BIRD PROTECTION VIEWED IMPERIALLY AND NATIONALLY

Forest and Bird, Issue 8, 1 March 1925, Page 1

BIRD PROTECTION VIEWED IMPERIALLY AND NATIONALLY

One of the great assets of the British Empire lies in its bird life. In this respect it is singularly rich. Since its flag flies over temperate, semi-Arctic, and tropical regions, the avi-fauna embraces species peculiar to all latitudes. England herself is especially the home of songbirds, the land where green fields and sappy woodlands ring with the melody of nightingale and warblers, and where the skylark pours out his lay from soft blue skies. In the New World lies Canada, with its myriads of water-fowl, its kingbirds, flickers, bluebirds, vireos, song sparrows, and plovers; Labrador, with rare Esquimaux curlew and yellowlegs; and Newfoundland with birds of the snow-field and summer visitors. At the other side, of the globe, Australia has unique glories such as the lyrebird and the bower-bird, together with, wattle-birds, emu, laughing jackass, and brilliant finches and cockatoos; and New Zealand the strange flightless rails and kiwi. Under the Union Jack, again, is British India, with herons, egrets, peacocks, jungle-fowls, rollers, and orioles; British New Guinea, part of the island habitat of the birds of paradise and the crowned pigeon; the West Indies, with glittering hum-ming-birds; and the vast regions of Africa, the natural home of the ostrich, guinea-fowl, secretary-bird, and grey parrot, and also of hornbill, anvil-bird, paradise-fly-catcher, and rhonocerus-bird. These names but suggest a few characteristic birds' of the British Empire. In all their variety and beauty the thousands of species comprised form so magnificent a treasury that the bird-

lover could occupy many a lifetime of delight, feasting his eves, his ears, his sense of wonder and his imagination, without going outside King George’s dominions; and the scientific ornithologist need not travel beyond their limits in order to study more than he can ever master. - The largest bird, some of the smallest birds, many of the most brilliant and beautiful, some of the strangest, and the sweetest songsters, are all to be found within the Empire’s borders.— (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds ).