Common Birds on the Farm. 269 



our birds, that every year in many sections the problem of how to raise 

 <?rops successful!}^ is becoming a most serious one. From time to time 

 thousands of southern farmers have gathered to discuss the question of 

 what can possibly be done to check the onslaught of the cotton boll 

 weevil. We now know that thirty or forty species feed upon this great 

 plague. 



Some of our government experts who have made a close study of 

 the subject of bird destruction and the results, tell us that one-tenth 

 of the entire agricultural products of eastern United States is annually 

 a total loss from the ravages of insects. This percentage, too, we are 

 told, is on the increase, owing to the decreasing numbers of birds. 

 That many birds are far less numerous than formerly, any observant man 

 over forty years of age will readily testify. 



The early inhabitants of New England felt that they had a griev- 

 ance against the blackbirds for eating corn in the fields ; so laws were 

 passed offering "a bounty of threepence a dozen for dead maize thieves." 

 Dr. Benjamin Franklin is quoted by Peter Kahn, a Swedish natural- 

 ist, as saying that the blackbirds were thus exterminated, "but as in 

 the summer of 1749 an immense quantity of worms appeared in the 

 meadows, which devoured the grass and did great damage, the people 

 abated their enmity for they had observed that those birds lived chiefly 

 on these worms before the maize is ripe, and consequently extirpated 

 them." 



Of recent years the study of the relationship of ))irds to agriculture 

 lias revealed many facts which are having a decided influence in chang- 

 ing public sentiment regarding many birds which were formerly re- 

 garded as largely if not wholly detrimental. The most marked example 

 is probably in reference to the real value of hawks and owls on the 

 farm. There have been recorded in North Carolina nine species of 

 hawks and eight kinds of owls. Many people have recognized but little 

 distinction between these, and tens of thousands of these useful creatures 

 have been killed by persons who sincerely believed they were doing the 

 country a service. We now know that a very large per cent, of the 

 food of the sparrow hawk consists of grasshoppers and other insects. 

 The red-shouldered hawk feeds to a large extent on field mice, shews, 

 young rabbits and other injurious vermin. To kill a sparrow hawk, 

 therefore, means an increased opportunity for the grasshoppei-s to eat 

 the grass, and to kill the red-shouldered hawk means that a further in- 

 vitation is extended to annoying rodents to increase and gnaw the fruit 

 trees or eat the grain in the field. We are very prone to think only of 

 the chicken or game bird which some "chicken-eating" individual hawk 

 takes, and at once condemn all hawks of all species. A wiser course 

 would probably be to make some study of the order of birds known as 



