“A FEATHERED HITLER.”

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 265, 9 October 1939, Page 12

“A FEATHERED HITLER.”

AIAG.PJE BULLIES SAIALLER BIRDS.

At intervals the magpie comes under notice as a persecutor of smaller birds —including natives, such as fantails, warblers, and tomtits—especially when the Australian birds are nesting. “1 like the magpie’s carol, especially in the early morning, hut I feel that the magpie is a feathered Hitler,” writes a Wellingtonian to the Forest and Bird Protection Society. “It is well-known that they not only resent savagely the presence of other birds near their nesting places, hut do not hesitate to dart at children or even men and women. Last year a motorcyclist who was travelling, bare-head-ed, at a moderate pace past a plantation some miles away from AVellington, had a painful surprise. A magpie charged him, and left the deep impress of a hard bill on his forehead. “Magpies apparently have a belief that the world is mainly for magpies. One pair, in a plantation big enough to supply peaceful homes for many small birds, will regard the little fellows as trespassers and harry them. The magpies are very unfriendly aggressors, with a pitiless contempt, for the rights of majorities of small birds. “Tin’s is another case for investigation when the long-promised policy for proper management of wild life comes into action. Do the virtues of the magpie counterbalance its vices? Does it do more good than harm?”