FIFTY COMMON BIRDS OF FARM AND 



ORCHARD 



Prepared under the direction of Henry IV. Henshaw, Chief of the 

 Biological Survey, as Bulletin 575 of the U. S. Department of Agri- 

 culture, and reprinted in full in the National Geographic Mac.azixk, 

 pages 66^-6(^/, by special permission of the Secretary of Agriculture. 



INTRODUCTION. 



This bulletin is intended to serve the very practical purpose of enabling our farmers 

 and their boys and girls to identify the birds that frequent the farm and orchard. The 

 material prosperity of State and Nation depends largely on agriculture, and any agent 

 that serves to increase the size of crops and insiu-e their certaiuty is of direct interest 

 and importance to the farmer. Birds constitute one of the most valuable of these 

 agents, since they depend largely for their food on insects which are among the farmer's 

 most dreaded foes. 



Entomologists have estimated that insects yearly cause a loss of upwards of 

 $700,000,000 to the agricultural interests of the United States. Were it not for our birds 

 the loss would be very much greater, and indeed it is believed that without the aid 

 of our feathered friends successful agriculture would be impossible. A knowledge of 

 the birds that protect his crops is, therefore, as important to the farmer as a knowledge 

 of the insect pests that destroy them. Such knowledge is the more important because 

 the relation of birds to man's interests is extremely complex. Thus, while it may be 

 said that most of our birds are useful, there are only a few of them that are always and 

 everywhere useful and that never do harm. Insectivorous birds, for instance, destroy, 

 aloi^ with a vast number of harmful insects, some parasitic and predatory kinds. 

 These latter are among Nature's most effective agents for keeping destructive insects 

 in check. To the extent, then, that birds destroy useful parasitic insects, they are 

 harmful. But, taking the year round, the good they do by the destruction of insects 

 injurious to man's interests far outweighs the little harm they do. It may be said, 

 too, that of the birds usually classed as noxious there are very few that do not possess 

 redeeming traits. Thus the crow is mischievous in spring and sorely taxes the farmer's 

 patience and ingenuity to prevent him from pulling up the newly planted corn. 

 Moreover, the crow destroys the eggs and young of useful insectivorous and game 

 birds; but, on the other hand, he eats many insects, especially white grubs and cut- 

 worms, and destroys many meadow mice, so that in much (although not all) of the 

 region he inhabits the crow must be considered to be more useful than harmful. Most 

 of the hawks and owls even — birds that have received so bad a name that the farmer's 

 boy and the sportsman are ever on the alert to kill them — arc very useful because 

 they destroy vast numbers of insects and harmful rodents. 



Birds occupy a unique position among the enemies of insects, since their powers 

 of flight enable them at short notice to gather at points where there are abnormal insect 

 outbreaks. An unusual abundance of grasshoppers, for instance, in a given locality 

 Boon attracts the birds from a wide area, and as a nile their visits cease only when there 

 are no grasshoppers left. So also a marked increase in the number of small rodents in a 

 given neighborhood speedily attracts the attention of hawks and owls, which, by 

 reason of their voracious appetites, soon produce a marked diminution of the swarm- 

 ing foe. 



America is greatly favored in the number and character of its birds, which not only 

 include some of the gems of the bird world, as the warblers and humming birds, but 



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