GOOD LITTLE BAD BIRDS.
—“Tee Essbie,” in “Smith’s Weekly.”
There’s a little bit of good in every bad little bird, even the sparrow and the starling. During a great many weeks I have been closely observing the feathered folk in my garden and can speak with authority. A wren was seen to feed its young 36 times in an hour, and the food she brought them consisted of aphides which had been sucking the juice out of my rose and citrus trees, and caterpillars which had been masticating the young shoots of a highly-prized wattle. Two starlings paid 30 and 32 visits to their respective nests in 59 minutes, with the larvae of click-beetles, rose-chafers and other beetles that do immense damage to plants. A record was established by a sparrow which made 254 trips to its nest in 3 hours 2 minutes with pests ranging from the mites which attack strawberries to the caterpillars of the privet-hedge moth. Without birds the greater part of vegetation would be immediately destroyed and successful agriculture would be an impossibility.
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Forest and Bird, Issue 24, 1 July 1931, Page 5
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177GOOD LITTLE BAD BIRDS. Forest and Bird, Issue 24, 1 July 1931, Page 5
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