SOME COMMON BIRDS ON THE FARM. 



By T. Gilbert Pearson. 



North Carolina is rich in wild bird life, both in the number of 

 species which is found within her borders and the countless numbers 

 of individuals with which some of the species are represented. The 

 farm lands are supplied the year round with numbers of birds of 

 great value to the agricultural interests. In winter the sounds teem 

 with wild fowl, twenty-six kinds of ducks and seven varieties of 

 geese being known to occur there. During the spring and fall migra- 

 tions along the beaches are found swarms of plovers, snipe, and 

 sandpipers of various names ; even the handsome Hudsonian Curlew 

 still comes to us, despite the years of incessant persecution. 



About eighty species of native wild birds are known to be perma- 

 nent residents of North Carolina. Perhaps eighty other varieties 

 come to us in the spring to spend the summer months in our yards, 

 fields, swamps, and on our seashores. Thus about one hundred and 

 sixty kinds of birds are known to nest within the borders of the 

 State. Add to this sixty-five species which pass in the autumn on 

 their long trip southward to spend the cold months in a tropical 

 climate, seventy species at least which come from the frozen North 

 to pass the winter in this latitude, and twenty or thirty birds which 

 have been recorded in the State as stragglers from their usual range, 

 and a total of three hundred and thirty species of North Carolina 

 birds is reached. 



If we are to believe what many toiling scientists have revealed, 

 what many State agricultural departments tell us, what the United 

 States Government publications declare, and what we can all see 

 with our eyes if we stop to observe, one great incalculable value of 

 our birds lies in the tremendous number of harmful insects which 

 they destroy and the vast quantities of harmful weed seeds which they 

 consume. It is no small service that a pair of robins render when 

 they honor you by living a summer in your garden, and each day 

 probably eat more than their weight of worms and insects. It 

 is no little thing to have a pair of pewees nest in a tree near your 

 house, and every day for weeks and weeks rid the air of hundreds 

 of harmful insects that seek to destroy the foliage or to sting the 

 fruit of your trees. I once watched a pewee capture sixteen insects 

 during a period of ten minutes, and in company with twenty-five 

 witnesses saw a chipping sparrow one summer seize thirty insects 

 in one minute. 



