commencing very abruptly, and slowly increasing in quantity till at the actual summit which is a small plateau it forms 90% of the tree growth.