Birds Common to Field and Orchard 



By Henry W. Henshaw 



This article is intended to serve the very practical puriJose of enahlinj; our 

 farmers and their boys and girls to identify the birds that frequent the farm 

 and orchard. The material prosperity of State and Nation depends largelv on 

 agriculture, and any agent that serves to increase the size of crops and insure 

 their certainty is of direct interest and importance to the farmer. Birfis con- 

 stitute one of the most valuable of these agents, since they depend largelv for their 

 food on insects which are among the farmer's most dreaded foes. 



Entomologists have estimated that insects yearly cause a loss of upwards 

 o'f $700,000,000 to the agricultural interests of the United States. Were it not 

 for our birds the loss would be very much greater, and indeed it is believed that 

 without the aid of our feathered friends successful agriculture would be impos- 

 sible. A knowledge of the birds that jirotcct his crops is, therefore, as impor- 

 tant to the farmer as a knowledge of the insect pests that destroy them. Such 

 knowledge is the more important because the relation of birds to man's interests 

 is extremely complex. Thus, while it may be said that most of our liirds are 

 useful, there are only a few of them that are always and everywhere useful and 

 that never do harm. Insectivorous birds, for instance, destroy, along with a 

 vast number of harmful insects, some parasitic and predatory kinds. The^e latter 

 are among Nature's most effective agents for keeping destructive insects in 

 check. To the extent, then, that birds destroy useful parasitic insects, they are 

 harmful. lUit, taking the year round, the good they do by the destruction of 

 insects injurious to man's interests far outweigh the little harm the^' do. It mav 

 be said, too, that of the birds usually classed as noxious there are very few that 

 do not possess redeeming traits. Thus the crow is mischievous in sjiring and 

 sorely taxes the farmer's patience and ingenuity to prevent him from ()ulling 

 up the newly planted corn. Moreover, the crow destroys the eggs and young of 

 useful insectivorous and game l)irds; but. on the other hand, he eats many insects, 

 especially white grubs and cutworms, and destroys many meadow mice, so that 

 in much (although not all) of the region he inhabits the crow must be considered 

 to be more useful than harmful. Most of the hawks and owls even — birds that 

 have received so bad a name that the farmer's boy and the sportsman are ever 

 on the alert to kill them — are very useful because they destroy vast numbers of 

 insects and harmful rodents. 



Birds occu])y a unique position among the enemies of insects, since their 

 powers of flight enable them at short notice to gather at points where there are 

 abnormal insect outbreaks. An unusual abundance of grasshoppers, for instance, 

 in a given locality soon attracts the birds from a wide area, and as a rule their 

 visits cease only when there are no grasshoppers left. -So also a marked increase 

 in the number of small rodents in a given neighborhood speedily attracts the 

 attention of hawks and owls, which, by reason of their voracious appetites, soon 

 produce a marked diminution of the swarming foe. 



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