RAVAGES OF HAWKS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 138, 12 June 1926, Page 15

RAVAGES OF HAWKS.

DANGER TO GAME OVERRATED. VIEWS OF CAPTAIN SANDERSON. Captain Sanderson, who is prominent in the work of bird protection in the Dominion, has addressed an interesting letter to the Auckland Acclimatisation Society on the destruction of hawks. He writes in part: — The writer has been a keen sportsman for 40 odd years, and at one time was of the same opinion with reference to hawks, a your society, but closer scrutiny has made mc doubtful.. Now. hawks kill, besides game birds and poultry, rabbits, weasels, rats, and mice, and I well remember my shooting companion on one occasion shooting a hawk and then going to look what it ro-e from feeding on. It was a weasel, and the question arose, would that and other weasels the hawk might have killed in future have done more harm than the hawk? You will notice with quail, and often markedly with pheasants, that the' cock birds largely predominate as the species decreases. This is a sure road to extermination. Now, why are hens in a minority? Presumably because the hens are killed in nesting season by ground vermin, sue as cats, weasels, etc., .but the work of these enemies is much -more difficult to observe than that of hawks-, and leads the unwary to erroneous conclusions. Surely, before the society decided to spend its money it would have been busines-like to make absolutely sure of the ground by following the method adopted where modern conservation systems are in vogue, i.e., shooting a fixed number of hawks or shags each month all the year round, and having the stoma -h contents scientifically analysed an! tabulated. Nobody in New Zealand knows whether the hawk or shag does more good than harm or more harm than good, and this method would inform us. The writer has shot over many districts in New Zealand, and has watched six hawks ineffectually working together at the ~ame time on one cock pheasant. Tinlast four sea-ons have lieen spent in the !lokian-_ra district, where hawks have been nearly exterminated, yet pheasants are rapidly decreasing each year. The probability is that this is largely owing to cats, wild and tame, and the writer has seen the home cat bring in bird after bird, until the whole clutch was consumed. Cats have even lieeu reported as capturing full grown hens. Now, might it be permissible to suggest that license holders be urged to pay partietilar attention to this cat and ground vermin menace. The cats are being persistently strayed per rail, launch, nnd motor car in preference to destroying a pet is no longer ■wanted, and our game birds pay tbe penalty. In one kauri gum camp 27 cats were'counted, and they arc present in your district working stealthily, and little observed, bat nevertheless very effectively. The remarks recently m.qdc hy an Australian sportsman as to finding pheasant eaten l-y hawks is solely the result of firing long, unsportsmanlike, speculative shots. These invariably wound, but rarely kill, leaving the unfortunate bird to be mercifully dispatched by some enemy, and whether caught by a hawk or not, generally filean§d.un try a hawk.