DAMAGE TO CROPS

Waikato Independent, Volume XL, Issue 3763, 27 September 1940, Page 2

DAMAGE TO CROPS

SPARROWS IN THE GARDEN PERSISTENT DESTRUCTION Many local gardeners are complaining that great efforts which they have made for the production of early crops have been brought to nought by the ravages of small birds. Those who have planted new lawns have also suffered through birds taking the seed and young shoots. The übiquitous sparrow has always been responsible for a certain amount of damage to kitchen garden crops, but the destruction this spring is on a scale not remembered by gardeners of many years’ experience.

One reason for these complaints is that because of a favourable late winter and early spring many vegetable crops were sown much earlier. The seedlings from these sowings provided tender green food for hosts of hungry sparrows who were then busy with domestic duties, nest building and, in some instances providing food for a clamorous and hungry family. Whatever the reason, the destruction has been done, and in some gardens the only remedy left is for the gardener to replant completely the plot on which green peas, lettuces and seedling cabbages have been pecked and eaten down to ground level.

Gardeners Puzzled

A feature of this damage which is most puzzling is that all gardens have not suffered equally. In one garden a row of green peas has been nipped badly, leaving only bare stems. Similar rows were untouched and flourishing in a nearby garden. Some people have tried to establish a connection between the appetite of the birds for seedling vegetables and the custom of feeding them with scraps of bread and breadcrumbs. Here again the facts cannot be reconciled. Some houses at which the birds are fed every day the garden plants have been destroyed, while at others where the birds are also fed no damage has been clone.

One gardener said that so serious and persistent had the sparrows been in eating down his peas and lettuces that he thought he would be forced to resort to poisoning if he was to have any success at all.

Protection Methods

The popular method of protecting seedlings by stringing black cotton along the rows has in some cases been quite ineffective and gardeners have been forced to cover their

crops with wire netting, an expensive if efficient safeguard. Another suggested remedy is to sprinkle lightly blood and bone fertiliser on the tender shoots, it being claimed that the strong odour makes the vegetables distasteful to birds. The effects of this activity on the part of the birds is annoyingly evident, even if their reasons are obscure, and in many households fears are held that despite intense efforts and careful preparation there will be no green . peas for Christmas, 1940.