SOUTHLAND BIRD LIFE

Southland Times, Issue 23334, 19 October 1937, Page 6

SOUTHLAND BIRD LIFE

Wealth And Variety On Rivers

TERNS ON ORETI AND APARIMA

The wealth and variety of bird life on Southland’s rivers, especially on the upper reaches of the rivers, were described by Mr D. F. Hobbs, fresh water fisheries biologist of the Marine Department, in an address to the Fisheries Committee of the Southland Acclimatization Society last evening, as one of the delights of angling that fishermen should not overlook in their eagerness to catch fish. Southland, he said, enjoyed a distinction in its bird life that was shared by no other province in New Zealand.

“Your fishing here is of an exceptionally high standard,” Mr Hobbs said, “and your streams are very interesting, offering every type of water to the angler. You have also got a feature down here that interests me greatly and yet I have never heard any angler in Southland speak appreciatively of the Southland streams. In the weeks I have spent down here the bird life was one of my chief delights and I have often sat down on the river banks to watch them.” Mr Hobbs reminded his audience that as members of an acclimatization society they had certain duties and they should remember that the birds were there before the trout and before the society, and had a prior claim. “I don’t think you appreciate them as you should,” he added. “I have watched the little terns on the Oreti and the Aparima and they are a pretty sight as they pursue the mayfly under the very noses of the fish. “There is something more to fishing than merely killing fish, and it is the sum total of these delights that makes fishing the delight it is.” He urged anglers to protect the nests of these river birds, pointing out that they too were under the protection of the law.

Mr J. H. Thomas mentioned the black-billed, or mackerel, gull which, he said, had come up the rivers in large numbers only in the last few years and these were feeding on fish in thousands.

Mr Hobbs said that if it was a fr.ct that any particular type of bird was doing a great deal of damage the department would investigate any report from a society. The common bird inland today was the small tern, but he had not seen many black-billed gulls. There were not many of them inland, and there were relatively few of them compared with others. The food cycle of these birds varied from months to month.