OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 August 1939, Page 4

OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

OUR TOWN BIRDS

(Tu the Editor.)

Sir. —Thanks to the innate? generosity of our town’s hundreds of younger school children who made extra sacrifice of luncheon supplies, in order that their feathered friends should nut die of starvation as a result of the abnormal weather conditions recently experienced, many beautiful birds appear to have escaped so trying an ordeal. Thanks, also, to those of our town’s growing number of adult citizens who go a step further in this direction in providing in their gardens not only nectar-flowering gums, but food caches and bird-fountains as well, more and more of our too long absent song birds (the tui in particular) are gradually adapting themselves to new conditions of life unknown, hitherto, by countless earlier generations of their specie, and for whom the Creator, in His wisdom, had provided (here in New Zealand) some of the world’s most lovely forest glades.

A word of thanks, also, Sir. on behalf of the so-called common sparrow (immortalised in Scriptural history, and so well-commemorated in song) to the hundreds of our kindly housewives (both rich and poor alike) who have never failed these birds as far as the food question goes. Their noted generosity, in this respect, has caused "Mr and Mrs Sparrow and family” to have become as domesticated in this community as their ancient and natural enemy, “Mr and Mrs Cat.” Trusting, Sir, some abler pen than mine (as the saying goes) will add its quota to this new held of contribution to your correspondence colums, I now (appropriately) subscribe myself as “ELIJAH.” (The raven-fed). Masterton, April 18.