BIRD STUDY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 136, 12 June 1933, Page 6

BIRD STUDY.

The appeal of an American, scientist at the Pacific Science Congress for greater co-operation in the investigation of bird life; and more legislative protection, will meet with a much wider response in this country than it would have a generation or more ago. The increase of late years in popular interest in native bird life has been encouraging. Mr. IT. Guthrie-Smith, one of our foremost observers of bird life, writes of "a species of I insanity" that seems to have permeated New Zealand in the 'seventies, when "the Dominion Avas tp be transformed into a sixth-rate Britain; our own native plants and native birds were unworthy of us." But Sir. lii. IT. Stead, in a book published last year, notes a change in his time in the attitudo of the public towards native birds. Such sentiment, he says, is stroijg and growing, daily. New Zcalandcrs are beginning to appreciate the aesthetic, scientific, and economic value of their bird life. Their contribution to what is appealed for by this American scientist should be twofold—preservation of indigenous birds and extension of study of such subjects as migration. There is a very wide Jield for such study, for New Zealand territory stretches from the Koss Sea almost to the Equator. We can contribute substantially to the study of that fascinating subject, the migration of birds, for this country is a terminus of what appear to be the longest journeys of bird masses in the world. It is significant that only now is the migration of the shining cuckoo being studied in the right way., It had even been doubted whether the bird left New Zealand at all, but this was J settled tlio other day by observations of j scientists in Pacific Islands.' There must still be a great deal of work to be done on the j migration-of the myriads <•" !,'rds that divide; their year between New Z. .....ihl and Siberia j and Alaska. .... •_ v>~ 1