AMERICAN BIRDS OF PREY 



467 



is a little falcon, related to the Kestrel 

 of Europe, but, unlike the European Spar- 

 rowhawk, an inveterate bird-killer, re- 

 lated to our Sharpshin. Our little fal- 

 con, the most ornate and beautiful of 

 American hawks, is of invaluable service 

 to agriculture by virtue of his fondness 

 for grasshoppers. Occasionally he catches 

 a bird ; about a third of his diet is mice, 

 but far the largest part is insects. Dur- 

 ing June, July, and August, when the 

 young are being raised, they are fed over 

 their weight daily on grasshoppers. 



The service rendered by owls is even 

 less appreciated than that of hawks, be- 

 cause they are mostly nocturnal, and 

 hence are seldom heard and almost never 

 seen. Owls are quite as expert mousers 

 and ratters as the diurnal birds of prey, 

 and the Great Horned is the only one 

 which deserves a consistently bad repu- 

 tation. . 



The Barred Owl lives almost exclu- 

 sively on field and white-footed mice, 

 ■ with chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, craw- 

 fish, and insects to vary the menu. 



The Barn Owl, common all over the 

 warmer parts of America, is exclusively 

 a rodent feeder, and is lOO per cent bene- 

 ficial, while both the long-eared and 

 short-eared species are in virtually the 

 same category, the Long-ear foraging in 

 and around the margins of wooded areas 

 and the Short-ear frequenting the wet 

 meadows and marshes for voles, shrews, 

 and mice. 



Everywhere the commonest of all, the 

 little Screech Owl, is the bird that most 

 people hear and recognize. His soft, 

 quavering call and velvety tooting are 

 familiar and welcome sounds to those who 

 know him, for he is the one owl that can 

 and does survive with the taming of the 

 land. Indeed, he seems to thrive best in 

 the more thickly settled farming regions, 

 nesting in the "woodlot" or orchard, in 

 the village parks, or in the more wooded 

 estates in the suburbs of large cities. 



No bird of prey has a more varied list 

 of food than this smallest of our com- 

 mon owls, as the following summary will 

 show: Of 212 stomachs examined, 39 

 contained feathers, 112 small mammals, 

 100 insects, 2 lizards, 4 batrachians, i 

 fish, 5 spiders, 9 crawfish, 2 scorpions, 

 2 earthworms, and 7 "miscellaneous." 



The beautiful Snowy Owl, which comes 

 in winter to the northern portions of the 

 United States, has in some curious man- 

 ner had protection specifically withdrawn 

 from it and stands on the list of unpro- 

 tected "vermin" on the game laws of the 

 land. Out of 26 evidence-bearing ex- 

 aminations, 20 revealed injurious mam- 

 mals and II had feathers among their 

 contents. This is surely in favor of the 

 Snowy Owl, which in winter is fre- 

 quently seen along the seashore or on the 

 ice-edge on the Great Lakes. 



A PLEA FOR THE FARMEr's AIR SCOUTS 



Is there not some direct way to bring 

 before the agricultural and economic 

 forces of our land their true relation to 

 our birds of prey? 



It is surely short-sighted voluntarily to 

 destroy the greatest natural check on the 

 greatest natural enefnies of our greatest 

 natural resource, and it would seem that 

 merely proving the point that the birds 

 of prey do even a little more good than 

 harm would be sufficient to insure them 

 complete protection. But it is easy to 

 show that they are, all in all, of very vast 

 value to our rural interests, and that 

 their beneficial offices would be multiplied 

 exactly in proportion to their increase 

 under adequate protection. 



It is largely our conservatism, the un- 

 willingness to give up an idea that has 

 long had lodgment in our minds, com- 

 bined with the apparently complicated 

 problem of "which is which," that has 

 made the valuable species suffer from 

 the misdeeds of the noxious ones, until 

 now the situation is in many places really 

 critical. 



The time is not far away when one of 

 two things must happen : Either proper 

 and adequate protection must be granted 

 and enforced, covering all birds of prey 

 except the Goshawk, Cooper's Hawk, 

 Sharp-shinned Hawk, Pigeon Hawk, 

 Duck Hawk, and Great Horned Owl, the 

 whole country over, or we shall soon find 

 it too late to avail ourselves of their in- 

 estimable services, and must find new, 

 costly, and far less efficient means of 

 protecting our rural interests from the 

 hordes of rapidly multiplying enemies 

 that will continue, in ever-increasing 

 numbers, to wage war upon agriculture. 



