I"m wondering why your local birds have lost interest in locusts.
Perhaps just too much of a good thing.
Melbourne suburbs seldom see locusts but I once saw a car come into the
Camberwell Junction shopping-centre car-park - quite covered with
locusts whole, broken-up and odd legs, wings, etc. etc caught
everywhere. Windscreen was covered with dried locust soup. House
Sparrows were checking all cars' wheels and radiator grilles for insect
prey and in no time this car was covered with Sparrows. They were even
chipping away at the dried juices on the windscreen, as well as clearing
wipers, grille, mirrors, roof-rack and wheels of all the locust bits
they could find. They had nests in a nearby electric sub-station and
were flying a rapid shuttle service back to it. Clearly they thought it
was a splendid windfall.
Anthea Fleming
wrote:
>
> The thousands of dead grasshoppers I mentioned yesterday has now
> turned into millions of dead grasshoppers. Yesterday and overnight
> the area around, and including, Dubbo was swamped with swarms of
> locusts - the ones I referred to yesterday merely being the advance
> scouting party.
>
> Cars driving into town have windscreens that are almost entirely
> covered with grasshopper innards and the streets of town are silver
> with their bodies. Looking out the window here at work the air is
> full of flying locusts.
>
> There's not much the Australian Plague Locust Commission can do about
> it as they can't spray within a certain distance of settlements and
> watercourses. There was news this morning of someone losing 80% of
> their oats crop overnight. The hungry little buggers had better stay
> out of my vege patch!
>
> As these insects feed up they will lay and just a little rain should
> then be enough to start a full-blown plague! Where are those ibis when
> you really need them!
>
> Cheers
>
> David Geering
> Regent Honeyeater Recovery Coordinator
> Department of Environment & Conservation
> P.O. Box 2111
> Dubbo NSW 2830
> Ph: 02 6883 5335 or Freecall 1800 621 056
> Fax: 02 6884 9382
>
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