THE GREY OWL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23529, 18 June 1938, Page 28

THE GREY OWL

ro THE EDITOR

Sir,—One of your correspondents has made the statement that in places where there was no native bush there would be no native birds, and that therefore it was not necessary to exterminate the grey owl in these places. The Rabbit Board at Clyde has put in a plea for the imported vermin in its district, on the grounds that there are no native birds to disturb —or words to that effect. Both statements

are incorrect. Nearly everywhere during winter time the waxeye comes in numbers round settlements. So also do a few warblers, and tomtits, and fantails. for most of our native birds are partial migrants. During the winter of 1910 there were large numbers of fantails and tomtits in the manuka trees on Canada Reef near Milton, and they all disappeared just before spring time. In the early days there were hundreds of native larks everywhere. Now there is only an odd one to be seen, and I suppose there will be a few left in all the centres. Then there are summer birds that used to come into the interior almost everywhere, but now, alas, in woefully diminished numbers. In Wanaka, which is a treeless district, many hundreds of blackheaded small terns used to come up on the middle of August, and in Cromwell they were about a fortnight earlier. Then there .were a few pairs of red bills and pied stilts, and in greater numbers the banded dottrell, and nesting was common among them all. Some years a flock of red-billed gulls would come up. In the summer of 1937 about 25 of them nested on an island in the Hawea River, and reared about 50 young birds. The dottrell was a very tame and interesting little bird.

There are not many insects for the grey owl to feed on, and some are here for only a short period in the year •The grey owls seem to be working night and day. Several times in the daytime I have seen them feeding on rabbits after they were killed by a motor car. The earwigs are not plentiful enough to form a staple article of food for the owl. We read that in England there are very large numbers of rats and mice of different kinds, and frogs and newts, gnd other water insects, so that the grey owl could live on these, but there is practically none of them here, and the grey owl, its appetite increased by hunger, would not scruple to knock birds off the nest. —I am..etc.. Richard Norman.