AVES IQ5 



see a familiar European bird in this country. Its introduction into 

 America is an excellent illustration of the danger of introducing an 

 animal into a new environment which may prove so favorable that 

 the animal will increase in numbers to the extent of being a pest. 

 This is exactly what has happened in the case of the English Sparrow, 

 which is considered such a pest that various methods of extermination 

 have been suggested and, usually, unsuccessfully tried. What will be 

 the final outcome it is difficult to foresee. It is claimed by some that 

 98 per cent, of the food of this sparrow is vegetable and that 74 per cent. 

 is grain. It also damages fruits and young flower buds. It is pugna- 

 cious and quarrelsome and by occupying the available nesting places 

 tends to drive away other small, valuable birds. It has a tendency to 

 live about houses which it often soils in a very annoying way. It is of 

 some slight value about towns as a scavenger and possibly does some 

 good as a destroyer of insects and weed seeds, but the total balance 

 seems to be strongly against it. As the writer knows from personal 

 experience it may be kept away from individual homes in the country 

 by a ceaseless warfare, killing the adults with a .22 calibre rifle, using 

 shot cartridges, and destroying the nests as fast as built. 



The American crow, Corvus americanus, one of the most familiar 

 of all our birds, is very generally considered by farmers to be a pest 

 because of its habit of eating newly planted corn and other grain, not 

 to mention eggs and small chickens; but it is not at all certain that it 

 does not much more than pay for this loss in the insects and other pests 

 that it destroys, throughout the year, which are said to constitute 

 more than 23 per cent, of his diet. By most people the common or 

 American crow is not distinguished from the considerably larger species 

 of the same genus, the northern raven, nor from the somewhat smaller 

 species the fish crow. 



The jays, especially the common blue jay, Cyanocitta cristata, are 

 another group of familiar birds whose economic value is very doubtful 

 on account of their habit of destroying the eggs and young of other 

 birds; but along with these highly undesirable habits, they have others 

 that are of benefit to man. 



In some sections the blackbirds or grackles (genus Quiscalus) 

 are considered a pest because of the damage they do to ripening corn, 

 late in the summer; it is probable again that this damage is more than 



