Birds of Allegany Park 243 



PRESERVATION OF BIRD LIFE IN ALLEGANY PARK 



Enemies of Birds and the Balance in Nature. In a great 

 recreation area such as the Allegany State Park is destined to be, 

 bird life is a most valuable asset. Birds are useful not only 

 economically as destroyers of forest insects, but also esthetically 

 and from the standpoint of recreation and education. Bird life 

 should therefore be carefully encouraged and protected. 



The possibilities with this object in view will include certain con- 

 structive lines of work. We can protect birds from enemies that 

 would tend to decrease their numbers. We can attract birds to the 

 Park or to camps or summer homes by making conditions favorable, 

 and to a limited extent we may increase their numbers. In the 

 development of the Park we can avoid the many procedures which 

 would tend to decrease and discourage bird life, however uninten- 

 tional such a result might be. 



In the protection of birds we may place their enemies in two 

 classes : the wild, natural enemies, and those enemies for which 

 man is responsible. The wild and natural enemies of birds have 

 long existed within the Park area. These consist of various mam- 

 mals such as the weasels, mink, fox, lynx, skunk and squirrels ; birds 

 themselves, including hawks, owls, jays, crows, and even smaller 

 forms such as the Red-headed Woodpecker, Cowbird and House 

 Wren ; snakes ; and probably parasitic forms among insects and 

 worms. In considering these enemies, we must realize the existence 

 of what has been termed the balance of nature. Each kind of animal 

 has its own struggle for existence. It must obtain food, escape its 

 enemies and reproduce its kind. In this struggle it depends upon 

 other forms of wild life which furnish in one way or another food 

 and shelter, and in the case of birds, nesting sites and nesting 

 materials. In this same struggle its enemies must prey upon it, 

 annually decreasing its numbers to nearly the same extent that it in- 

 creases them by reproduction. Each species is dependent upon its 

 associates in one way or another, and these species in turn upon 

 still others. The interrelations between different forms are there- 

 fore exceedingly intricate. The decrease or increase of the num- 

 bers of any one species causes a corresponding increase or decrease 

 in some other species, and that in turn of a third. When man, 

 through wholesale destruction of some species supposedly harmful 

 to him, disturbs this natural balance he may not merely decrease the 

 harmful kind, but tend to increase some other much more harmful, 

 or decrease some beneficial species. It is probable that the out- 

 breaks of harmful insects in vast and almost uncontrollable num- 

 bers might be traced back, if we understood the interrelation of 

 forms of life, to some disturbance of nature's balance by man. 



Further than this, the wild enemies of birds weed out from their 

 ranks the weaker individuals, those less fitted for the struggle for 

 existence. If through destruction of these enemies, the weaker ones 

 increase, disease or parasitic enemies may start, and spread from 

 weaker to stronger and do far more to decrease bird life than other 

 natural enemies ever would. 



