What Birds Do for Us 



the Department of Agriculture. "It feeds on Indian 

 corn and on wheat and other small grains and 

 grasses, puncturing the stalks and causing them to 

 wilt." Incalculable numbers of this pest are eaten 

 every season by Bob Whites, or quail, which, it will 

 be seen, are perhaps as valuable to the American peo- 

 ple when roaming through our grain fields as when 

 served on toast to our epicures. Blackbirds, crows, 

 robins, native sparrows, chewinks, oven-birds, brown 

 thrashers, ground warblers, woodcock, grouse, plov- 

 ers, and the yellow-winged woodpeckers or flickers, 

 which feed on ants (whose chief offense is that they 

 protect aphides or plant lice to "milk" them) these, 

 and many other birds contribute to our national 

 wealth more than the wisest statistician could esti- 

 mate. Many old farmers will wish at least the crow 

 or the blackbird removed from this white list, but 

 scientific experts have proved that the workman is 

 worthy of his hire that the birds which destroy 

 enormous numbers of white grubs, army worms, cut- 

 worms and grasshoppers in the fields are as much 

 entitled to a share of the corn as the horse that plows 

 it or the ox that treads it out. The evil results fol- 

 lowing a disturbance of nature's nice balances rest 

 on no scientific theories but on historic facts. Pro- 

 tective bird laws, which very quickly increase the 

 insect police force, add many million dollars annually 

 to the permanent wealth not only of such enlight- 

 ened states as have adopted them, but to the country 

 at large, for birds, like the rain, minister to the 

 just and the unjust. And the rising generation 

 of farmers is the first to be taught this simple 

 economic fact ! 



185 



