304 Birds of Buzzard's Roost 



mice, twenty shrews, one star nosed mole, and one English 

 sparrow. In the Department of Agriculture at Washington, 

 forty-nine stomachs of the red-legged hawk were examined 

 and it was found that forty of them contained mice, and five 

 of them contained such small rodents as rabbits, gophers, 

 weasels and shrews. In eighty-eight stomachs of the logger- 

 head shrike, only seven birds were found, and it was ascer- 

 tained that mice constituted fifty per cent, of their food. In 

 1885 the State of Pennsylvania passed what was called the 

 "Scalp Act," offering a bounty for the scalps of hawks and 

 owls. The United States Department of Agriculture has 

 estimated that the passage of that act resulted in killing over 

 one hundred thousand of these birds and that by their 

 slaughter, the state sustained a loss of near four million dol- 

 lars in one year and a half. 



Prof. Weed says, "After many years of study of the re- 

 lations of birds to agriculture, I am convinced that the birds 

 are a most potent factor in making crop production possible, 

 and without them, we should be overrun with pests verte- 

 brate and invertebrate to an extent of which we have no 

 conception." Michelet, the great French historian and na- 

 turalist in his "Insect Life" said, "If all the birds of the world 

 were destroyed, it would be uninhabitable for men in nine 

 years." Do not all of these facts give us good sound practical 

 reasons for protecting the birds? 



Birds are unique in their structure. They are the only 

 creatures that are covered with feathers. The structure of 

 these feathers is very wonderful. Notice how light they are, 

 yet how strong. How they are adapted to retaining the heat 

 of the body, and aiding in the flight of the bird. Examine 

 the vanes on each side of the shaft and see how wonderfully 

 the thin laminae are interlocked. With all our ingenuity we 

 can make nothing like them. We can not counterfeit them. 

 The Indians of the Shasta Mountains have a beautiful little 

 legend about the origin of birds. The Great Spirit, they say, 

 in looking upon the bright hued leaves of autumn thought 

 them too beautiful to die. So he endowed them with new life 

 and gave to them wings and song : 



