HOW HE WORKS FOR US 127 
robin, of course for one meal. Ants are very 
troublesome in many ways, and three thousand 
of them have been taken from the stomach of 
one flicker. 
Rats and mice, ground squirrels and gophers, 
make great havoc in our crops, and farmers 
spend much time and labor trying to get rid of 
them ; but these creatures are the favorite food 
of most hawks and owls. 
If the farmer would stop shooting the birds, 
and protect them instead, they would do this 
work for him, and much better than he can. 
But because (as I said in a former chapter) one 
or two hawks and owls have a taste for chickens, 
he generally kills every hawk and owl he sees, 
and for this folly has to spend half his time try- 
ing to kill the little animals they would gladly 
have eaten. 
A great deal of refuse, dead sea creatures, 
and other matter, is thrown up on the seashore, 
or floats on the water. On this feed the water 
birds, — herons, gulls, terns, and others. If this 
were not disposed of, it would make us sick. 
Indeed, on the shores where so many herons have 
been killed, to get their plumes for ladies’ hats, 
the result has been sickness and death among 
the people, as Dr. Gaumer, of Yucatan, told Mr. 
Chapman. 
