OUT IN THE OPEN

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 130, 29 November 1945, Page 6

OUT IN THE OPEN

UNPOPULAR GULL

(By I. W. T. Mimro.) Every now and then we hear from an angler in [Treat distress over the sight of a black-backed gull eating a trout on the river bank, and he is always very hard to persuade that the future oil his favourite sport is not endangered by the bird's depredations. Despite its size and its handsome appearance, the • karoro, as the Maori calls it, is an out-and-out scavenger, and no hunter of fish. When the karoro dines on trout, it is almost always the fish that have got Jito a pool ■subsequently cut oIT by shrinkage of the stream, and would die in any"case, or else on a diseased fish that, too weak to stem Die midstream current, has drifted in to rest in the shallows. When the gull drags such a one ashore and eats it. then it is actually helping to conserve the fishing by preventing the diseased fi«h from continuing to infect the water. ATTACKS ON SI3EEP. The sheep farmer lias a more justified complaint'against the black-back, which, in the lambing season, roams the country, principally for the offal but not hesitating to attack new-born lambs or "cast" ewes, picking out their eyes and tongues. For this the blackback is excluded from the list of protected birds. Even sincere lovers of birds '-take a dim view." as the Army says, of the black-back, and consider that we could do with a lot fewer of its kind, for it cats the eggs and young birds, particularly of the terns, often nesting close to breeding colonies of ihose birds in shinidy riverbeds, and making daily forays'for eggs and chicks. The blackbilled gull is similarly victimised. On the other hand, the black-back, besides destroying a considerable number of insects and .heir larvae, is probably the best "undertaker" we have. Wherever there are meal; works, there are hundreds of black-backs cleaning up the offal, and such neighbourhoods would undoubtedly be a lot more malodorous than they are but for the birds. Round the wharves, the black-back disposes of the scraps thrown overboard from ships, and along the foreshore it attends to all manner of dead creatures left by the tide. The number'of black-backs probably represents f-u'riv exactly the amount of scavenging work it is required to do; if there were less offal for them to clean up, fewer chicks would be raised, and the blac'--back population would be re-j Ayxed ciccordingly. J