MENACE TO BIRD LIFE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 305, 22 November 1934, Page 3

MENACE TO BIRD LIFE

WILD CATS IN THE NORTH. LARGE, FIERCE ANIMALS. A report lias been submitted by Mr E. T. Frost, a representative of the Native Bird and Forest Protection Society in North Auckland, on the havoc wrought by cats among native birds in that district.

Speaking of the desertion of workedout gum areas and the departure of the diggers, Mr Frost says that almost every digger had a cat, and in many cases these were left behind, and have bred and multiplied, so that they now constitute a great menace to bird life. Travelling along almost any track in the scrub, especially just about dusk, one may see the stealthy form of the marauding cat. . Many of them are large, fierce animals, and it is a bold dog that will tackle one. “Recently, while riding over some sandhills, where dotterel nest,” says Mr Frost, “1 flushed a wild cat, and a young dog I had bailed it up in a flax bush. I got up just in time to see the cat lying on its back, its four feet and claws extended, waiting for the attack. The pup rushed in, and got it, and in a trice was retreating .as fast as its legs would carry it, while the spitting, scratching cat had made good its retreat. “Thousands of young birds must fall a prey every year ; and one wonders what the result will be. The. country is as yet so sparsely settled in many parts that it will bo many years before the wild cats will bo reduced in numbers, and meanwhile our larks, dotterel, and fern-birds, 11s well as tree-nesting birds, will suffer.”