The Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) are conducting post-mortems on the birds which started dropping out of trees over the weekend around the town.

Kolora Wildlife Shelter manager Kirsa Veal and Derrinallum Wildlife Shelter manager Lyn Faul have spent the last few days picking up the carcasses with the help of locals.

Ms Veal said she had counted more than 40 bird deaths but expected the number to rise into the hundreds.

“It’s absolutely disgusting (and) vile the way some people have decided to enact this culling,” she said.

“They started dropping on Friday, falling out of trees and there are carcasses on the ground everywhere.

“There are dependant young (birds) everywhere (and they) will eventually starve after a few days without their mothers to feed them.

“It’s really quite cruel and I don’t think those who perpetrated this crime really thought about the outcomes of the poisoning.”

Farming leaders in South Australia last year called for landholders to be granted permits to shoot corellas which are protected as an endangered species.

The birds are con­sidered a pest by some farmers given their propensity to eat freshly-laid crop seed.

Ms Faul said she was now concerned about the risk of secondary poisoning to pets which might attack the dying birds.

She added that raptors like brown falcons and wedge-tailed eagles which hunt in paddocks near where the bodies were found would also be threatened by the mass poisoning.

“I really can’t understand how someone can do this,” she said.

“If someone did this intentionally, its wilful killing of a protected species.

“If it’s an acci­dent, it’s criminal negligence,” she said.

“We’ve had to notify as many residents as possible about the incident in case their pets are exposed to poisoned birds.”