No. 4.] RErOIlT OF STATE ORNITHOLOGIST. 199 



The Agricultural Value of Birds. 

 In a letter recently received from Miss Mabel T. Gage, 

 who has passed two winters in- a valley in California, there 

 appears the following statement : — 



I lived always in Worcester, Mass., until two or three years ago. 

 The life here in California has been a great revelation to me. Never 

 in my travels in Europe or Japan have I been in a place where 

 there were so many birds and so few insect pests as here. Except 

 a certain very small scale (and the bush-tits eat that), there are no 

 insect pests. You have but to plant a rose bush and fertilize the 

 soil. Nothing attacks it as far as we can see. I grew up with the 

 idea that this relation between birds and insect pests was universal. 

 The more of one means the less of the other. ... I was in Cam- 

 bridge, Mass., about two weeks in August. Should I not be telling 

 the truth if I said that the loss of trees in the college yard was 

 really due to the scarcity of native birds there. I was told that 

 they were killed by an insect pest, a sort of borer. I should like 

 to see an insect of that sort fry to get a foothold in the society of 

 the really ubiquitous woodpeckers, flickers and so forth in our 

 beautiful valley. 



It is a fact that the trees in Harvard College yard are 

 believed to have been destroyed by the attacks of the gypsy 

 motiis, brown-tail moths and borers, and from what we know 

 of the case it seems quite probable that the work of the 

 borers might have been checked and the trees saved had native 

 birds been numerous in the locality. 



Mr. C. W. Vibert of South Windsor, Conn., tells me that 

 in 1908, when there was a great pest of tobacco worms in 

 that part of the Connecticut valley, flocks of grackles came 

 and picked up the worms that had been killed by the farmers 

 and also killed many living worms. Kingbirds and red 

 winged blackbirds also ate many and carried more to their 

 young. He has often seen robins killing and eating quan- 

 tities of these worms, but the flock of grackles seemed to stay 

 about the tobacco fields most of the time, killing worms. 

 ISTotwithstanding the value of these birds to the tobacco 

 growers, a movement is now under way in Connecticut to 

 have the protection of the law removed from blackbirds. 



Mr. O. A. Case of Barkhamstead, Conn., has watched 



