BETTER THAN GEESE

Opotiki News, Volume III, Issue 319, 4 October 1940, Page 3

BETTER THAN GEESE

HERALDS OF ATTACK SEAGULLS’OF ENGLAND LONDON, Aug. 6.—The way in which an anti-aircraft battery on the coast receives warnings from seagulls of the approach of enemy -planes is described by Robert Casey, London correspondent of the Chicago Daily News, in an article from a south-east port, which he calls “Hotspot, England.” He writes:—

The anti-aircraft battery commander looks up: from his range finder and lent an ear to the swirling seagulls', a din that almost drowned the sounds of the air raiders high in the clouds. One gull, which got the most of the captain s attention sat on a clump of barbedwire and laughed insultingly: “Heh, heh, heh!” “That is the smartest .bird in England,” said the captain, admiringly. “They are all smart. They are our best intelligence service. But this one is the best of the lot.”

The air war in this area has recently gone so far aloft that ground observers seldom see any of it and artillery fire is directed largely by sound.

“You may remember hearing that the geese saved Rome,” said tho captain, discussing this phenomenon. “Well, geese may have been all right for ground flights, but for air warfare give me the good old seagulls. “What the Germans are trying to do up there is more than I can tell you. They, arc too high to see any-

thing. “The planes may be up so high that wo can hardly hear them, so high that we cannot be sure of thendirection. But the birds know. When the Germans come over the birds go out to sea. When the German go home the birds come back. As he spoke the white cloud of gulls spread out towards mid-Chan-nel. Indistinctly a murmur of plane engines came down from the high battlefield. One bird remained—the humorist. “What about' him?” somebody asked. ‘‘He knows about bombing,” said the captain. “He learned .the other day that when a bomb explodes in the water it kills fish and he is not only smart but lazy.”