212 
FOREST AND STREAM 
[Sept, g, 1905. 
The Natural Enemies of Birds. 
BY EDWARD HOWE FORBXJSH. 
From the “Special Report on the Decrease of Certain Birds, and 
its Causes, - with . Suggestions for Bird Protection,” in the 
Fifty-second Annual Report of the Massachusetts State Board of 
Agriculture. 
The Red Fox. 
Fifty-eight people regard the fox as one of the most 
injurious enemies of birds, thus placing it next to the cat 
in destructiveness. This is entirely at variance with my 
experience. I have followed the tracks of foxes for many 
weary miles through the snow about Warehain,^ where 
they seem to live, in winter at least, on mice, marine ani- 
mals, an occasional muskrat, and such bones and dead 
marine and other animals as they can pick up ; but I have 
never seen any conclusive evidence there that a fox had 
killed a bird. My son dug out a fox’s burrow, but there 
was no sign that any live bird had been taken there. 
Foxes pick up all sorts of meat scraps, chicken legs, 
heads, etc., and kill some birds, as well as poultry; but, 
according to my experience, this is the exception and not 
the rule. 
Mr. William Brewster, who has been in the woods 
more than most gunners or sportsmen, tells me that he 
has seen very little positive evidence of the destruction 
of birds by foxes, although occasionally they kill game 
birds. Mr. William S. Perry, of Worcester, says that 
foxes kill practically no birds. He has shot a great many 
foxes and examined their stomach contents, as well as 
those of foxes killed by others, and says he has never 
found the remains of a bird in a fox’s stomach. ^ 
At a recent meeting" of the Massachusetts Fish and 
Game Protective Association, Mr. A. B. F. Kinney stated 
that he had examined the stomachs of eighty-five foxes 
and found only two quail, one" woodcock and one part- 
ridge. Mice, frogs, rabbits, berries and frozen apples 
were among the food material found. 
Mr. H. W. Tinkham, of Touisset. says that in his hunts 
this year he has observed only one case where a bird had 
been killed by a fox; the bird was a crow. Of thirteen 
fox stomachs he examined, only two showed any remains 
of birds; and out of ninety fox excrements, only _ one 
showed birds’ remains. The food evidently consisted 
mainly of mice and other small mammals.^ 
This, however, is only negative evidence. There is con- 
vincing, positive evidence of the destructiveness of the 
fox to offer. Mr. C. L. Perkins, of Newburyport, writes: 
“Have made it a practice, when skinning foxes, to open 
the stomach, and have found, in seasons of bare ground, 
moles, field-mice, etc. ; but when the earth is covered 
with snow, the stomach will generally contain remains 
of grouse or rabbits. This is, no doubt, due to the habit 
of the grouse to bury in the snow.” 
Mr. F. B. McKechnie, of Ponkapog, tells tlie follow- 
ing: ' “In May and June of the_ present year I was at a 
loss to account for the destruction of numbers of birds 
nests found by a friend and myself about Ponkapog. Cat- 
birds, song, sparrows, thrashers, black-billed cuckoos, 
ovenbirds, redstarts and other nests were robbed of their 
contents with astonishing rapidity. Red squirrels and 
snakes were very scarce in the pasture where these nests 
were found, and after some discussion we laid the de- 
struction to foxes. It is well known that foxes will fol- 
low a man’s track; but it was not for some time that we 
found out that they were deliberately following us, and 
taking the eggs and young of all the nests, either on or 
near the ground, which we had stopped to examine. In 
the first part of June we got the first clew, when a young- 
fox, following Mr. Horton, walked to within a few yards 
of him in a swamp where he had stopped to watch a 
Canada warbler. In the morning of June 19 Mr. Horton 
again saw two foxes, nearly full-grown, skulking along 
behind him. He directed me to a song sparrow s nest 
with six eggs which he had found and photographed 
during the morning, but before I got there the eggs were 
taken. In fact, as many as twelve nests were robbed be- 
fore we discovered the cause.” 
Mr. I. Chester Horton corroborates this. He writes : 
“I have spent some time the last two- years in photo- 
graphing birds’ nests on, or near, the ground, and was 
sorry to find in 1904 that nearly all the nests I visited 
were robbed and destroyed. One song sparrow’s nest 
was robbed -a few hours after I visited it, apparently by 
some animal that had followed my track. _ One morning, 
while watching a . bird, I concealed myself in the branches 
of a small pine tree. While watching there I heard a fox 
bark, and soon found he was coming in my direction. In 
a few minutes two foxes ' appeared, following my track, 
and came within fifty feet of where I stood, stopped as 
though they partly detected riiy presence, and, after play- 
ing a few minutes, made off into the woods. On another 
occasion a half-grown fox, following my track,_ came 
within fifteen feet of where I stood, perfectly motionless, 
in a swamp. I have no doubt that foxes discoveied that 
I was seeking birds’ nests, and followed me and robbed 
the nests I found. ' 
“While photographing nests I found three ovenbirds 
nests, within a radius of a few hundred feet; one being 
partly built, the other two with freshly laid eggs. I 
waited several days and visited them again. I should 
have stated that one of these nests was about five feet 
from a path, and, knowing that something was following 
me and destroying nests, I did not move out of the path 
in visiting this nest. The nest that I found partly built 
I photographed after it had eggs, as it was rather pecu- 
liar, being constructed entirely of, and lined with, pine 
$The inadequacy of an examination of stomach contents alone 
to determine the character of an animal’s food is seen, when we 
consider that we get, in this way, evidence of only one meal out 
ef g.11 that the aniinal has 4«r4>g entire lifetirfif. 
