STARLINGS’ DEMONSTRATION AGAINST CATS.
Early one Sunday morning a commotion in the bird world awoke me (writes Miss R. Zeller). Whenever this takes place I get up to investigate, as it is always something unusual that causes such a noise before it is fully light. Usually it is a cat on the guttering looking for baby-birds in the corner of a roof. The starlings do their best to drive away the marauder, even when it is a sparrows’ nest and not their own which is in danger. Several times I have had to lend a hand by sending some soft clods of earth aimed none too skilfully on a neighbour’s roof, hoping I would not bring out angry people rubbing their eyes to see what was the matter, and thus have birds and me all into trouble. When the cat is successfully routed the starlings stand guard for quite a time, while the poor parent sparrows find courage to re-enter their home and count their “babies.” If the cat so much as dares to show his nose round a corner, the starlings once more set up the loudest possible din.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/FORBI19350201.2.16
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Forest and Bird, Issue 35, 1 February 1935, Page 12
Word count
Tapeke kupu
190STARLINGS’ DEMONSTRATION AGAINST CATS. Forest and Bird, Issue 35, 1 February 1935, Page 12
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
For material that is still in copyright, Forest & Bird have made it available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0). This periodical is not available for commercial use without the consent of Forest & Bird. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this magazine please refer to our copyright guide.
Forest & Bird has made best efforts to contact all third-party copyright holders. If you are the rights holder of any material published in Forest & Bird's magazine and would like to discuss this, please contact Forest & Bird at editor@forestandbird.org.nz
Log in