THE DESTRUCTION OF BIRD LIFE IN AUSTRALIA. 

 By WALTER W. FROGGATT, F.L.S., Government Entomologist. 



DURING the last few years a somewhat heated controversy has been carrier! on in the columns of our 

 newspapers regarding the cause of the destruction of our native birds. A number of writers are under 

 the impression that by the spreading of poison baits tor rabbits by means of the poison cart our birds 

 are decreasing in numbers throughout the settled districts. These writers talk about the balance of 

 power in nature being destroyed by the poison cart, and the advent of new plagues and insect pests 

 that were unknown in Australia before the coming of the rabbit. They even go further and state 

 that there were no grasshoppers, cutworm, or flv plagues in existence in the good old days of our fathers. 



In these notes I propose to point out the fallacy of many of these statements, which are made by 

 people who generalise only upon the conditions prevailing in their own locality, and are thus unable to 

 study the problem from a broad standpoint dealing with all phases of the question. 



To start at the beginning : there were insect plagues just as severe in the early days of settlement 

 as there are at the present time, long before there could have been any marked reduction in the wild life 

 of Australia. Surgeon Cunningham in his " Two Years in New South Wales," published in 1827, 

 gives a graphic account of the damage caused on the farms in the County of Cumberland by great 

 swarms of caterpillars, and specially mentions blow-flies as a pest, swarming everywhere, blowing every 

 dead animal, and even the blankets on his bed. Martin in his " History of New South Wales," 1839, 

 writes : " Flies are a great nuisance in summer ; one species in particular, called the blow-fly, taints 

 and putrefies everything it touches. Caterpillars at intervals of several years swarm in incredible 

 numbers, blighting the finest wheatfield in a few hours. Locusts are common in some parts of the 

 colony." Eldershaw, in " Australia as it Really Is," 1S54, says : " The locust is also very prolific ; 

 the ravages of this insect upon the herbage and green crops is a serious inconvenience to the settler." 



Townsend, in "Rambles and Observations in New South Wales," 1848, speaking of the UUadulla 

 district, says : " Caterpillars, evidently bred in the ground, sometimes suddenly make their appearance, 

 and hang in great numbers to each stalk of wheat ; if the wheat is well advanced in ear they do not 

 do it much injury, but they are very destructive to the young leaf of clover." 



In 1870 and again in 1875 enormous clouds of locusts bred in the Riverina, and, when winged' 

 swarmed over the whole of Victoria, long before the rabbits started their march from the southlands- 

 Many other records of insect pests could be quoted, but these are sufficient to show that our pioneer 

 settlers knew what insect pests were long before the wholesale destruction of bird life commenced with 

 the advance of civilisation. 



The destruction of birds began long before the poison cart came into existence. Writers of the 

 very earliest notes on Australian natural history stated that the emu, wild turkey, native companion, 

 and many other birds would soon be things of the past, because they were not to be found in the vicinity 

 of the towns that were coming into existence with the advance of settlers from the coastal districts. 

 Yet it will be a very long time before the emu will be extinct on our western plains and scrubs. 



The first blow to many forms of bird life was the ringbarking of thousands of acres of our forest 

 lands, and the consequent destruction of the food supplies of most of our arboreal insectivorous birds, 

 which had to move out from the desolated area, where previously every tree supported its insect world. 

 The next was the advent of the common domestic cats, which not only hunted through the parks 

 and gardens, but also spread into the bush lands, where they grew larger and fiercer as they reverted 

 to wild conditions and levied a heavy toll on our feathered friends. 



