worth at least twenty dollars to the farmer. Certainly, if these birds are so valu- 

 able in Pennsylvania, they are much more valuable in a great agricultural state 

 like Illinois, where rodents and insects are so very destructive. It seems unreason- 

 able, as Fisher and others have pointed out, that many people will fondle and 

 protect a disease-spreading, bird-eating, poultry-stealing cat, and make war upon 

 our beneficial birds of prey which so effectively do the work for which some 

 people pretend to keep cats. Again, it seems inconceivable that so many people, 

 who get more of the rapid-breeding cats than they want, will haul them out and 

 drop thern along the roadside, there almost invariably to go hungry and cold until 

 they learn to catch the beautiful and valuable birds. It is cruel to treat cats thus, 

 while it would be humane to chloroform the surplus stock. This latter procedure 

 applied to the surplus stock and to any cats found eating poultry or birds would 

 very greatly lessen the enormous destruction of valuable birds. 



School teachers and their pupils can slowly but surely and permanently put 

 an end to the destruction of valuable birds by teaching in every community the 

 real benefits we derive from them. Many people believe that all birds of prey are 

 bad, just because an occasional individual acquires a perverted appetite.- No one 

 would punish all boys in school because one bad boy did wrong. No one would 

 shoot all dogs because one dog in the neighborhood killed sheep. But to punish 

 good and bad boys alike, or to kill good and bad dogs alike, is no more foolish 

 or wrong than to shoot good and bad hawks and owls indiscriminately. The rare 

 offender should be destroyed, but the great majority of beneficial birds of prey 

 should be protected lest we bring on a scourge of destructive rodents. 



If space permitted I might show how woodpeckers are also too generally 

 misunderstood. With their chisel-like beaks and their extensible, barbed, homy 

 tipped tongues they expose, spear and extract numberless destructive grubs and 

 borers in forest and fruit trees. Only the sap sucker does notable injury, and that 

 very rarely in Illinois. 



Woodpeckers, robins and many other valuable birds are frequently charged 

 with serious destruction to cherries and other small fruits. I am convinced that 

 where such occasionally occurs it is pretty largely our own fault. I have a tree 

 of black mulberries in my yard ripening when my cherries are mature. Birds 

 are numerous about the place, and while on this town lot we usually pick from 

 100 to 200 gallons of early Richmond cherries, we do not lose one per cent of the 

 crop to the birds. But while the ripening cherries are hanging near by and scarcely 

 a bird may be seen in the cherry trees, the mulberry tree is swarming with many 

 species of birds and a few squirrels literally filling themselves upon the more 

 d:isirable mulberries. The planting of a few mulberries or wild fruits for the birds 

 to feast upon will usually save the cultivated fruits from injury by the birds. 



All the birds in Illinois are protected by law with the exception of the English 

 sparrow, sharp-shinned hawk, Cooper's hawk, great horned owl, crow blackbird, 

 crow, bluejay and sap sucker. Boys and girls especially should see to it that the 

 others are protected and encouraged. Bird nests, especially, should not be 



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