A PLACE FOR BIRD LOVERS

Evening Star, Issue 22572, 13 February 1937, Page 8

A PLACE FOR BIRD LOVERS

The Pledge:—“ I promise to care for all wild birds, especially New Zealand native birds, to feed them in winter and to protect them at all times. I promise also to protect our native trees and bush, and at no time to assist in their damage or destruction, since they are the natural home of our native birds.”Name Full Postal Address If you wish to Join the Bird Club it is necessary to send Is in stamps or a postal note, and a badge and bird book will be sent to you. Address your letters to Big Brother Bill, care of ‘ Evening Star,’ Stuart street, Dunedin, C.l Be sure to mark your envelope “ Bird Club.” THE WONDER OF THE HUMMING BIRD. Some of the wonders worked by a new camera, which makes a picture in each hundred-thousandth of a second, have been shown to the American Ornithologists’ Union. Already the camera has solved the problem of the movements of a humming bird’s wings and explained why the bird can fly backward. First the naturalists were shown how the wings in flight move so swiftly that they seem not to move at all; but the camera also counted for them the movements, at which they had only been able to guess. Wlijle at the take-off the wings of one of these tiny birds beat 75 strokes

HOW MANY STARS CAN WE SEE? I guarantee every boy and girl who reads this has at some time or other wondered just how many stars can be seen in the heavens with the naked eye on a dear, cloudless night. The answer is rather astonishing. You may think there are countless thousands, but, as a matter of fact, on the clearest mght there are nob more than 2,000 stars visible to the keenest eye!. And how many stars do you think have been caught by the eye of the astronomical camera—that wonderful instrument used in the great observatories of the world? No less than 40,000,000! It has been possible to measure the distance of only a few of these stars, for by far the greater number of them are so terribly distant that no moans of doing it has been found. To give you an idea just how distant these stars are, let me tell you the nearest one to the earth is 25,000,000,000,000 miles away!

a second;' while hovering the wings were heating 40 times a second, or 2,400 a minute.