FRIENDS OR FOES?

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 24, 27 January 1906, Page 9

FRIENDS OR FOES?

NEW ZEALAND'S FEATHERED IMMIGRANTS.

(BY J. DRUMMOJsTX)

(Copyright.) IV.—THE SPAEEOW. It is interesting to no'«e that the first sparrows were taken to the United States in ISSO, seventeen years before Captain Stevens liberated the historical five in Lyttelton. The first pairs in America were liberated in Brooklyn, but they did not succeed very well, and a second attempt had to be made, a large shipment being sent from England in 1853. The birds were carefully watched, fed and protected. Into some districts they were transported; into others they went voluntarily and formed colonies. By 1875 there were many large colonies in different parts of the country, and a bulletin issued by the United States Department says: "From that time to the present the marvellous rapidity of the sparrow's multiplication, the surpassing swiftness of its extension, and the prodigious size of the area it has overspread are without parallel in the history of any bird. Like a noxious weed transplanted to a fertile soil it has taken root and has become disseminated over half a continent before the significance of its presence has come to be understood." Exaggerated reports of the benefit the bird had conferred upon settlers in the districts in the United States into which it had been first introduced helped largely to foster the inscrease. Many people in the States went to the expense of purchasing and shipping eparrows to considerable distances in the belief that they were purely insectivorous birds, and must prove beneficial wherever they could be naturalised. In this way a sparrovV "boom" was started, and the price of sparrows in New York went up to such a point that many people desirous of obtaining the birds found it cheaper to club together and import them straight from England. WHAT IT EATS MOST OF. I directed special inquiries to ascertain, if possible, the manner in which the sparrow in New Zealand regulates its diet. It would be interesting to know the proportions of grain and insects it consumes, and whether, if a dish of insects and a dish of grain were placed in front of it. it would take the insects before the grain.

Large numbers? of farmers in this country have come to the conclusion that the sparrow has entirely lost its insectivorous habits, and has become a graineater pure and simple. They Bay that while there is a speck of grain about, or a seed of any kind, the sparrow will not trouble about insects, unless to feed the young.

Some attempts have been made to put the sparrows weakness in this respect to an actual test. One correspondent states that when insects have been placed round a sparrow's nest the bird has left them alone, and has flown to an adjacent wheat field or a garden of sweet young vegetables. So far as the replies to my circular are concerned, there has been only one case of this kind, and against it there are the statements of many correspondents that the sparrow, still prefers insects, although this is often qualified by another that it does so only when there is little grain available.

A reliable correspondent at Ashburton, Mr A. H. Shurry, estimates that one sparrow ivill eat one hundred grains of wheat in twenty-four hours, and that the progeny of one bird, during the three months of harvest, -will consume threequarterp of a bushel of wheat, and will also shake large quantities to the ground. These estimates are not altogether guesses, but are based on intelligent investigations.

A Waikato farmer say-?: "Bother the sparrows, they eat or destroy evervthin<» you don't want them to." A farmer in the Wairarapa 9111ns up his views by saying: '"'lf all the sparrow 9 v.ere dead, we would never miss them; they are a tax on the farmer to the extent of an extra bushel of seed per acre." A member of the Farmers' Union at Aponga, Whangarei, declares that he doubts if the sparrows ever touch insects, as he has never seen them doing so. ITS CON~DEMNATIOX. The fifth question in the circular was: "Do you think that the introduction of any of the small birds was a mistake?" There are very few correspondents who, in replying to this, have not named the sparrow, and emphasised his inclusion in the condemned list by strong and harsh words. ?»Ir A. Burrows, a dairy farmer, of West Oxford, North Canterbury, says: "I once made a small box for sparrows, and placed it in a position where I could watch them. After a week had passed, a pair built a next in the box, and reared five young. For the first week they fed them on insects, bringing as many as six moths and 'long-legs' at a time. A short distance away there was a paddock of wheat getting ripe. They started upon that. They made a journey about once in every five minutes, bringing each titnea a grain of wheat, making, for both birds, twenty-four grains an hour; that is, assuming that they took only one grain at a time. If they worked eight hours a day, the total would be one hundred and ninety-two grains. I don't know how long they would have continued, a? I killed the young ones before they were ready to fiy. There was nothing but wheat in the crops of them all. "I sowed four pounds of Timothy seed on naif an acre of land, well worked, to test its capacity. After sowing, I brush-harrowed it well, and rolled it hard. I could not keep the sparrows off. They worked it all up again, as though it had never been harrowed, and very little came up. I shot some of the sparrows, and found that they had as much as half a teaspoonful in their crops. I tried poisoned wheat, but they would not touch it. Last winter I raked the snow off the grass and put poisoned wheat down. The sparrows were plentiful, but did not touch it. but in an hour there were five larks, three chaffinches-, one ?rey linnet and one thrush dead. Dead gulls, blackbirds, pheasants and hedgesparrows, poisoned by wheat, have been brought to mc."

