The Audubon Note Book. 



109 



AMONG THE BIRDS IN TEXAS. 



Editor Audubon Alagazitie: 



As we live in the land of birds it seems fit that we 

 should be interested in their protection. Our home 

 is embowered amid large spreading oaks, cedars and 

 chinas, besides mulberries (now ripe) which seems 

 to draw all the feathered tribe, and their songs 

 make the air ring with their cheering music, besides 

 apple, peach, pear and plum, all set off with flowers 

 of many hues in front, and ivies and geraniums fill- 

 ing the house with their pleasant perfume. I wish 

 you people, pent up in your great city, could hear 

 and see for a day the birds and their music, which 

 fills the air with song. We have two martin houses 

 and about tweny-five noisy tenants, which chirp, 

 twitter and sing all day long; jays in numbers, blue- 

 birds, bee martins, redbirds, thrushes, wrens, tom- 

 tits, snowbirds, blackbirds, yellowhammers, sap- 

 suckers, woodpeckers and many others, all singing 

 at once; but last and loudest and longest and sweet- 

 est, as the leader of the band, is our own mocking- 

 bird, and every one without regard to the other, sing- 

 ing as if the exhibition depended on himself. And 

 when night comes on, the disconsolate whippoorwill 

 puts in his or her sad refrain, rendered more dis- 

 cordant by the hooting of the swamp owl and the 

 chilling, shivering notes of the screech owl and 

 rumbling of the swallows or chimney sweeps, which 

 well nigh takes the poetry out of the whole tribe, 

 and we feel like turning loose the destroying urchin 

 to quell the riot; but now from his dreamy perch the 

 mocking bird trills, carols, and warbles forth his 

 sweet notes that lull us to sleep, and we thank the 

 Creator for the lovely songsters that drive away 

 eternal silence. Tully Choice. 



KiLGORE, Texas, May 10. 



SEALS, SEA LIONS, SEA GULLS. 



Editor Audubon Magazine : 



Have just read an item — can't such fiendishness 

 be stopped by somebody? — " Fishermen in Shinne- 

 cock Bay stuff small fish with arsenic or strychnine 

 in order to poison the sea gulls, which they sell to 

 feather dealers," and San Francisco fishermen say 

 the sea lions and seals must be made away with be- 

 cause they eat up 44,000 tons of fish every year. 



San Francisco. 



[Our correspondent is very indignant, and justly 

 so, at the wanton destruction of gulls for the sake of 

 their feathers, and scarcely less indignant at the 

 proposed eradication of the seals and sea lions of 

 the Pacific Coast on the plea that they make away 

 with forty-four thousand tons of fish every year; but 

 we must draw a great distinction between the motives 



which prompt to action in the two cases. In the first 

 case we have to do with wanton destruction to gratify 

 vanity in defiance of the generally recognized fact 

 that birds are in some way necessary to human well- 

 being. Here the moral nature is at fault. In the 

 second case the proposal to kill off the seals and sea 

 lions is justified by the assumption that the measure 

 is necessary or at least conducive to human well- 

 being by increasing our food supply. Here it is only 

 the head that is at fault, the fishermen having cal- 

 culated or got hold of the calculation, on perhaps 

 respectable authority, that the seals and sea lions 

 consume forty or fifty thousand tons of fish a year 

 on the Californian coast, conclude very naturally that 

 the supply of fish available for the fisherman is cor- 

 respondingly reduced. This hasty conclusion might 

 have some justification if all the fish taken by the 

 seals and sea lions were herbivorous, but as nearly 

 all of them are carnivorous, the calculation requires 

 that against the weight of fish consumed by the seals 

 and sea lions we should set off first the weight which 

 these fish would collectively have consumed had they 

 escaped the seals' and sea lions' jaws, and if this does 

 not balance the account in favor of the seals, we 

 should take into calculation the additional fact that 

 they prey only on fish which in themselves are sub- 

 stantial mouthfuls, while the daintier fish prey in 

 great part upon shoals of young fish requiring a 

 great num.ber for a meal. Attaching due weight to 

 these considerations, there is no reason whatever to 

 suppose that the presence of the seals and sea lions 

 tend to diminish the available stock of fish in the 

 ocean; on the contrary, it is reasonably assumable 

 that their presence may conduce to the maintenance 

 of a liberal supply. As we have argued before in 

 this magazine, there may be some errors in the plan 

 of creation, but they are nothing in comparison with 

 the errors which man falls into in his efforts to 

 straighten things out.] 



THE MOCKINGBIRD AND THE SPARROW. 



An observant gentleman of our city says he thinks 

 that he hears fewer of the South's greatest songsters, 

 the mockingbirds, now warbling than ever before, 

 and believes that the feathered singers are abandon- 

 ing this section. The only way he can account for 

 their disappearance is the advent in this section of 

 those little pests, the English sparrows. They are 

 turbulent and pugnacious little birds, and all other 

 birds which do not possess the same characteristics 

 make haste to abandon their favorite retreats and 

 leave the sparrows in possession of the field. It 

 would be a real pity indeed if the South's favorite 

 birds should be forced out or exterminated by the 

 English sparrow. — N'atchez {Miss.) Democrat, May^. 



