Part II.] NATURAL ENEMIES OF BIRDS. 229 



Skunk {Mephitis putida). 

 This much detested animal is looked upon commonly as a 

 nuisance and a pest, bat every naturalist who has made a 

 study of its food and food habits has come to regard ic as 

 useful if not indispensable to the farmer. Its animal food 

 consists largely of rats, mice, snakes, frogs, turtles' eggs and 

 insects; it is fond of refuse animal matter and will feed on waste 

 meat or carrion. Occasionally it takes the eggs from under 

 a sitting hen not properly shut in at night, and has been known 

 to kill and eat both fowls and chicks. I fed two skunks regu- 

 larly on garbage in a henhouse for weeks where forty fowls 

 roosted two and one-half feet from the ground. The skunks 

 killed mice and rats but never troubled the fowls. Later a 

 pair of skunks reared their young in a yard of about one 

 acre, fenced in by chicken wire in which were several hundred 

 chickens. They never touched a chicken. In all my experience 

 I have only once known a skunk to break up a nest of a wild 

 bird. The bird was a ruffed grouse, and I saw the skunk 

 eating the eggs while the bird hovered close by. I have been 

 able to learn of but one other such case where the skunk was 

 actually seen to destroy the eggs. Nevertheless, the animal is 

 accused continually by gunners and sportsmen, and it is very 

 destructive to turtles' eggs. Its animal food in summer, how- 

 ever, consists largely of noxious insects. It spends the greater 

 part of its time in turning over stones and clods under which 

 insects hide, in digging out the white grub of the May beetle, 

 and in taking from the foliage such pests as the Colorado 

 potato beetle. Any one who examines the dried droppings of 

 the skunk will find them filled with remains of insects. It is 

 rather remarkable that this animal, slow and clumsy as it is, 

 has learned how to catch mice and rats. It is practically 

 unable to capture adult wild birds, and its fur is now valued 

 so highly that it is not likely to become too numerous. 



Raccoon (Procyon lotor lotor). 

 There is some evidence to the effect that the raccoon robs 

 birds' nests, but it is not numerous enough now in settled 

 regions to be very destructive. Its fondness for green corn 



