350 HOMING WITH THE BIRDS 



task to preserve useful bird life, not to take it on 

 any excuse whatever. But going beyond the limits 

 of my work, comes that of the statisticians, who 

 have carefully counted how often birds fed their 

 young in a given time, and who have not hesitated 

 to kill our most exquisite songsters by the dozen 

 in order to analyze the contents of their crops. The 

 general summing up of both branches of investiga- 

 tion results in the verdict that life on this planet 

 would be insupportable without the protection 

 afforded us by the birds against winged pests, 

 bugs, worms, and caterpillars, larvae, aphis, and 

 lice. With the usual exactness of nature in work- 

 ing out her evolution, every scjuare yard of earth 

 and air seems to be especially policed by these 

 watchful, feathered servitors of ours, busy in their 

 daily work of sustaining bird life, having not the 

 slightest knowledge of what their work, beauty, 

 and music mean to us. 



Over the waters of my lake, during the fall and 

 spring migration, I see wild geese, ducks, loons, 

 galinules, coots, gulls and grebes feeding in flocks. 

 They keep our lakes from becoming overcrowded 

 with fish, and feed on countless larvae and worms 

 around the shore. During the summer, a few of the 

 ducks — once a loon — and uncounted coots and grebes 

 nest around the shore lines, reducing objectionable 

 water larvae and keeping the frog production with- 

 in the balance demanded by nature. Around the 

 swampy shore line, stalk cranes, herons, bitterns, 