needles. I also intended to photograph the third nest, 
with the bird on it, as she was very tame; but on my 
third visit it had been . robbed, as was tbe one I photo- 
graphed. I visited the one by the path several times, but 
■never stepped out of the path, and did not photograph it, 
and was gratified to see the eggs hatch out and the young 
grow to be large enough to leave the nest. One nest I 
found, that of a brown thrush, two feet high in a blue- 
berry bush, was robbed when it had young half grown.” 
If , foxes follow the tracks of people who find birds’ 
nests, then bird study and photography may prove dan- 
gerous to the birds. 
Mr. C. E. Ingalls once intimated to me that he had 
some reason to believe that a fox had followed his tracks 
to a bird’s nest. In response to a written inquiry he 
sends the following : “1 had at one time under observa- 
tion tbe nest of a meadowlark. One afternoon about sun- 
down Tpassed the nest wdth its full complement of young 
a day or two old, wdth everything looking favorable for 
a successful development. I passed from the meadow 
where the nest was situated up to. a hillside adjoining, and 
in full view of the location of the nest. I seated myself 
upon the ground to watch some spotted sandpipers that I 
felt sure were nesting beside the brook flowing through 
the meadow, wdien I saw a fox come to the lower end of 
the meadow and begin to bunt, as I supposed, for mice. 
In the course of his quartering over the ground he ap- 
parently stumbled on to my lark’s nest, and, as he became 
aware of its proximity, he pounced sharply to one side 
right into it. I jumped to my feet and shouted to him, 
and ran toward the nest, wdiile Mr. Fox loped airily and 
quickly to the woods. When I arrived on the scene, two 
of the young were gone and one other lay about a foot 
from tbe nest, dead. 
“One pleasant evening in May I was sitting on a log- 
near the edge of a piece of mowing land, where it joined 
some scrub on the edge of a wood. * * While 
w'aiting, I saw a fox on the edge of the grass land minc- 
ing along, in no hurry, and evidently hunting for mice or 
grasshoppers, as he would thrust his muzzle into the 
grass, then dance around as if watching some moving 
object in the grass, make a grab, then move along, all the 
time coming nearer to my position, which was hidden 
from him so long as I remained motionless. Suddenly 
when the fox was within five or six rods of me, a big 
ball of feathers flew out of the scrub at him and drove 
him some distance into the grass land. I immediately 
sized the situation up. A partridge (ruffed grouse) was 
warning Mr. Fox that she had claims to that particular 
tract of land that he would be required to respect. But 
Mr. Fox was evidently hungry, so he followed the brave 
little mother back to her nest beside a stump on the edge 
of the scr-Lib. Although the bird made one or more 
rushes, they were of no avail, and, although I did not at 
first intend to harm the fox, as at that time of year he 
would be of no use to me dead, I regarded it, in the light 
of recent developments, to be a case for armed interven- 
tion, so put a bullet where it would dO' the most good, 
and he died within his length of the nest, with his mouth 
and throat filled with egg contents.” 
Probably foxes kill some of the young of the smaller 
birds when they are learning to fly, catching them as cats 
do. Of this habit Mr. F. H. Mosher says : “I have seen 
but one instance of the fox catching a bird,_ and that was 
several years ago. I was standing on a rise of ground 
that overlooked a wet meadow. A fox came out of the 
woods and appeared to be hunting for mice in the grass. 
As he came opposite a small clump of bushes, a small bird 
flew out and started for the woods. The fox ran a few 
steps after it and gave a tremendous spring, and caught 
it on the wing. Probably it was a young bird.” 
If foxes quarter over the ground in summer, as they 
certainly do in winter, it would seem impossible for any 
nest on the ground to escape their notice, unless, indeed, 
they are unable to smell the sitting bird. Prof. C. F. 
