Birds

BIRDS. The feathered tribes are among the most highly organized of created beings except man, possessing, as so many of them do, either elegance of plumage, great vivacity, or fine voca/ powers. The increased prevalence of insect life in all thickly settled countries, is due, in a meas ure, to the indiscriminate destruction of birds and insect-eating animals. The objection from pomologists, that they also eat fruit, although well founded as to the thrush family and some others, is no argument against the wholesale destruction of birds, especially in breeding time. To the farmer birds do not labor under the same objection. The moiety of grain they consume being too insignificant to be weighed for a mo ment against the good they accomplish. As against the thrush family, -which in Illinois for instance, comprises nine species, viz: the Robin, the Cat-bird, the Brown Thrush, the Wood Thrush, the Hermit Thrush, Swainson's Thtush, the Alice Thrush, the Mocking Bird and Wilson's Thrush or the Wren, from the fact that the thrush tribe, the Robin and Brown Thrush especially, prey largely on predaceous beetles, or those insects whose food is other insects, we must consider carefully whether the injury done in. eating predaceous beetles is more than counter balanced by the good accomplished in eating Insects injurious to vegetation. During the nest ing season there is no doubt as to the benefits accomplished by insect-eating birds. The careful investigations of Prof. Forbes, director of the Illinois State Department of Natural History, would seem to cast a strong doubt on the fact that the thrush family is beneficial to fruit grow ers. Nevertheless, taking singing birds as a whole, when they are driven away insect life does increase unduly. Prof. Forbes seems to be of the opinion, from his examinations, that at least the good accomplished by the birds is not unmixed with evil, and acknowledges that the experiments must be continued much longer to be able to arrive at any accurate conclusion. It must be borne in mind, also, that the food of the young birds is almost exclusively insect. Prof. Treadwell, of Cambridge, was obliged to feed young Robins their weight in insects every day, to keep them from starving to death. Thomas M. Brerner, M.D., an eminent ornothologist of Boston, Mass., in a paper read in 1879, mentions as one of the prominent causes of the increase of insects in Europe, to be the wholesale killing of birds. The great Frederick of Prussia once nearly exterminated the sparrows in his kingdom, in a fit of royal wrath, because they took agrarian liberties with his fruit; and what was the conse quence? The caterpillars, which the sparrows had kept in check, having no one now to prevent their increase, multiplied at such a fearful rate that they swept before them the foliage, and with the foliage all the fruit also. It is said that for two years not a cherry, apple, peach, plum, cur rant or any kind of fruit could be raised in any portion of the kingdom. Sensible at last of his mistake, this great king, conquered for the first time, in a field where his impotence was but too apparent, yielded to the necessity, and expended more money in reintroducing the sparrow than he had wasted in destroying them, but only after a loss to his subjects of a million of dollars. It has been ascertained that one pair of javs will feed its young on half a million of caterpillars in a season, and that each bird will destroy, during the winter, eggs that in the following spring would have hatched into at least a million or more of the larvte. Our blue-jays would do the same if we would let them and not persecute them. Their favorite food is the egg of our apple tree, or tent-caterpillar, and for their young the larva of this same insect is also their choice. A pair of blue-jays in an orchard have cleared it so effectually of every caterpillar in a single sea son, that not one single insect could be found. This is not merely theory, but absolute fact, demonstrated b_y the careful investigation of the venerable Dr. Kirtland, of Cleveland. So corn

pletely did his carefully protected jay extirpate these pests from the /ake shore of that part of Ohio, that absolutely not a single individual specimen could be found for miles around Cleve land. The investigations of M. Prevost, acting for the French government, demonstrated that those birds generally regarded as being insect eaters, are not as a. rule the most beneficial; but that for the most part, the birds which render the greatest service are those against which the popular predjudices are strongest. Thus the sparrows, the starling and crows are the great destroyers of the cockchafers, and so our crows and black-birds are of the May-beetles, and we are but just finding out that many birds we have deemed to be our enemies are really our best friends. Another important law of nature revealed by M. Prevost's investigation is of especial interest. This is, that nearly all birds, during the period of reproduction, whatever may be their natural food at other times, are almost entirely insect-eaters, and that they feed their young almost exclusively with insect food. Then the amount of insect food a young bird will con sume is enormous. Dr. Wyman took from the crop of a young pigeon a mass of canker-worms that was more than twice the weight of t,he bird itself. Charles V. Riley, Ph. D., Chief of the United States Entomological Commission, in his report upon the subject of usefulness of birds, following some experiments in feeding two plovers with grasshoppers and other insects, under which they consumed 1,816 insects, says: At this rate twenty old plovers would eat 3,000 insects each day. or 90,000 in a month. And suppose, further, that these twenty plovers had ten nests, which averaged four young ones each. At sixty insects each day for each young plover, the forty would consume 2,400 every twenty four hours, or 72,000 a month. The twenty plovers and their progeny together, would con sume 162,000 insects each month. At this same rate 1,000 plovers and their young would con sume in one month 8,100,000 insects. That many locusts -removed in one year from a farm of 160 acres would probably render it capable of producing crops even when these insects are doing their worst. As there are many birds that eat more insects than do the plovers, as well as rnany that eat less, 150 insects a day is probably a fair average for all insectivorous birds. The prairie chicken (Grouse) has been ruthlessly de stroyed by farmers, under the supposition that they destroy large quantities of grain. Such, however, is not the fact. The losses from the eating of the grain before harvest time is quite insignificant in proportion to the good these birds accomplish. Their food in summer is almost wholly insects, and in winter they eat the seeds of weeds, to far more than compensate for the little corn they destroy in the fields, as the following from Dr. Riley, will show: Four prairie chickens were examined. The contents of the first were one grain of corn, five grains of wheat, thirty-eight seeds of polygonums (mostly P. amphibium), seven seeds of cassia, and thir teen of sunflowers, and seventeen not identified. The contents of the second were fourteen seeds of polygonums, thirty-one of sunflowers, three of cassia, eleven of verbenas (wild), four euphorbias and 113 wild rose seeds. The contents of the third were thirteen seeds of cassia, twenty-nine of wild roses, twelve seeds of polygonums, two grains of wheat, one pain of barley, and thirty four not identified. The fourth chicken had in its stomach fifteen seeds of the gentians, thirty three of rag-weeds, three of wild roses, four of euphorbias, and twenty-nine minute seeds not identified. Of the eight quail examined dur ing the same month, only one had a few grains of wheat in its stomach. All the rest were filled with grass-seed and the seed of weeds, piincipally the latter. Those examined in the winter of 1875 gave the same average results. The following are among the more common of the insect-eating birds of the prairies and groves of the West: