Farmers Move To Have Magpies Protected

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32393, 4 September 1970, Page 16

Farmers Move To Have Magpies Protected

(From Our Own Reporter) TIMARU, September 3. By not being protected, magpies were subject to a lot of indiscriminate shooting and also, as occurred in North Canterbury recently, were killed by chemicals used in the control of grass grub, it was agreed at a meeting of the Timaru and St Andrews branch of Federated Farmers. A move to have the magpie declared a protected bird was adopted unanimously, and a recommendation to this effect will be sent to the executive committee of Federated Farmers for action. The magpie was a copious eater of the grass grub, but some chemicals were killing as many magpies as the grub they were intended for originally, it was asserted. Backing the motion, Mr R. M. Ford said: "There is far too much willy-nilly producing of these poisons: the birds do more in the long run in helping to control grass grub than some of the poisons that are produced.” Successful Colonists Imported from Australia for their colour and song, and liberated widely in New Zealand in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the Black-back and White-back (“white crows that sing”) magpies have proved success-

ful and aggressive colonists. The handsome bird —the most engaging of the commoner crows—has a predilection for cultivated areas. Grassland farming, with its attendant shelter belts of pines and gums, is eminently suitable. A motorists’ bird, in that it is seen along the highways, but far too often a shooter’s bird, the magpie, which believes there is safety in numbers, is also a suburban dweller, frequenting parks, playing fields and airports. The White-back magpie is shyer and more wary than the Black-back, and its long squeaking note of alarm is familiar to city and country dwellers.

Equally familiar to birdlovers is its whistle-like call, and its bubbling flute song. The Black-back, with its wonderfully modulated whistle, has a melodious yodelling song.