CAMERA OR GUN?

Otago Witness, Issue 4039, 11 August 1931, Page 9

CAMERA OR GUN?

BIRDS IN AUGUST SOME BIRD MONTH VIEWS Writing in support of the New Zealand Native Bird Protection Society’s campaign for cultivating a higher birdsense, and for recognising August as Bird Month, a member of the society makes the following appeal:— ~ A TEST OF CULTURE. As indicating the extent to which bird-love is a test of cultural advance,

an writer finds pride in writing—and people in New Zealand would be proud to be able to echo his words—-that more and more every year are the American people turning to the study of birds for their beauty and alsd their utility.” Bird-watching has become in America a delight to thousands. It needs for more vigilance than examining a stationary botanic specimen or a fixed fossil in a rock. Stalking birds with a camera is found to be better than going after them with

a gun. Fellowship with bird and tree is now seen to be a rich privilege, yet free to all. Even the boys in America are learning not to destroy. Cannot we in New Zealand also step out in this great movement ? In this great cause the New Zealand Native Bird Protection Society seeks help in thought and in deed.' Its publicity is but a drop in the bucket compared with the American flood of bird literature, but the drop of water that wears away the

Btone of public . indifference has been falling for some years now, and the society foresees and invites an evergrowing flow of practical public sympathy.

The beauty of the native birds needs no gilding. Who does not love the grey warbler with his wistful song, the tui and bellbird with their orchestra, and the fantail with his last fly-catching flutter against the sunset? But the utility of birds is less understood. There is, however, a fundamental alliance between native bird and native tree, and lower-lying farm lands rely upon the higher protection forests to protect the valleys and plains from disastrous flood. Thus 'the essential unity of bird and forest and farm land in one co-operative whole is an economic fact which every business man should recognise and subscribe to. It is “good business” to support, in a material way, the birds

and the Native Bird Protective Society, and every other society or institution that stands for beautiful and useful bird life. One such institution that the society now introduces to public attention is Bird Month, August, the month between winter and spring when birds are in special need of sympathy and help. UTILITY AS WELL AS BEAUTY. On the utility side of bird life, the writer adds:— “Just a few instances of how birds help trees and therefore help man: You have seen the small native birds fluttering like bits of thistledown on the extremities of fronds of foliage, cleaning the leaves of parasitic foes. You have seen other birds exploring the stouter branches and the bark of the main tree, engaged in other police work. And you have ’ seen birds of several species taking insects in the air. All these activities are directly related to the life and health of the forest. ‘Woodpeckers,’ observes an American writer, ‘ destroy the larvae of wood-boring insects, which cannot well be reached by other birds.’ In New Zealand we had

birds with specialised beaks, the beak of the male being different from the beak of the female, but the special work they did is done no longer because we have allowed this bird (the huia) to become extinct, or almost extinct. What more Striking proof could there be of the need of protecting the native birds. While we have been killing out natives like the huia we have been importing exotic insects, some of the wood-borers. We continue to import-them with imported poles. * Potential insect enemies are thus being increased, and defenders like the huia and the kiwi are vanishing or becoming rare. What folly and what offence against utility as well as beauty. Surely the efforts of the Native Bird •Protection Society to preserve the birds ,are worth your half-crown. Remember that the reproductive power of insects is enormous, while that of birds is comparatively low. It has been computed that birds in Illinois destroy about 70 per cent, of the annual insect crop.”