18 SOME USEFUL AUSTRALIAN BIRDS. 



During the height of the rabbit invasion in western New South \Taies, 

 some landholders liberated numbers of cats in their paddocks in the hope 

 that they would multiply and help to check the rabbits, but the latter were 

 so numerous, and easy to catch, that the cats that confined their attention to 

 rabbits developed hair balls in their stomachs and died ; only those that 

 varied their diet with birds survived. 



The introduction of the fox, and its rapid spread of late years right into 

 the interior of Australia, was another destructive agent in the diminution 

 of bird life. All the ground-nesting birds of the plains, such as plovers, 

 bustards, ducks and quail, are at the mercy of the night-prowling fox, while 

 in the forest the lyre-bird, scrub-turkey and many other birds are threatened 

 with extinction. 



Turning to the introduced birds we are faced with other serious problems. 

 The ubiquitous sparrow follows the railway lines into the country and sets up 

 in competition with our useful native birds. Before they were so numerous 

 in England, house-martins were found in every village and kept down many 

 insect pests, but the sparrow, taking possession of their nests and otherwise 

 persecuting them, has driven them out of many of their old haunts during 

 the last few years. The common starling is another bird that thrives and 

 multiplies wherever it finds suitable surroundings ; one has only to see the 

 enormous flocks in New England and on the Liverpool Plains to understand 

 how they have must have altered the conditions of native bird life. They, 

 like the sparrow, follow the railway lines into the country, and I have seen 

 them at Byrock and other western towns quite fitting into their new 

 .surroundings. Not only do they devour large quantities of the natural food 

 supplies of our native birds, but they nest in hollow trees and interfere with 

 the local birds. It is a well-known fact that in England they often raid 

 dovecots and eat the pigeons' eggs. Both in size and cunning they are 

 superior to the sparrow and more difficult to trap or shoot. 



The time has gone by when stockowners considered every native bird or 

 animal that ate grass or trampled the herbage, a pest and an enemy in 

 competition with sheep and cattle, and that by destroying them as such they 

 civilised the country. We have learnt much in the last decade, and in the 

 rising generation are many young landowners who, profiting by the educa- 

 tional facilities won for them by their pioneer fathers, and a perhaps wider 

 outlook, are interesting themselves in the fauna and flora of their native 

 land and co-operating with nature lovers in their preservation. There are 

 many Australian estates to-day where nobody is allowed to shoot or hunt, 

 and these are virtually private sanctuaries ; others have been actually dedi- 

 cated with the approval of the State authorities. Many other landowners 

 need only to have the facts brought under their notice to induce them to 

 follow suit. The zoological and field naturalists' societies now include many 

 country members, and each one becomes an agent for good in his own 

 district. Surely there is room in this broad land for all of us man, beast, 



