NATURAL HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA 



pests are at the maximum of their destructiveness, 

 and wise Nature has arranged that birds shall build 

 their nests and rear their families at this critical period 

 in the life of the grain plant. The young of the 

 species of seed-eating birds which prey on the farmers' 

 grain are fed on larvae, chiefly young caterpillars. 

 The appetite of a rapidly growing nestling bird is 

 prodigious, and the number of caterpillars it can 

 digest in the course of a day is phenomenal. 



Many species of birds are so suspicious and 

 afraid of man that if their nests are disturbed, or an 

 egg removed, they desert them. Others do not 

 abandon the nests, but they never build a second time 

 in such a dangerous locality. Through lack of 

 knowledge and humane teaching, boys are often guilty 

 of the most diabolically cruel actions. I have seen 

 boys catch the fiskal shrike (otherwise known as the 

 jack hanger) with bird-lime, pluck out all its body 

 feathers, and let it go. I came upon a boy lying 

 behind a shrub with a shot-gun. In front of him 

 was a bare spot where the refuse from a flour mill 

 had been dumped. Every time a flock of weaver 

 and widow birds assembled to feed on the refuse, 

 he fired amongst them. The dead birds were placed 

 in a bag, and the wounded ones fastened by a leg with 

 twine. When I came on the scene there were upwards 

 of fifty wounded, blood-smeared birds struggling 

 piteously to free themselves, and the human demon 

 was looking on and gloating over them. He was 

 the son of one of the leading citizens, and attended a 

 high-class college, too. 



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