COMBAT MOSQUITOES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 169, 20 July 1938, Page 14

COMBAT MOSQUITOES.

SWALLOWS IN ITALY.

PLANTING "YOUNG BIRDS." ROME. Steps to encourage the settlement of swallows to combat mosquitoes in the Pontine Marshes —the scene of immense reclamation work—are now,being tindertaken by the Italian Government. It had been thought that the presence of buildings would have been enough to attract swallows, martins and swifts. This has not been the case, and although a few strays have come in, the hirundine population has not increased quickly enough to suit the Government.

The map who will look after this work is Signor Budini, the "Father of the .Swallows," who, at his home in Ferrara, has worked out a technique of bird colonisation. He is perhaps the only man in the world to succeed in rearing young swallows by artificial means. His method, as described by Feliciano Philipp in a monograph on the protection of birds in Italy, is to take young birds from their nests in May and transfer them to artificial nests built up with clay and vegetable fibre on the desired site. Here he feeds them regularly with a special paste prepared from insects and milk with a coarse meal base. The composition was only arrived at after long experiments, and the birds now thrive 'on it.

When the fledgings take the air they hawk for insects round Signor Budini's house, and are always ready to come at his call. But towards the end of August something stirs in them. They answer Budini's call with increasing reluctance, and spend most of their time on the telegraph wires, twittering and chattering together. Then one fine day they depart, drawn by the mysterious spell of Africa.

The following spring they come back, gome take up their old artificial nests in which they were reared. Others build new ones nearby, and year after year they return to the neighbourhood in which they were "planted." In this way Signor Budini has been able to restore swallows to districts in which none had been seen for many years.

Hearing of his experiments some years ago, the Governor of Rome asked the "Father of the Swallows" to begin work at Castelfusano, near Ostia. At that time there was still a good deal of malaria in the environs of Ostia, and the authorities began clearing it up about the same time as work was started on the Pontine Marshes project. The bulk of the mosquito population was exterminated by draining or filling in stagnant pools; but there are scattered breeding places which can never be completely mopped up, and it was to deal with the mosquitoes breeding there that swallows were needed. It is estimated that in the 20 days needed before young swallows take the air and hunt for themselves they are supplied with 134,400 insects by their untiring parents.

Signer Bndini set to work under the supervision of Prince Chigi, director of the Castelfusano Ornithological Observatory and reared some 200 birds which are now regular summer residents in Castelfusano, the first in the memory of the oldest inhabitant*.