THE OOLOGIST 



145 



southern neighbors; and I hate to 

 have to say a word against them, be- 

 cause they are, in many ways, delight- 

 ful people. But all the same they are 

 heathens in attitude toward our birds. 

 As you know, nearly all our song and 

 insect-eating birds go south at the ap- 

 proach of winter to escape the cold 

 weather. As soon as they cross the 

 Ohio river, they are all considered 

 game, everything from a bluebird to 

 a robin and a meadowlark; and every 

 man and boy, white or black, that can 

 get hold of a gun goes after them. And 

 this we estimate is about 98 per cent 

 of the male population of the south. 

 Here in he north the proportion is 

 about the other way; only about 2 

 per cent of the men and boys own 

 guns and shoot, but down there they 

 nearly all do. 



The robin, the bird that you know 

 best and love most, is the favorite 

 game bird in the south. Why? Be- 

 cause he is the easiest mark of all. 

 Let me give you two instances of 

 robin hunting in the south. A so- 

 called prominent sportsman in a 

 southern city, the clerk of the county 

 court, went out in November on a 

 hunting expedition. He went to a 

 cedar grove five miles out of town, 

 where the robins had packed in lit- 

 erally in thousands and were eating 

 the berries. He killed 640 of them 

 that afternoon. Loaded his buggy 

 with them as long as she would lay 

 on, then filled two gunny sacks and 

 put them on top. He took these birds 

 to town, gave away a lot of them to 

 his friends, and sent a dozen of them 

 to the editor of a local paper, in order 

 to get himself written up as a 

 "mighty Nimrod." 



Slaughter in Tennessee 



Another hunting party was made 

 up in the little village in Tennessee 

 and drove out just before sundown 

 to another cedar grove. They took 



along guns, pitchforks and poles; 

 they provided themselves with lan- 

 terns and torch materials. When the 

 darkness came on they lighted their 

 torches and their lanterns. They 

 even built fires under the trees to 

 blind the poor birds still farther. 

 They raked them down with their 

 guns, their pitchforks, their poles and 

 their clubs until they killed over two 

 tiiousand of them; loaded a farm 

 wagon with them, drove them into 

 town, gave away what they could to 

 the few families in the village and 

 what they could not give away the 

 farmer fed to the hogs. And these 

 are only two instances among hun- 

 dreds I could tell you of if I had time. 

 It is safe to say that of the millions 

 of birds that go south every fall never 

 more than 10 per cent can live to get 

 back. 



Any of you who have had the 

 pleasure of traveling in the south in 

 winter, in recent years, if you have 

 gone into the big markets in the cities 

 and looked about you have doubtless 

 seen hanging there great strings of 

 our beautiful song birds, everything 

 from a bluebird to a robin, tagged for 

 sale at 10 to 30 cents a dozen. The 

 society women of the south send their 

 servants to the market to buy great 

 baskets of these birds, have them 

 dressed and made up into potpies and 

 invite their friends in to help eat 

 them. Possibly some of your ladies 

 may have had such invitations when 

 in the south. 



A bird potpie is considered one of 

 the greatest luxuries of the entire win- 

 ter season, in nearly all of the south- 

 ern cities. 



Yes, we hope to stop all this kill 

 ing of birds in the south under the 

 action of the migratory bird law 

 passed by congress two years ago. 

 Sportsmen of the North. 



Then the bird corps of this great 



