Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 113 



of all kinds; they go into the woods and hunt down the insects 

 that are eating the forest trees and destroying them. 



This (showing another picture) is that beautiful little 

 screech owl that sometimes comes and builds its nest in the big 

 oak that overshadows the house and raises its young there. 

 Some people kill these because they say they carry off little 

 chickens and ducks. Possibly one does carry off a young 

 domestic fowl once in a whole summer, but it is very seldom. 

 In the meantime they are hunting mice and rats and large 

 insects. 



Now if a pair of these birds nest about your house next 

 spring don't kill them, and don't allow anyone else to. Get your 

 camera and make a picture of them. Or, if you have not a 

 camera, send for some friend who has one, take the little chaps 

 out of the nest, set them up and make a picture of them. Take 

 them out again later and make another picture. One of them 

 may get peeved, like this one on the end did, and turn his back 

 to you and look cross-eyed at you, but he will get over that in a 

 minute and cuddle up to his little sister and be just as chummy 

 as ever; and when the birds grow up and go away you may have 

 a beautiful lot of pictures to show your friends. 



The kingbird is another that is sadly misunderstood. The 

 average farmer considers him a pest and kills him at sight 

 because he eats a few bees; but this bird eats only the drone 

 bees. He will not eat the honeybee. 



Now a pair of these birds, or a pair of any of the other birds 

 I am talking about, in raising a family of young will feed them in 

 the few weeks they are growing up from twelve thousand to 

 fifteen thousand insects. Even this kingfisher that you usually 

 see about the water takes an hour off once in a while and goes 

 into the meadows or marsh hunting bugs for a change of diet. 

 He is a persistent fisherman. He takes up a position some- 

 where about the water and watches for minnow to come to the 

 surface. Then he goes after it and gets it. When he gets three 

 or four he has had a square meal and he quits and goes away. 

 In other words, he quits when he gets enough, and that is more 

 than I can say of some men I have known. I have known men 

 who would fish all day long, and way into the night if the fish 

 kept biting, and stack them up on the shore or in the boat, and 

 if it were hot weather probably half of them would spoil; but the 

 men were fishing for a record. They wanted to go home and 

 tell what great sport they had had. 



