BUSH RATS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 October 1939, Page 7

BUSH RATS

KILLERS OF NATIVE BIRDS. Lovers of native birds will be pleased with the report that traps set for oppossums in the forest of Mount Egmont caught 420 rats, including many bush rats. "Rats are the worst enemies of our birds; and perhaps the bush or tree zat is even more destructive than his jrey relative,” states Mr H. GuthrieSmith in “Mutton Birds and Other Birds.” "After long experience I am convinced that at Tutira (Mr GuthrieSmith’s estate in Hawke’s Bay) the wo species of rat do more damage to my local avifauna than shooting, fires, logs, cats, weasels and birds of prey .•ombined." The well-known naturalist’s remarks ;how how well qualified the bush rat is for preying on the eggs or nestlings of birds. It is as agile and nimble as j monkey among the branches of trees. "The bush rat’s domicile in outward form is not unlike the untidy structure of a house sparrow; and when his quarters lie in farming districts. the nests arc conspicuous, high on tall hedges of English hawthorn and African boxthorn. In the bush, they may be found in masses of lawyer. clumps of black vine, thickets of supple-jack and dense shrubberies of Lulu. I have seen them also built just like an English wren’s nest into the libry rootlets of an overblown tree, or fastened into the clinging rata that often ivies the face of a limestone •lifT. Most rarely they are to be found in clefts of trees or as burrows in steep, dry banks." The common grey rat is also a quick and clever climber of trees. At dusk, by the swan pond of the Wellington Botanical Gardens, a visitor saw a grey rat run swiftly up the midrib of tree-fern frond and leap to another frond. What chance would a nesting bird have against such an enemy? Some sportsmen apparently, however, do not realise the great harm rats do because they declare war on harrier hawks, one of the main enemies of the rat.