BIRDS AND AEROPLANES

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 57, 23 February 1918, Page 16

BIRDS AND AEROPLANES

Observations at the front and elsewhere have proved that, as far as birds are concerned, all the forces of warfare are merely regarded as nothing out of the common. During last autumn 1 was watching a large number of migrating swallows and house martins collecting for their long flight on the banks of a river "somewhere in France." The telegraph wires running parallel with the stream were covered with the birds, resembling ropes of black beads against the opal colouring of the sunset sky. Numberless coots, a solitary hereon, and a family party of wild ducks were swimming or feeding among the reeds of a near by, marsh. Suddenly a small airship and fourteen aeroplanes came up over the horizon, flying very low, and passed directly over the perching swallows and the marsh. The swallows and martins paid absolutely no need to the aircraft; probably they were too intent upon their migrating business to trouble. The water fowl, however, gave warning cries and darted for cover, or crouched perfectly motionless among the reeds or under the tussocks of long grass on the banks of the stream. Evidently they considered flic aeroplanes wove large! birds of prey, as their movements and I cries had been exactly the same when a largo hawk had flown over an hour previously.