The Wairarapa Daily. FRIDAY, JULY 14, 1882. THE SMALL BIRD NUISANCE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 4, Issue 1126, 15 July 1882, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. FRIDAY, JULY 14, 1882. THE SMALL BIRD NUISANCE.

• -The.members,foe this district have, been active' 3 cliiriiig the present session in promoting a measure to annihilate small birds. : .In this as well as. in many , other districts of the Colony, ; theft - are farmers who believe that small -birds'are a.'pest,. consequently a good deal of jiifluence'is being brought, to bear, to- legalize their destruction. , It is, however, still, an' open question, : whether small birds do not save more crops-than they destroy! Bechstein remarks-". It has been reckoned: that ■each sparrow, taking the year through destroys of corn and field crops the worth of,one gulden, and that in, a < district "of three-'lmndfed" villages, six millions pf-sparrows were to be found;' consequently, this multitude would destroy six million .guldens' wqrth r yearly." Rut he fufßer" reihafei; 1 " That this reckoning is/fallaoious any' unprejudiced observer may perceive, without my aßsistance. : ' TheriJ by way' rof. exafiple,' I- can certainly 'keep. „six'|

s|Vi^w§,ih ; ti feet .on. nothing acd Aviierej : nj all|t|e worifl, raillions;Of sparrow only 'three? hundred; Milages?;, flftt must indeed be a land of sparrows,"' "On the other liarid,. 'on the .-.above , reckoning, their usefuliiess would bo ..excessive, R'emimer has no'ticedtliat each'sparrow tliatdias young ones, with a caterpillar, or the larvseof some beetles in'its bill Hies to its nest 20 miles.in an. houi'— both male and female do this.;' contiequently ..the : pair destroy 40 lavvte of insects - during the hour, or inja; day of ,12 hours, 480,"arid in t\Vo weeks; (t 'ab.out the time they would take to rcai'vtheir .y0ung), :, 6720; therefore in a diftilct'of three hundred villages with six millions of sparrows, it follows, .that in ; one breeding time 20,160,000;000 of caterpillars would be destroyed. They 'breed however, two or three times a year, and then eat nothing butdestructive..insects.... There halve . not' : been' wanting instances in the .Wairarapa of crops; Ueing destroyed' by; insect life prior to the introduction of small b'irds; Twelve and' fifteen - years ago when feathered songsters Were, almost?' unknown it) our har vest fields we remember heariiig.'more. grumbling about • losses from insects, than we. have ever of late years heardiof from the depredations of small, birds. . , /