36 FOOD OF WEST VIRGINIA BIRDS 



CHAPTER V. 

 BOBWHITE, GROUSE AND WILD TURKEY. 



Game Birds. 



We are particularly interested in some of our birds because of the 

 food they eat, but our interest in the Game Birds arises from the food 

 they supply. The group of Game Birds affords an illustration of the 

 manifold usefulness of birds. Though other species are of untold utility 

 because of their help in combatting some of the plagues of the agricul- 

 tural world, these fine birds help in a more direct way to supply our 

 food by furnishing their own flesh. The time was, not many years ago, 

 when the wild game birds and mammals contributed very largely to the 

 larder of the pioneer settlers in this country. I have heard persons 

 say that they could remember very well the time when so many Wild 

 Turkeys were brought in at the end of a little hunting trip that the 

 entire family could not make use of them. Only a few generations 

 ago wild game of many kinds abounded in this part of the country. With 

 proper protection and care our Game birds might become very common 

 once more, and furnish much pleasure to the hunter and food to the 

 hungry. Our thousands of acres of rough untillable land here in West 

 Virginia furnish ideal conditions for the natural propagation of our native 

 Game Birds. In so many sections there are now large tracts of moun- 

 tain land that have been cut over by lumbermen or burned over by 

 forest fires. In these places tangles and dense thickets of shrubbery 

 and vines are springing up. These afford good shelter, refuge and food 

 for these birds. If we can hereafter control our forest fires, especially 

 in the spring when* the Wild Turkey and Ruffed Grouse are nesting, 

 if we can control some of their natural enemies and fine or imprison 

 some of their human enemies till they learn the lesson of game pro- 

 tection, these birds will increase rapidly and become quite common 

 once more. West Virginia should bcome a veritable paradise for Game 

 Birds, and, no doubt, with the enforcement of our laws, an awakened 

 public conscience and educated public sentiment, these birds may yet 

 be saved from extinction in our forests and may become almost as 

 common as in other years. 



Bob White. 



There is, perhaps, no bird in all America more generally known than 

 the attractive and beneficial Bobwhite. As a game bird it is without 

 a peer. Though small in size it is quite abundant when properly pro- 

 tected, and its flesh is one of the favorite foods of the epicurean. Et 

 might be a provident source of food for all the people if it were allowed 

 to increase as nature would have it. That my readers may know the 

 great value of this little Game Bird I quote at some length from Harold 

 Baynes' new book, Wild Bird Guests. In his chapter on the Economic 

 Reasons for the Protection of Birds Mr. Baynes says, of the Bobwhite, 

 "They are wonderful destroyers of potatoe bugs, and if encouraged to 



