REMAKING WETLANDS - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 222

to the Chief Secretary - who declared open seasons - that the open season currently
in place in the region, from February to April, be maintained and not altered to
better suit the times when rice was vulnerable, from approximately September to
March (Ellis, 1940: 201). This was possibly due to concerns that hunting across the
summer months would coincide with the peak of the duck nesting season. Duck
breeding seasons had traditionally been closed hunting seasons, so as to protect duck
populations for game shooting. Another reason may have been due to some
farmers' assertions that the birds ate insects that damaged rice crops (Kinghorn,
1932: 603).
Dry conditions in the mid-1920s led the birds to seek refuge in the rice fields.
Rising controversy over whether they were a pest that hindered the rice crop or
helped by eating weeds sparked the government investigations by Kinghorn.
Kinghorn visited the MIA three times during the 1927-1928 rice season, at
different stages of cultivation and plant growth. During this time he talked to
farmers, observed birds on rice fields, and hunted ducks in rice areas and nearby
wetlands such as Fivebough Swamp for his own gizzard analyses (totalling 17 ducks
from four different species). Kinghorn's investigations reveal his unfolding views
about ducks and agriculture. They also show some of the different views and
practices of farmers and the ways that ducks and other birds were inhabiting these
new aquatic environments (1932: 604-606).
Kinghorn found that grey teal, black duck, and wood duck ate rice seed at the
time of sowing as well as green rice plants, but also barnyard grass-weeds, 'weed
seed' and some insects. Pink-eared duck, however, ate no rice and were instead
valuable 'as an insect destroyer' (ibid.: 607). He also argued that other waterbirds
like the glossy ibis, cranes, herons, white ibis, and spoonbills were helpful to rice
farmers as they ate insects and crayfish, the latter of which could undermine check
banks, drains and other earthen infrastructure. Further, Kinghorn found that ducks
were not the only birds that potentially damaged rice crops. As the first flooding
took place in the rice bays, he saw starlings and crows 'retreating before the
advancing water collecting worms and insects which were wriggling hurriedly from
the soil', 'but at the same time there appeared to be no doubt that they were also
eating the freshly sown rice seed' (ibid.: 604). It seemed that ducks had been blamed
for the damage these, and other birds like galahs and sparrows, had caused as ducks
were considered by some farmers to be 'the only bird' to damage rice (ibid.: 606).
While ducks puddled and pulled out some rice, Kinghorn argued that much of
the damage attributed to them was instead due to 'faulty farming methods' (ibid.:
608). He reached this conclusion through his interviews with farmers where he
found that '[i]t was also very noticeable that the growers who produced the best
rice crops had little or nothing to say against the ducks' (ibid.: 607). Kinghorn
claimed that bare sections in a rice crop were mostly due to the rice, which had
been sown by being broadcast, washing into depressions and then drowning as
water pooled there when the rest of the bay was drained. Similarly, rice could
drown if the bays were badly graded. Broadcasting seed also seemed to produce a
weaker young rice plant than drill sowing. Plants grown from broadcast seed could