Economic Reasons for Protection 107 



Birds belonging to what we might call "the 

 blackbird family," which includes the bobolinks, 

 meadow larks, orioles, blackbirds, grackles, and 

 cowbirds, are nearly all more beneficial than 

 harmful. But there is a great difference in the 

 amount of good done by the different members of 

 this family. The meadow lark is one of the most 

 useful. In the eastern states it does very little 

 harm even in the spring when the corn is sprout- 

 ing; in summer, it feeds almost exclusively on 

 insects, chiefly noxious ones, and in the fall it 

 is useful as a destroyer of weed seeds. Pro- 

 fessor Harold Child Bryant of the University of 

 California, in his splendid work on The Economic 

 Status of the Western Meadow Lark shows how 

 valuable the bird is to the California farmer, in 

 spite of the fact that it does some damage by 

 pulling grain during two weeks in the spring, a 

 damage which might be prevented, he suggests, 

 by planting the grain somewhat deeper or by a 

 little overplanting. Professor Bryant gives ten 

 good reasons why the meadow lark should be 

 protected, and among them is the fact that it is 

 probably unequaled as a destroyer of cutworms, 

 caterpillars, and ^grasshoppers, three of the worst 

 insect plagues in the state of California. 



Taking the other extreme, the bobolink prob- 

 ably does much more harm than good, if we 



