134 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



In small city parks, gray squirrels can easily 

 become so numerous as to constitute a pest to 

 nesting birds. It is a mistake to permit one hun- 

 dred squirrels to exist in a park so small that it has 

 room for only twenty or less. A swarm of restless 

 and hungry squirrels will attack nesting birds, and 

 devour both eggs and young birds. A park that 

 has become infested with red squirrels our most 

 destructive and objectionable species deserves to 

 be delivered from the pest by the use of a ,22-caliber 

 rifle, fitted with a Maxim silencer in order that the 

 process may not be made painfully conspicuous in 

 the ears and eyes of the public. 



I am distinctly not in favor of slaughtering birds 

 merely because at rare intervals they flock in grain- 

 fields and consume grain. The period wherein 

 grain destruction is possible is very brief; and the 

 proper way to protect the crops is by spending a 

 few dollars in systematically frightening the birds 

 and compelling them to move on. In all such cases, 

 the shot-gun should be the farmer's last resort, not 

 the first. I am a firm believer in the use of blank 

 cartridges in the preservation of fruit and field 

 crops from the unbearable attacks of birds, but the 

 farmer who uses them runs the risk of being without 

 his feathered friends when he most needs their aid! 



The time was, a few years ago, when we all con- 

 ceded that the rice-growers of the Carolinas had a 

 moral right to hire negroes to slaughter bobolinks 

 (or rice-birds) with shot-guns, for the protection 



