What Birds Do for Us 



third year ten billion plants." With these figures 

 in mind, it is easy to account for the exceedingly 

 rapid spread of certain weeds from the Old World 

 daisies and wild carrot, for example of com- 

 paratively recent introduction here. The great ma- 

 jority of weeds being annuals, the parent plant 

 dying after frost or one season's growth and the 

 species living only in embryo during the, remain- 

 der of the year, it follows that seed-eating birds are 

 of enormous practical value. Even the despised- 

 English sparrows do great good as weed destroyers 

 almost enough to tip the scales of justice in their 

 favor. In autumn, what noisy flocks of the little 

 gamins settle on our lawns and clean off seeds of 

 crab-grass, dandelion, plantain, and other upstarts 

 in the turf ! The song sparrow, the chipping spar- 

 row, the white-throated sparrow, and the goldfinch 

 are glad enough to follow after their English cousin 

 and get out the dandelion seeds exposed after he 

 cuts off several long, protecting scales of the invo- 

 lucre. Because of his special preference, however, 

 the little black and yellow goldfinch, an unequaled 

 destroyer of the composite weeds, is often called 

 the thistle-bird. The few tender sparrows which 

 must winter in the south are replaced in autumn by 

 hardier relatives, whose feeding grounds at the far 

 north are buried under snow; by juncos, snowflakes, 

 longspurs, redpolls, grosbeaks, and siskins, all of 

 which are busy gleaners among the plow furrows in 

 fallow land, and the brown weed-stalks that flank 

 the roadsides or rear themselves above the snowy 

 fields. In enumerating the little weeders that serve 

 us without so much as a "thank you" and fifty dif- 



