BIRD-WATCHING IN THE BACKYARD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 735, 14 August 1953, Page 7

BIRD-WATCHING IN THE BACKYARD

| HAVE seldom seen an infertile egg left after a hatching of sparrows, starlings, thrushes, blackbirds, goldfinches or ltarks, It must happen oftener than we realise, since no one examines more than a decimal percentage of the nests in his neighbourhood. . .-‘‘Sundowner," writingin The Listener, July 31, 1953. R. L. E. RICHDALE, the Dunedin ornithologist whose book on Sexual Behaviour in Penguins led to his being described in Time magazine as "the Dr. Kinsey of the penguin world," returned the other day from a twomonths’ visit to Australia. When he was passing through Wellington he had some interesting comments to make to The Listener about the gap in ornithological studies in this country on the life cycle and breeding habits of such common birds as those mentioned by "Sun-

downer" in the quotation above. Dr. Richdale, who for the past 17 years has been studying the habits of pen-, guins, albatrosses and petrels on the Otago coast and on Whero Island, off Stewart Island, said that in many ways the study of the-sparrow or thrush, or even some of our familiar native birds, could be more valuable in the long run than the study of penguins, albatrosses, and. so forth. "If I started again I’d take a common bird to study-the sparrow or thrush, or one of our common. native birds like’ the tui, fantail, tomtit, grey warbler or bellbird,’ he said. "I would have more time with my subject, because the amount of travel and cost would be less, and I should be able to learn\ more about it. People seem to think that because certain birds are common everything is known about

them or else that they're not worth studying. But if you ask yourself a few questions and look up a book or two you get a bit of a shock. "Tt isn’t really necessary to go to Spitzbergen or New Guinea or the Antarctic to study bird life. This study may be carried out by anyone who has the inclination to do so, man or woman, from his or her own backyard. A person living on a farm or in a house with plenty of trees around it would have the opportunity to study, for instance, the common house sparrow. If you are in a house with macrocarpa or pine trees around it the house and trees make .a unit for study. A_ definite unit with a bird population which you can get to know over a period of years can be studied more intimately than an unusual bird in a distant and more inaccessible place which you can only visit for brief periods and at considerable inconvenience,

"All you would have to do would be to catch your sparrows-trap them in the old familiar way with a sieve or basin propped up on a piece of stick with a length of string attached and a few crumbs scattered around. Once you have trapped your sparrows you band them with coloured bands so that you can recognise each individual. The ability to, recognise them individually stimulates interest in the observer. You would then find all the nests, mark the youngsters as they were born, and. go on studying the breeding habits and life cycle of the members of the unit for a number of years-say ten as the ideal number-to work the. population right through and get a complete turnover." Dr. Richdale mentioned two overseas examples of this kind of study which had been highly successful. One was a study of the robin. redbreast, the common English bird: which every child .is told about as one. of the first things learnt at school. No one in, England had "made a proper scientific’ study: of this bird until an amateur ornithologist, a schoolteacher named David Lack, spent several years on it in his spare time. The result of his work was one of the most comprehensive studies of any bird that had been made. The schoolteacher, said Dr. Richdale, was now Dr. David Lack, F.R.S., head of the Edward Grey Institute of Ornithology at Oxford, where he was training his students to make similar studies of common English birds. Dr. Richdale mentioned another ex-ample-that of an American woman, Mrs.’ Margaret M. Nice, of Chicago, who had observed intensively for eight years (while herself: rearing five children) the habits of the common American song sparrow. The result was a remarkably well documented study of this bird. Environmental Changes Another question of interest to ornithologists was the degree to which English birds domiciled in New Zealand had changed their’ original behaviour patterns over the .past hundred years. All animals and. creatures changed their habits in a new environment, Dr. Rich» dale said, and. the study of these changes was quite important to science.

Dr. Olaus J. Murie, for instance, the American wild life expert,.who recently visited New Zealand, had come here to study the effect of change of environment on the American elk or wapiti which had been released in the fiordland district some years ago. A study, was at present being made in Wellington by an amateur ornithologist of the common blackbird domiciled’ in New Zealand, but there was opportunity for much more research on the same lines. Banding was necessary for an accurate record, Dr, Richdale said, "Although you might think that you retognised each individual bird when you saw it, banding is necessary for absolute accuracy and reliability in the results of your studies. "It can pay to study common birds and animals at home," he said. "Such native birds as the tui, fantail, tomtit, grey warbler or bellbird we can recogs nise when we see or hear them perhaps, but if we thought a little more deeply and asked ourselves such questions as How long do they. live? How long do they take to incubate their eggs? How long do the young stay on their nests? How long do the parents stay with their young?-we would. find there was a great deal we didn’t know about them."