RAVAGES OF INSECT PESTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15518, 28 January 1914, Page 11

RAVAGES OF INSECT PESTS.

ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS.

[from otjr own correspondent.] Syi.-kist, January 21. Australia lqpes hundreds of thousands of pounds annually owing to the ravages of insect pests. Mr. Dudley Le Souef, director of the Melbourne Zoological Gardens, recently visited an enormous rookery of the stray-necked ibis in the Riverina, and in an article published in the Victorian Naturalist, states that the birds in this rookery would, at a conservative estimate, number at least 240,000. He procured a few specimens, and found that the stomach of each contained about 2000 immature grasshoppers. A 6imple calculation would show that this vast flock would account for 480,000,000 grasshoppers -per diem. Yet, in face of this, people visit the breeding haunts of the birds and collect their eggs by 'the cartload. One party last year, having gathered more than "it required, drove away and left about 4800 eggs to rot on the banks of the swamp. "We read daily in the newspapers." he writes, "of plagues of locusts devastating our lands, of apple crops ruined by codlin moth, of valuable stock killed by bot flies, and of the many other misfortunes that assail our primary producers, and are caused by insect pests, and yet the destruction of insectiverous birds goes on. How long is this foolishness to continue?"