THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF BIRDS. 19 



NECESSITY OF BIRD PROTECTION 



It having been demonstrated to the satisfaction of naturalists that 

 nearly all native species of biro's are useful, and many of them vitally useful, 

 to man, the need of protective legislation and a healthy public sentiment 

 in favor of the preservation of birds is apparent from a consideration of the 

 facts. During all except the last decades of the past century the destruction 

 of birds was going on in the United States and elsewhere at an appalling 

 rate. During the last two decades the destruction has been in a large 

 measure checked in most parts of the United States, owing to legislation, 

 and more particularly, perhaps, to the educational work carried on by various 

 agricultural, horticultural, and ornithological societies, and the widespread 

 dissemination of literature bearing upon the subject by the United States 

 Department of Agriculture. 



Fifteen years ago the New York Zoological Society, in cooperation with 

 ornithologists throughout the United States, conducted an investigation of the 

 decrease of bird life in the United States. The report (42) shows ah average 

 decrease of 46% in the number of birds in 30 states, an increase in 4, and 

 increase and decrease balanced in 3. As the eggs average probably not more 

 than 4 to a clutch, and not more than half of them ever develop birds to 

 maturity, such destruction cannot easily be replaced, as it would be in case 

 of insects. 



Every sportsman and naturalist is familiar with the decrease in game 

 birds. The disgraceful extermination of the passenger pigeon in the United 

 States is being repeated in case of some other species. These pigeons were 

 formerly found in almost incredible flocks, but now there is not supposed to 

 be one left alive in the wild state, and at last account but one in cap- 

 tivity (43). The offer of large rewards (44) in 1910, 1911 and 1912 has 

 failed to bring any information of a single wild bird of this species now 

 living. They were killed at their "roosts," not by hundreds or thousands, 

 but by tons, for the market. Audubon tells of seeing schooners at the New 

 York wharves loaded in bulk with the pigeons at 1 cent each, in 1S05, and 

 Roney estimated that in 1878 1,500,000 dead birds and 80,532 live ones were 

 shipped from near Petosky, Michigan (45). No one who reads the numer- 

 ous accounts of the ruthless slaughter need wonder where a species has gone 

 whose rate of reproduction was so low that it required on an average at least 

 2 years for a pair to reproduce its own number under normal circumstances. 

 The prairie hen and other species of grouse and quail have disappeared 

 from much of their former range and are scarce elsewhere. The wild tur- 

 key, whose range was once so extensive, is extinct except in a few isolated 

 localities, where it is rapidly decreasing. Ducks are greatly lessened In 

 numbers almost everywhere. Shore birds are well on their way to ex- 



(42) Hornaday, William T., The Destruction of Our Birds and Mammals. A Report 

 on the Results of an Inquiry, Ann. Rept. N. Y. Zool. Soc. for 1898 ; republished, with 

 addenda, in 1901. Our VaniPhintf Wild Life. 1913. 



(43) Deane, Ruthven, The Passenger Pigeon Only One Bird Left, The Auk, Vol. 

 XXVIII, p. 262, 1911. 



(44) Hodge, C. F., The Passenger Pigeon Investigation, The Auk, Vol. XXVIII, pp. 

 49-53, 1911 ; A Last Word on the Passenger Pigeon, The Auk, Vol. XXIX, pp. 169-175, 

 1912. 



(45) Palmer, T. S., A Review of Economic Ornithology in the United States, U. S. 

 Dept. Agrlc., Yearbook for 1899, p. 269. 



