It was the fall of a sparrow – in fact, more than 100 of them at Waimarama Community Gardens last week – that left volunteers saddened and horrified.
Poisonous grain intentionally scattered on top of compost heaps managed by the Compost Club, who rent the council-owned land, is the suspected cause of sparrows “dropping from the sky”.
A few blackbirds, grey warblers and chickens also suffered slow deaths after consuming the grain.
The exact cause of the mass mortality is yet to be confirmed.
Waimarama Community Gardens coordinator and trustee, Sally Rees, says the grisly discovery was made by a member of the public at about 5pm on Sunday, 17 May.
Authorities including SPCA, Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and Nelson City Council were contacted in the days that followed.
“It was terrible, we’ve never had anything like this before,” Sally reflects.
“It was fairly obvious that it was intentional, [MPI] found on top of the compost pile some either wheat or dried corn kernels, but I think it was the council who said it didn’t look like any sort of commercially treated wheat, so I don’t know what [the culprits had] done to it.
“Absolutely thoughtless action, and hopefully [those responsible] can make up for it somehow.”
Sally says Compost Club volunteers make the compost on Saturday mornings and sparrows fossick in it afterwards but nothing is placed to feed them.
She says volunteers also found seven birds’ nests on the ground, allegedly “poked” from nearby trees.
While some birds were taken away for testing to determine their cause of death, the remainder were buried off the property.
SPCA inspectorate regional manager Ben Lakomy says a necropsy or post-mortem check on some of the birds that were found was being undertaken and it was also testing the grain.
“We have also reported the incident to MPI and while enquiries are ongoing, we cannot comment further at this time,” he says.
A Biosecurity New Zealand spokesperson says its role is to rule out exotic disease as a cause of death.
“Samples were sent to our specialist laboratory, and we have ruled out any exotic disease as a cause. We don’t test for other causes.”
Nelson City Council operations delivery manager Eddie Powick says he was “saddened” by the incident and council arranged for contractors to assist with the deceased bird's removal on Tuesday last week.
