BIRDS AS FARMER’S FRIENDS.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXII, Issue 42761, 15 August 1905, Page 2

BIRDS AS FARMER’S FRIENDS.

Ia Pearsou’s Magazin a Miss Linda Gardiner, secretary of the Royal Society for the protection of birds, has a captivating article on the part that birds play Jin the economy of nature, showing that the toll they take in man’s crops of grain and fruit is only their just wages for destroying noxious we»ds and destructive insects. One small spike of p'aintain yields two or three thousand seeds at a low estimate, and this means nine or ten thousand potential successors of one single plant. All would not find hospitable ground, but it is certain that if the birds of the air did not consume a large proportion, they would present, an appalling problem to the tiller of. field and garden. The quantity eateu by birds such as chaffinch, greenfinch, linnet, red-poll, lark, and yellow-ham-mer and other buntings, is incalculable,. A caged bullfinch has been observedl to eat 238 thistle seeds in twonty minutes, though unstintingly provided! with hemppseed. The birds might claim a percentage of the crop in return for their weeding but they do not claim the twenty-five per cent, that has been known to fall before the grubs of the di tmond-back-ed moth, 241 of which have been counted on one turnip plant. In place of such a demand the birds,eat the grubs. - ? From the starling—who takes fees in fruit—-to the barn-door owl, who does not, all the farmer’s feathered friends do their work with a will:

The starling has a fondness for cherries, especially in thirsty weather; as public servant his services to agriculture and horticulture would be slenderly paid by the dedication of an orchard to his use, but those who wish to make money, by their cherries will prefer to net their trees. To the agriculturist it is a suggestive sight to see the rooks aDd maybe log the plough and clearing the furrow of grubs; or to watch the starling,or jackdaw perched on the backs of the sheep, wuoae fleeces they rid of the troublesome tick. '