UP WITH THE BIRDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 256, 29 October 1929, Page 6

UP WITH THE BIRDS.

Whether or not the clock should be put on

lalf an hour or more in the manner made famous

by Mr. Sidey is not a vital political issue in the strawberry-growing areas of suburban Auckland. It is the early bird that catches the ripening berries, so the grower must be up well before the sun if he is to save his choicest fruit from feathered pilferers.

One enthusiast for the Summer Time Bill says the song birds have always practised daylight saving. He has noted that they begin their carolling twenty minutes before sunrise, just as the grey dawn is breaking. This makes early risers of the strawberry growers throughout the three or four months of the picking season. Long hours and strawberry gathering are linked together, though sometimes there is overtime pay in the shape of big returns. One experienced* grower cheerfully relates how he was up with the birds at four o'clock each morning last season, picking all day and packing and grading the berries for market until the small hours of next morning, and then up again at 4 a.m.

After a few years of strawberry poaching Auckland birds seem to become as cunning as master cracksmen eluding the police. Starlings, blackbirds, thrushes and the tiny "white-eve" all

take their toll of the ripening berries. Growers declare that starlings have their sentries posted on convenient trees, and that at the approach of a man a warning is given to the marauders below. Very busy the starlings appear as they walk (the stalling does not hop like other birds) along the rows where the berries are peeping out. but the sight of their blue-black plumage sends the irate grower reaching for his shotgun.

A few shots every day have a deterrent effect on the uninvited bird guests. However, the cutining blackbirds seem to know that the man with the pun does not want to fire a charge of shot into his fruit-laden plants, but is waiting for the birds to rise up into the air; so thev hop across country with the skill of old soldiers taking cover till they find a tree to dart into. Perhaps they piactise the ait of. making a. Quick get-away among themselves before the" season starts. Certainly they seem equal to knowing how to beat a quick retreat when danger threatens.

Thanks to their grey plumage, the thrushes can camouflage themselves against tlie straw, hay or pine needles used for mulching, which form's a thick carpet between the rows of "plants. Trust, ing to this disguise they remain still when human | beings approach and more often than not escape detection. Sometimes growers almost tread on thrushes- in hiding. The small green-coated "white-eyes" are bold plunderers, for though Hocks of them rise at the sound of a gun tliev soon recover from fright and return to the attack on the luscious berries.

Birds soon get used to the old-fashioned scaro.crow, but they are more wary of imitation cats cut out of tin and painted in realistic fashion. Indeed these, when suspended in the breeze, move so much like the real "puss'" that visitinA doo S sometimes show: a desire to scamper over the strawberry beds after their traditional quarrv Passers-by are . also deceived by these scarecrow cats in the distance.

> Every .strawberry grower agrees that there arc too many birds around Auckland and mav be pardoned for thinking unkind thoughts about the old-time Nature lovers who brought English songsters to Xew Zealand. So the ardent daylight savers who listen every morning to thrushes singing of summer with full-throated ease should not forget the suburban Hampdens withstanding the little feathered tyrants of their strawberrv fielcls. Does Mr. Sidey congratulate the -rowers on their early rising? _4j§