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Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 111, 13 May 1931, Page 2

Beautiful Gulls Being rigorously protected, the mack orcl gull is one of the few natives that has no difiiculty in holding its own. On the land the injudicious importation of feathered friends from the Old World by the whites who annexed New Zealand injured the land birds. Like the pakcha inan, the pakeha bird found the soil congenial, and. as with the Maori, so it will be with the Alaori’s birds. On the water the native birds have no aliens to contend against. Fishermen who imported the trout have taken a keen dislike to the kawau, or shag, to give him his pakcha name, because they say he poaches on their preserves, and his head is in jeopardy, but I the rest of the sea birds roam unmolested. It. is true the mutton bird is slaughtered in thousands, but he is such a prolific, breeder that the operations of the mutton-birders down at Stewart Island have made no appreciable difference to the millions that nest on these I shores. The skill of the seagull as a scavenger saved him from the pot shots of the peculiarly-constituted people who like to shoot, anything that flies, and round the coasts he still swarms in multitudes. It is one of the prettiest sights of the seafront, and of the lower portions of the Wanganui River to see these birds sailii^ia. their silent, majestic, wheeling flif**.