R-N8-31-31 



However, insects are not tho sold fOOa of skunks, "by any manner of means* 

 These bedutif-al little ■black and white "polWcato", as We used to call them, have 

 bteen accused of killing quail and other game "birds and of talcing chickens and 

 eggs, jlnd they do sometimes, hut more often they get "blamed for some other ani- 

 mal' s depredations. As a matter of fact, I've known quails to nest and hatch out 

 a "brood within a few rods of a skunlc den. The truth seems to "be that at the 

 season when our native game "birds are nesting, skunks have plenty of insect food. 

 By the time that insect food fails, the "birds are strong of wing and seldom f^ll 

 a prey to a polecat. 



As for the chickens, the skunk gets credit for a lot of killings "by 

 weasels and minks, which are much "better climbers and fair more bloodthirsty. 

 Likely as not, the skunk detected axound the hen house was there after the rats 

 and mice. Polecats are really remarkably fine mousers. Of course, the individ- 

 ual that hunts and kills chickens should be destroyed. 



Host such suspicion, the specialists tell me comes from the fact that 

 skunks work largely under cover of darkiiess and the person who sweepingly blames 

 the skunk usually doesn't go to the trouble of investigating thoroughly. Evi- 

 dence taken from the stomachs of a large number of skunks supports the idea that 

 skunks are on the whole highly beneficial in their food habits. 



And of course we all know tliat skunk skins are highly prized for fur. 

 Nowadays we just have three fairly abundant fur animals left in the United 

 States; the muskrat, the mink, and the skunk. The biologists say tliat there 

 seems to be little danger of extinction of the muslcrat, but that the mink is al- 

 ready in danger, and that the demand for skunk fur is causing more and more trap- 

 ping of skunks. 



However, as far as the fur question goes some of our specialists believe 

 that skunks can be domesticated and successfully raised in captivity in many 

 parts of the United States, 



And while we are mentioning misunderstood wild creatures, let me say a 

 good word for the European Starlings, now found as breeding birds in many of the 

 States east of the Mississippi River, In the last twenty years, they liave spread 

 fast, and there seems every reason to expect that they will continue to spread 

 westward to the Rocky Mountains, and if the Mountains don't stop them, right on 

 to the Pacific Coast, 



A lot of farmers and bird lovers have looked with suspicion on the ever- 

 increasing flocks of these birds and have accused them of many crimes. And 

 specialists of the Biological Survey admit that Starlings do damage cherries, and 

 other small fruits, and garden trucl:, and even late fruit and com. And probably 

 their f ilthr-producing roosting habits in cities are more largely responsible for 

 the bad name they have acquired. 



T7eighing atarling' s good habits against their bad ones, however, our 

 scientists credit starlings with doing much more good than harm. They are in- 

 sect eating birds, and observations of them in the field has established the 

 fact that the time spent by starlings in destroying crops or in molesting other 

 birds is short coi-npared to the endless hours they spend searching for insects 

 or feeding on wild fruit. 



Starlings help destroy such pests as the clover-leaf weevil- the Jap- 

 anese beetle, May beetles, cutworms, and yes, grasshoppers too, As insect de- 

 stroyers starlings are more energetic than pome of our protected native birds» 



