KINDNESS TO BIRDS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 1, Issue 85, 8 November 1939, Page 3

KINDNESS TO BIRDS

THEY TRUST THEIR FRIENDS The birds of New Zealand had no fear of man until he began to wage war on them. Even to-day, plenty of fantails. grey warblers, pigeons, robins, tomtits, tuis, bellbirds and others have the utmost confidence in people who are kind to them. Reports of these friendships are often received by the Forest and Bird Protection Society. Similarly, acclimatised birds such as sparrows and thrushes soon learn to trust persons who arc kind lo them. The other day on a bank where a man was digging, beside a path on the Town Belt. Wellington, a thrush hopped by the gardener's feet and boldly picked up worms for a brood which was ready for a feast in a copse ne-irbv. "You wouldn't see anything like that when T was a boy," remarked a citizen 'who had observed the incident. "The youngsters were then constantly hunting the birds with 'catapults (u.siully known as 'shanghais*). You couldn't get closer than forty or fifty YM'ds to a thrush or a blackbird i:i the open. What a change now! The other day I nearly trod on a thrush on a narrow path in Kelburn. It just hopped aside and looked at me. I might have been a cow or a horse—it had so little fear of me." "Perhaps it thought you were a donkey," commented a cynical listener. In Wellington streets too, the city pigeons show no fear of mankind or motors when' friends have scattered some crumbs or grain for them. Now and 'then one sees a mo'ojvn; stopping his c;»r when t!i/> loud honking of his horn I; as ra'lecl lo scare pigeons on the "cadway.