288 Birds of Buzzard's Roost 



on the farm. It is one of the most nearly omniverous birds, 

 consuming large quantities of weed seeds, and destroying 

 many of the worst insect pests with which the farmer has to 

 contend. It does not injure grain, fruit, or any other crop. * 

 * * A careful computation of the total amount of weed seed 

 the Bob-white is capable of destroying is surprising in the 

 magnitude of the result. In the State of Virginia it is safe to 

 assume that from September 1 to April 30, the season when 

 the largest proportion of weed seed is consumed by birds, 

 there are four Bob-whites to the square mile, or 169,800 in 

 the entire State. The crop of each of these birds will hold 

 half an ounce of seed, and as at each of the two daily meals 

 weed seeds constitute at least half the contents of the crop, 

 or a quarter of an ounce, a half ounce daily is certainly con- 

 sumed by each bird. On this very conservative basis the 

 total consumption of weed seeds by Bob-whites from Septem- 

 ber 1 to April 30 in Virginia amounts to 573 tons. * * * 

 Furthermore, the proportion of injurious insects habitually 

 eaten by the Bob-white makes its services as a destroyer of 

 insects more valuable than those of many birds whose per- 

 centage of insect food, though greater, includes a smaller pro- 

 portion of injurious species. Conspicious among the pests 

 which the Bob-white destroys are the potato beetle, the twelve 

 spotted cucumber beetle, the bean-leaf beetle, the squash lady- 

 bird, wire worms and their beetles, May-beetles, such weevils 

 as the corn-hill bug, the imbricated snout-beetle, the clover 

 leaf weevil, and the Mexican cotton-ball weevil, the striped 

 garden caterpillar, the army worm, the cotton worm, the boll 

 worm, various species of cut worms, the corn-louse ant, the 

 red-legged grasshopper, the Rocky Mountain locust, and the 

 chinch bug." And yet, notwithstanding this splendid record 

 of the usefulness of the Bob-whites no birds are more persist- 

 ently persecuted and killed than are they. 



"The thundering guns are heard on every side, 

 The wounded coveys, reeling, scatter wide; 

 The feathered field mates, bound by nature's tie, 

 See mothers, children in one carnage lie." 



