94 Wild Bird Guests 



almost wholly beneficial. The turkey buzzard 

 and the black vulture of our southern states 

 render valuable service as scavengers. Flying 

 at great heights and endowed with wonderful 

 powers of vision, they quickly find and devour 

 carcasses and other decaying animal matter, and 

 thus prevent it from becoming a menace to 

 health. 



The hawks come next and I will begin with 

 the red-tailed hawk, whose appearance in any 

 locality is almost sure to attract the attention of 

 the farmer, and which is among the birds most 

 frequently shot for a "chicken hawk." As the 

 range of this bird covers the whole United 

 States, if chickens constituted any large propor- 

 tion of its food, it would surely be a great enemy 

 of the poultry keeper. Fortunately, however, 

 its principal food consists of mice, with a fair 

 proportion of shrews, rats, squirrels, gophers, 

 rabbits, grasshoppers, beetles, frogs, snakes, and 

 crayfish. Poultry is occasionally taken, and a 

 few birds are on the list, but the great good which 

 this hawk does by destroying rodent pests, pays 

 many times over for the occasional chicken or 

 song bird taken when perhaps the mouse-hunting 

 is poor. How far the good deeds of this hawk 

 outweigh its bad ones, may be seen when we learn 

 from Dr. Fisher that out of 562 stomachs ex- 



