BIRDS KILLED BY CARS

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 September 1929, Page 8

BIRDS KILLED BY CARS

AN AMERICAN INVESTIGATION.

The often-expressed fear of bird lovers that valuable species of feathered denizens of California might be dangerously depleted in numbers through being run down by automobiles on public highways is apparently without foundation, according to Jean M. Linsdale, research associate in the Univercity of California Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, who expressed this opinion recently. In a report to the Cooper Ornithological Club journal, “Tho Condor,” Mr. Linsdale listed the following results- of a survey of the situation just completed on the graded dirt roads and paved highways of the State:

“The number of birds killed each year by automobiles is large, just as a statistical summation of the number of humans killed in automobiles is large. But the majority of bird deaths are confined to a few species of common birds.

“More important than the question of how many birds are killed is the question of how many pairs are prevented from successfuly rearing their young. The number of pairs thus prevented is not large, chiefly because of the fact, recently discovered, that nqstiug birds usually replace a lost mate without waste of time.

“Birds which are most likely to be killed by automobiles are those living near the roads, in other words, those vzhich have been unable to find other suitable breeding places. The elimination of some of these might actually favour some kinds of birds by removing surplus numbers and insuring a better food supply for the remainder. “It is not so much speeding automobiles that are to be blamed in any event, but rather the large number of roads. For every road, through its fence posts, telegraph poles, ditches of water, sedges and convenient dust wallows, is a point of attraction for birds which occur in flocks, or are notoriously slow in starting flight, suffer the heavest loss. The most conspicuous of these is tho red-headed wood-pecker. Yet there arc probably a great many more of these in some parts of the country than there were before heavy settlement by man.”