Destruction by Man 65 



many gunners who cannot resist the temptation 

 to shoot at large, conspicuous birds of any kind. 

 But the farmers, more than any others perhaps, 

 kill hawks and owls more or less systematically, 

 because they believe these birds, one and all, 

 to be destroyers of poultry. In one way it is 

 quite natural that they should believe this. It is 

 easy to notice a hawk come down into one's 

 poultry yard and fly away with a hen or even a 

 chicken which one knows by sight. And it is 

 easy to appreciate the loss because it is imme- 

 diate and definite, the value of the chicken being 

 known. But it is much less easy to keep in sight 

 that same hawk or another, as day after day he 

 picks up mice in the distant fields. And though 

 the gain to the farm through the destruction of 

 the mice may be many times greater than the loss 

 sustained by the killing of the chicken, the exact 

 amount of it is not known to the farmer and 

 moreover he does not get it at once. The one 

 thing that is really clear to him is that a hawk 

 has caused him a loss, and without looking any 

 farther he decides to prevent losses of that kind 

 by killing every hawk he sees. When laws are 

 passed to prevent the killing of birds, he sees 

 to it that the hawks are not included in the list 

 of birds protected by it, and sometimes he goes 

 farther than this and demands that a reward or 



