BIRDS IN'- RELATION TO AGRICULTURE AND HORTI- 
CULTURE* 

BY LAWRENCE BRUNER 
Nebraska is a good home for birds. We know definitely as many as four 
hundred different kinds that have been found within our borders and 
the presence of 11 moreis quite probable. Of these two hundred are definitely 
known to nest in the state; many more certainly should be added to the list. 
During winter months more than one hundred (120) have been recorded, 
while the others leave in the fall for the warmer south country, only to return 
to us with the advent of pleasant weather in the following spring. While 
there is much to be learned concerning the migrations, nesting, moulting, 
songs and peculiar ways of living among the different birds that we may see 
in our groves, fields, along the streams, on the prairies, and about the hedge 
rows and garden patches, the most important feature connected with their 
lives to us is their food habits. For it is by what they eat that birds can and 
do make themselves of so much value to us. Of course birds are of different 
colors, sizes, and forms, and have their beaks, feet, wings, and tails made so as 
to best conform to the uses for which they are intended. The woodpeckers 
have hard, chisel-like beaks for cutting holes in the bark and wood, and, at 
the same time, their tail feathers are stiff and pointed so as to be of use as 
props for holding the birds in place while busily engaged at nest making or 
digging for borers. In a like manner their long tongues are barbed so as to 
spear and drag forth the ‘‘worms” when reached. The short, strong beaks 
of the sparrows and their relatives are likewise suited for cracking the many 
kinds of weed seeds eaten by these birds in winter, as well as for crushing 
such insects as are eaten by the parents or fed to their young during the sum- 
mer time. 
On account of this most important feature in connection with our birds, 
we will confine our remarks in this paper chiefly to what they eat, and leave 
the descriptions of the birds themselves, their haunts, migrations, and nest 
building for some other time. Then too, almost everybody knows a few of 
these last mentioned things about most of our common birds. 
Birds can be useful to us in many ways. They can carry the seeds of dif- 
ferent plants from one place to another so as to help start new groves in which 
we and our domestic animals may find shelter from the cold winds of winter 
and the oppressive heat insummer. They plant seeds of shrubs by the way- 
*The present chapter is a combination of two former papers by the author, 
on the same topic, but the subject matter has been somewhat modified and 
abridged. The first of these papers appeared in the Proceedings of the Ne- 
braska Ornithologists’ Union, II, pp. 18-29, and the second in the New 
Elementary Agriculture, pp. 103-117. This last work was issued by the 
University Publishing Company of Lincoln, Nebr. 
