24 LEGISLATION FOE THE PROTECTION OE BIRDS. 



(Montana), 'any other bird whose habits are not essentially pred- 

 atory upon and destructive of the agricultural products of man 

 (West Virginia), 'birds of like nature that promote agriculture and 

 horticulture by feeding on noxious worms and insects, or that are 

 attractive in appearance or cheerful in song' (Nebraska). Only one 

 State, South Carolina, distinctly limits the term to ' any bird whose 

 principal food is insects.' 



Probably less than two-thirds of the North American birds are, 

 strictly speaking, insectivorous, and a much smaller proportion are 

 properly song birds. Beside the four orders of perching birds (Pas- 

 seres), swifts and hummingbirds (Macrochires), woodpeckers (Pici), 

 and cuckoos (Coccyges), which comprise a little more than 600 species, 

 few groups contain many species which can be considered insectivorous. 

 Even a liberal interpretation of the term excludes more than one-third 

 of the birds unless they are protected by some additional clause, such 

 as 'plume birds,' which is adopted in the Florida statute to cover 

 herons, ibises, cranes, and curlews. 



In the report of the New Jersey Fish and Game Commission for 

 1899, some objections to the indefinite term 'insectivorous' are stated 

 as follows: 



The question naturally arises as to what constitutes an insectivorous bird. Is a 

 bird to be regarded as insectivorous which feeds on insects for two or three weeks 

 every year? Under the provisions of the present law persons might be prosecuted 

 for killing shore birds, for these feed to a great extent on aquatic insects, and the 

 prosecution against a person for having killed reedbirds during the open season would 

 result in a conviction, for the reedbirds destroy insects in large numbers, and the 

 prohibition of the law against killing insectivorous birds is certainly sweeping. 1 



Although this is doubtless an extreme, if not erroneous, interpreta- 

 tion of the phrase, it shows the objection to the use of this term unless 

 qualified in some such way as in the South Carolina statute. But the 

 chief objection is that the definition is vague and instead of going too 

 far, does not go far enough, and thus fails to cover a large number of 

 birds which are as worthy of protection as those which depend mainly 

 on insects for food. 



Inasmuch as game birds constitute but a small proportion of the 

 avifauna of any State, it seems more reasonable to enumerate them and 

 extend protection to all others, as is now the practice in some States 

 (see pp. 63, 67, 82). This may be done quite briefly by following the 

 groups or families and orders into which ornithologists combine vari- 

 ous species. Of the 17 orders of North American birds shown in the 

 table on page 25, only 4 (marked with an asterisk) include true game 

 birds and but 4 others species which are properly insectivorous, so that 

 by defining game birds, as suggested by the American Ornithologists' 



1 See Forest and Stream, LIV, pp. 9-10, January 6, 1900. 



