BIRDS AND THEIR SONGS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 122, 19 November 1935, Page 13

BIRDS AND THEIR SONGS

A fascinating talk about birds was given to Rotarians today at their usual weekly luncheon by Mr. Johannes Andersen. Many people, he said, went through life deaf and blind, and his object was to draw attention to what was going on around them so that they could get more enjoyment out of their environment. Birds and plants went together, but one reason why people did not take interest in the latter was because they had no common names by which they might be talked about.

Mr. Andersen paid tribute to the value o£ imported birds which had made possible big yields of grain, and yet people talked about destroying them. Most New Zealand song birds, he said, had themes wkich were woven into regular tunes. They used the same scale as that used by humans, which scale, he maintained, was not a human invention. The speaker's whistling of various bird songs was highly appreciated by his listeners, so was his remark that sparrows in their behaviour were very much like Rotarians. A final story was about a tui, which is well known as a mimic, imitating a lady's cough and ultimately her remark, "I do feel bad."