DESTRUCTION AND PROTECTION. 



Where game birds are left to look out for themselves, 

 civilized man and the conditions he brings with him 

 constitute their most destructive enemy. It is not so 

 much the number of birds killed by man as the changes 

 which he works in the land that affect the birds and 

 often make life impossible for them. Of these changes, 

 the most important is the clearing up and cultivation of 

 woodland the cutting down of forests and the drain- 

 ing of swamps. Most wild creatures require cover to 

 afford them shelter from their enemies, while the far- 

 mer wishes the ground to be free from all cover 

 except that which his crops afford, and these crops are 

 standing for a few months only. Without cover, the 

 quail, the wild turkey, the grouse and the woodcock 

 cannot exist. Wild birds depend for safety largely on 

 their protective coloring, which makes it easy for them 

 to escape notice in their chosen haunts, and on their 

 habit of flying on the approach of danger to refuges 

 where they may hide. But if forest and brush are cut 

 away the partridge and the quail have no places in 

 which to seek safety ; if the tall grass of prairie sloughs 

 and ravines is mowed and the soil ploughed up, the 

 prairie chicken is without place of concealment; if the 

 swamp is drained and the alders, birches and spice- 



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