Scientific War

ON

Fiji’S Starlings

From Our Own Correspondent SUVA, August 25.

DR. R. GARRICK, of the Aus tralian CSIRO, came to Fiji in August at the invitation of the Colony’s Government to spend a “working holiday” on two islands in the Lau Group where colonies of English starlings have become estab lished through the years.

Dr. Garrick will study possible means of exterminating the birds.

It is feared that, their numbers now rapidly increasing, they may become a menace to banana and other fruit crops in Fiji. The starlings are at present nesting on the two islands of Ono-i-lau and Vatoa.

Dr. and Mrs. Garrick were flown down to Ono-i-lau by RNZAF Catalina in mid-August.

Missionary’S Interest

The PIM reported the arrival of the starling to these islands in the issue of December, 1951. The Rev.

Walter Hill, of the Methodist Mission, had written saying that he had found the birds firmly estab lished at Ono-i-lau when he had called there in January, 1951. The natives were vague as to their date of arrival, but thought they had first appeared after a hurricane “about 20 years ago.” We said, editorially, that probably the birds had been blown in from the Kermadecs, that no doubt they would be spread further in Fiji by the same means and that they would probably become a great pest to growers of bananas, paw-paws and other soft fruits.

A short time after Mr. Hill had written about the starlings he read of a man who was doing a world wide study of these birds and wrote to him in Scotland. That man was Dr. Garrick, now with the CSIRO.

Although Mr. Hill and Dr. Garrick are at present in the same group of Islands, it is unlikely that they will meet. Mr. Hill is at a Mission near Savu-Savu.