Common Birds on the Farm. 271 



The most popular as well as the most important game bird in North 

 Carolina is without doubt the Bobwhite. Probably more men in the 

 state engage in hunting this bird than are employed in shooting all 

 other kinds of wild birds and animals. Immense numbers are killed 

 every yeav and sold in the local markets, and many persons, especially 

 in j^ears gone by, have found a profitable business in smuggling them,. 

 in violation of the laws, to northern cities. The shooting privileges- 

 over large tracts of land in some sections are leased by sportsmen, the 

 farmers receiving in return a remuneration sufficient to pay all their 

 taxes and in many instances considerably more. Over one hundred and 

 eighty thousand acres in Guilford county alone are thus under lease at 

 the present time, and the amount of taxes paid for the shooting rights 

 exceeds $8,000 annually. The lessees kill comparatively few birds, and 

 it is a matter of common observation that the partridge is far more 

 abundant on leased lands than on the adjoining farms where the birds 

 are afforded less protection. 



The Bobwhite is a great destroyer of insects during the warm 

 months. He is very found of the chinch-bug, which annually levies a 

 tremendous tribute from the farmers of America. Two tablespoonfuls 

 of chinch-bugs have been found in the crop of one bird. Grasshoppers 

 are credited with doing an annual damage of $90,000,000 to the agri- 

 cultural interests of the country, and Bobwhite is one of their most 

 deadly enemies. The boll weevil came over the border into the United 

 States in 1894, and was soon costing us $20,000,000 a year. The gov- 

 ernment collectors have found many partridges whose crops were filled 

 with these weevils, which are secured late in the season when the weevil 

 leaves the cotton and takes refuge in the leaves and rubbish on the 

 ground. 



These birds also eat the striped cucumber beetle that does such 

 havoc to cucumbers, squashes and other vegetables. In short, the crops 

 and gizzards examined in great numbers in the government laboratories 

 have yielded fifty-seven kinds of beetles, twenty-seven varieties of bugs, 

 nine grasshoppers and locusts, and thirteen different sorts of caterpillars, 

 besides ants, flies, wasps and spiders. 



But the good work of the Bobwhite does not end with the summer, 

 Eighty-five different weed seeds have been found to make up in part 

 his bill of fare. Crops have been found packed with rag-weed seeds 

 and as many as one thousand seeds of the crab-grass have been taken 

 from one bird. A specimen shot on Christmas day of 1901 at Kinsale, 

 Virginia, contained about 10.000 pig-weed seeds. In Bulletin 21 of 

 the Bureau of Biological Survey, we read: ''It is reasonable to sup- 

 pose that in the states of Virginia and North Carolina from September 