Some of the replies give an idea of the intense enmity the sparrow has created for himself in New Zealand. r, ::e correspondent refers to him as •'that bird brigand, the sparrow." A resident of Mataura. ia Southland, says that he is a greater nuisance than the rabbit. Another farmer says that the man who first introduced the sparrow should be smitten with all the plagues of Egypt, and another thinks thath hanging is the only punishment that will fit the crime of introducing "this pesijlerous little beast, which has done no good to anyone and much harm to everybody."

IN ITS PRAISE. Of the hundreds of correspondents who have filled in the circular, there are only six who raise their voices in the sparrow's favour. I give their opinions in full. Sir G. Wilkinson, chairman of the North. Cape County Council, writing from Mangonui, says:—"l feel sure that; sparrows do a lot of good, and if their numbers were greatly reduced the country would he overrun with insects again."

Mr W. E. Draper, of Waerenga, Waikato, looks upon the sparrow as '"the best agricultural scavenger we have. a "It is true," he adds, "that he eats a little, but he does not destroy what he ■won't eat. When I watch him and see what quantities of dirty slugs he eats I'm satisfied that I am not paying too high a price for the return made. I am also satisfied that a great deal of the damage attributed to the sparrow is committed by the lark."

Mr G. M. Thomson, of Dunedin. says that though the sparrow is very destructive to grain crops "when they are ripening it eats a number of insects throughout the year, as well as the seeds of weeds. He also states that "it is a common sight to see sparrows chasing moths and other insects on the wing, and lighting down on the roads to strip their wings off; in gardens they destroy germinating seeds, especially peas, disbud gooseberries, and pick the primrose floweTS as they open; but here again they do a lot of good in keeping down insect life."

Mr R. H. Shakespere. earetaser of the Bird Sanctuary at Little Barrier Island, says that sparrows are destructive to a certain extent, but in the ■winter they destroy a good many insects. He doubts if they are as destructive as they are thought to be, and se.j3 that probably one characteristic balances the other.

Mr Shurry, of Ashburton. states that a. pair of sparroxrs have been observed to feed their young thirty-six times an hour in a fourteen-hour spring and summer day, and he has calculated that they feed their young -with 3400 worms and caterpillars in one week.

Mr H. A. Kevins, writing from Tinui, Casts* Point, says:—"Sparrows do a great deal of good; I have known them to clear a field of peas of caterpillars, which, before the birds became numerous, would hare destroyed all the peas." That is the case for and against the sparrow as far a3 my inquiries have gone.

The mass of evidence is entirely against the bird, which stands condemned on the almost unanimous rote of the farming community of' the colony. It is proclaimed a public nuisance, and the mitigations of its offence are evidently so light that they are deemed hardly worth considering. Whatever the sparrow may do in these times, however, there is no doubt that it did good service to the agriculturist and horticulturist of New Zealand in former days, when the insects were on the war-path and when the people were liable to be eaten out of ihfluac and bom« A new generation has arisen, and only the sparrow's faults are remembered.