34 PROTECTION OF PLA^TS, 192C-21 



injurious insects. The Bob-white feeds freely of the potato beetle, wire worms, 

 and cut worms, while hundreds of grasshoppers are consumed per hour as a 

 flock of young turkeys traverse a meadow or pasture. 



The next group is that called Raptores, including eagles, hawks, owls and 

 vultures. Many other kinds of birds are rapacious, but no other are so well 

 equipped for capturing and killing other birds as well as small animals, and even 

 fish. In spite of their highly specialized beaks and claws, our Canadian hawks, 

 with very few exceptions, are mild and beneficial birds, only one of our owls is 

 persistently injurious, while in no part of our country are eagles or vultures a 

 menace. The hawks known as the Sharpskin and Coopers or the Duck hawk 

 and Pigeon hawk, are destructive of valuable insectivorous birds, while the 

 Gyrfalcon kills large numbers of the grouse of the northern wilderness. The 

 Great Horned Owl visits and revisits the poultry yard, carrying away even 

 turkeys and geese, and, if these are not available, attacking any of the other 

 birds of our woodlands. All the other hawks and owls live upon the vermin 

 which are such pests to agriculturists. Mice, rats, moles, grasshoppers, beetles, 

 crickets, spiders and frogs are their usual bill of fare, and in the capture of these 

 they are very persevering and skillful. The false idea, born of ignorance, that 

 the killing of hawks and owls is meritorious is an anachronism, and should be 

 banished to that limbo which has finally received, we hope, the hunting of the 

 wren, and other such cruel superstitions. 



The Coccyges is a group in which arc l)irds showing but few similarities, — 

 the cuckoos and the kingfishers. The cuckoos are heard more frequently than 

 seen, being fond of dense thickets of shrubs, from which their call is heard in the 

 late springtime. They live upon insects, and deserve our protection because of 

 their unusual courage in eating largely of hairy caterpillars, especially those 

 which defoliate our trees. European cuckoos are parasites, dropping their 

 unwelcome eggs into the nests of small birds, Canadian cuckoos seldom do this, 

 but build their own nest and rear their young in the orthodox manner. The 

 Kingfishers live on small fish, but do little harm except possible in streams 

 planted with troutlings. Their food is mostly the coarse and useless minnows 

 and perch which would certainly feed on the eggs of better fish. 



The order Pici includes our carpenter birds the woodpeckers. Ignorance, 

 and the hereditary barbarism which prompts us to kill, have made these birds the 

 targets for that destructive combination — a boy with a gun. We now know 

 that, with one exception, the woodpeckers are interested in a tree, only that 

 they may relieve it of its insect parasites. The exception is the Sapsucker, which 

 punctures the protecting cork covering of several kinds of trees, and leaves them 

 open to fungus infection, after it has eaten away the cortex and cambium which 

 in the spring are filled with sugar or starch. The perforations may form a 

 girdle about the trunk, and quite often result in the death of a valuable tree. 



