BIRD WATCHING.

Forest and Bird, Issue 29, 1 April 1933, Page 7

BIRD WATCHING.

Now insects, in contradistinction to vertebrates, are'in the great majority vegetable-feeders,- both by ancestral predilection and modern practice. So that in regard to what we may call biological trade, the complicated circulation of matter through lifeless forms in earth, water, and air through green plants, animal bodies, and microscopic scavengers like moulds and bacteria, and back into lifeless forms again, the nett effect of birds is to be a check upon insects in their consumption of green plants and their products. In this way they are obviously the allies of man; remove every bird in the world at one stroke, the biological balance would be tilted, and it would be much harder even than now to protect man’s crops and trees from the ravages of their

persistent insect consumers. Birds, in fact, are one of the few groups of animals whose ■activities as a whole are useful to man.

But do not let us run away with the idea that economics are everything. There was a letter in “The Times” not long ago apropos of Sir Hilton Young’s Bill for safeguarding some of the beauties •of the countryside. The writer, after pointing out that the Bill, if it became law, would involve in certain cases some financial sacrifice for individuals or for the country, •continued, “and, after all, the aims of the measure are merely aesthetic” —and there-

fore, in his estimation, not to be weighed against even small -quantities of £ s. d. It is just this point of view— attitude embodied in that word merely —which I want to combat. Economics is the foundation of everything, and money is money and must be made. We may know that elementary truth well enough, and yet be permitted the reminder that the really important thing is what we are going to ask of our money when we have made it. We may ask leisure, or a bigger house, or travel, or a gay life, or power, or bits of several of these in turn. And one thing that some will want to ask for is the refreshment of unspoilt country

and the delight of wild birds. England is getting so crowded now, with mechanical devices so huge and pervading, and travel so easy, that the different things different people ask from money are coming to clash with each other. If the wants of different kinds of people are to be satisfied, there has got to be not only forbearance and goodwill, but regulation and restriction. The bird-watcher and the bird-lover ask for more birds, and more different kinds of them, and more opportunities of quietly watching and studying them. In the last thirty or forty years there has been a welcome change in the attitude of the general public about birds. They are more interested in them, fonder of them, delight to see photographs and read accounts of them in their wild state, but deprecate the killing of them or the wanton taking of their eggs much more than they used to do. The birdwatcher can help the growth of this changed attitude. We have gone a long way, but could go much further. In some American towns there are now bird-boxes everywhere in city parks and private gardens, and bird-tables and bird-baths —and naturally an enormous increase in the number of birds to gladden the eyes of city dwellers. In Germany, before the war, I went once casually into the city park at Wurzburgh, and found an astounding plenty of birds, and people feeding them. One man had a couple of tits on his hand, chaffinches and blackbirds at his feet; he told me he once had a spotted woodpecker swoop down from a tree and take a nut from his fingers. And the hawfinches, those fantastic huge-billed birds, so shy that many country people do not know of their existence even where they are not uncommon —they were sitting about in the trees like sparrows; I even saw a pair of them courting over a public path and in full view and sound of the trams and traffic in the street beyond. We could encourage and tame birds like this in our own garden and our cities and our parks if we wanted to. The bird-lover can help to see that the Bird Protection laws are enforced; for, in spite of the general change of attitude, there is still plenty of killing of rare birds and egg-snatching of rare eggs by people with the ridiculous collection mania, plenty of snaring of linnets and goldfinches, and other song-birds to be put into cages, plenty of wanton shooting, especially of something unusual just because it is unusual. He can try and get the law changed; to take an example, the law which permits the discharge of waste oil from oil-driven ships at sea, to drift about and foul our shores, and in doing so to smear itself on the plumage of hundreds of guillemots and divers and puffins and other sea-birds, prevent them opening their

wings, and so condemn them to death from starvation. If you want ocular demonstration, go and look at the case in the Central Hall of the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, which shows what happens to birds when the oily filth gets onto their feathers. And he can help by supporting such bodies as the National Trust and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which are saving wild bits of country from being built over or otherwise developed, or reserving them as actual sanctuaries, inviolate to the birds, or providing birds-rests at lighthouses to prevent dazzled migrants from being drowned, or paying watchers to see that protected birds are not shot or robbed of their eggs.— Extracted from “Bird Watchman and Bird Behaviour,” by Julian Huxley.