A Starling Plague

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 289, 7 December 1936, Page 2

A Starling Plague

LOSSES TO FARMERS LONDON, Nov. 14. Huge flocks of starlings are the English farmer’s latest worry. In Devonshire, especially, tho birds are so numerous that the local farmers have sent an S.O.S. to the National Farmers’ Union to .say that the. birds are causing untold raniage to the apple crops, and a big increase in poultry disease. Hundreds of thousands of the birds are said to be roosting in the neighbourhood of Torrington, Honiton and Sowton, and by what is considered to be something more than a coincidence, disease among poultry in these districts has risen fo 40 per cent.

Hr T. C. Buckland, Mayor of Torrington, a well-kuown farmer, said iu an interview: ‘‘The Eights'of starlings are so great that they make day like night as they pass. They have completely destroyed 10 acres of trees in their roosting place. Something is spreading disease among the poultry, and special investigations have been conducted by the Ministry of Agriculture to discover whether the starlings are responsible. “Our only hope of destroying the birds is by means of a gas spray at night, by this we could destroy the whole lot in one srveep. The birds are so numerous that they can be picked off branches like blackberries and every night they break off branches by their weight." The cold autumn has brought them south earlier than usual, and farmers have had to race them for the fruit.