MILLIONS OF CRICKETS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 112, 13 April 1936, Page 12

MILLIONS OF CRICKETS.

A STRANGE MIGRATION. PURSUIT BY SEAGULLS. Followed by flocks of seagulls, which are feasting to their full, millions of crickets are migrating northwards between Paparoa and Maungaturoto. Mr A. 1). Wylie, of Wellington, who returned, from North Auckland by car on a recentj evening, said that two miles of the Paparoa-Maungaturoto road, where it borders the Coates farm, one day last! week was black with crickets moving! northwards over the bodies of thousands of their kind that had been crushed under, tho wheels of passing traffic. Motorists had to reduce speed as they| drove through the flocks of seagulls which i were preying on the migrants. Hundreds of tho birds were hovering above or run- j ning about on the road, where the insects were more easily snapped up than in the .long grass of the paddocks. Only living insects, Mr Wylie .noted, were taken by the gulls, dead ones being ignored. In one paddock along this stretch of road a farmer was discing, and a flock of seagulls was following close at his heels to pick up the crickets that were turned up in "tlTe soil. 1 One of Mr Wylie’s passengers was a lady from South Africa, who said that tho migration of crickets resembled that .of the locusts, which are the dread of the South African farmer. Only once had she seen such abundance of insect life, she said, and that was when a swarm of locusts had passed over a South African farm, eating everything#in its way. The seagulls had fed so full that, they were slow to rise from the road, Mr j Wylie stated. Some had been run over, and killed, but .wise motorists went slow-! ly amongst them, as the impact of a sea- [ gull against the windscreen of a car might' easily shatter the glass and shower the ■ occupants with splinters. . 1