Hodge told me in 1903 that he had found by experiment 
that trained pointer and setter dogs were unable to find 
a ruffed grouse sitting on her nest, even when, in one 
case, the bird had left her nest and walked about a short 
time previously. This seems to indicate that these birds 
leave no scent during incubation ; but Mr. Brewster in- 
forms me that , his dog on more than one occasion found 
a woodcock on her nest. It seems probable, however, that 
ordinarily dogs and foxes find only such nests as they 
happen to stumble upon ; otherwise, what is to prevent 
them from destroying the broods of nearly all ground 
breeding birds? 
In order to determine the value of the evidence against 
the natural enemies of birds, letters were written to near- 
ly all who regarded crows, jays, foxes, squirrels and 
"W'easels as particularly injurious, inquiring what evidence 
had led to this conclusion. Some of the replies showed 
that the evidence was merely hearsay, others appeared to 
be the result of personal observation. 
Regarding foxes, Mr. J. H. Wood, of Pittsfield, writes 
as follows : “I visited a swamp in the vicinity of Ashley 
Lake for the purpose of running the white rabbits with 
a hound. There had been a heavy snowfall a day or two 
before, and in following a bank, on the edge of the swamp 
we noticed several holes in the snow at the foot of the 
bank under some spruce trees. We also^ noticed a fox 
track and .some feathers about a hole. This led me to 
investigate, and I found that this one fox had killed four 
out of the seven partridge that had taken refuge in the 
snow from the storm of the previous day. We tracked 
this fox from where he had eaten the first bird to a ledge, 
where we succeeded in finding one of the birds that had 
been carried there by the fox. My next experience was 
in 1902, about the 20th of November, when I found a 
place where some men were getting out stone. They _had 
uncovered a fox’s burrow where there had been a litter 
of fox^§ th? -past summer, pnd if you could have seep the 
parts and feathers of the partridge you would have, been 
surprised.” 
Mr. W. J. Cross, of Becket, also in Berkshire county, 
a fox hunter himself, says : “Every hunter of the fox has 
found, when following a track, the circle of feathers tell- 
ing the story of where the ruffed grouse made his last 
dive under the snow to furnish a meal for Mr. Fox the 
next morning.” 
. Mr. W. H. Snow, of Becket, says : “I have seen where 
the foxes have killed and eaten the partridges when there 
is a snow storm. The partridges get under spruce trees 
to get shelter for the night, and they are caught by the 
foxes.” 
Mr. Thomas Allen, of Bernardston, Franklin county, 
asserts that he has found the remains of grouse partly 
eaten, or feathers alone remaining, where fox tracks 
showed plainly. Others have related to- him similar ‘ex- 
periences. One saw a fox eating a grouse. 
Mr. George E. Whitehead, of Millbury, Worcester 
county, says : “Every observing hunter or trapper can 
tell you the story of the fox’s attempt tO' ambush a part- 
ridge, as told by the tracks on the snow. One can plainly 
see how the fox took advantage of every bit of natural 
cover, while he sneaked to where he made his spring. The 
fact that a few feathers' are left shows that he met with 
success.” 
Mr. Oti-s Thayer, of West Quincy, Norfolk county, 
says that after the Blue Hills Reservation was closed to 
hunters, game increased very rapidly, for foxes were 
scarce ; but as the foxes increased, game decreased. 
Formerly, he says, this region was good hunting ground ; 
now he finds no game, but always finds foxes. They are 
now so plentiful that they are becoming destructive to 
poultr3' as the game decreases. 
Mr. W. H. Aspinwall, secretary of the Massachusetts 
Rod and Gun Club, writes as follows : “During the last 
few years I have twice, if I remember aright, found the 
place where a fox had very recently killed a partridge and 
eaten him. It was so recent an act that my setter pointed 
at the place, and I went up and found the remains of the 
partridge, and foxes’ tracks all around. The only fox 
that I ever shot I ran on quite unexpectedly while work- 
ing up a bevy of quail. It was a young dog fox, and he 
was on the same errand that I was, for the quail flushed 
when I killed the fox. I have made a great many 'in- 
quiries among the native hunters in our country, districts, 
and they all believe that foxes and skunks, especially in 
the breeding season, are very destructive to our game 
birds. I have been told by a number that in digging out 
foxes that have holed they have found the remains of 
partridges, and even of the smaller birds, such as robins, 
etc. Only last week a friend of mine who- is an extreme- 
ly good observer and sportsman told me that he found 
the remains of a robin which a fox had just killed.' I 
believe that the chief difficulty is in the breeding season, 
when it is quite easy for foxes to catch the hen bird on ; 
a nest. I think that most people agree that, as the foxes 
have increased tremendously in numbers in the neighbor- 
hood of our reservations, such as the Blue Hills Reser- ' 
vation, the partridges have decreased in about the same 
proportion. That foxes have increased in eastern Massa- 
chusetts is proved by the evidence that within the last few 
years a great deal of poultry has been destroyed, even in 1 
such a closely populated district as Chestnut Hill ; and ; 
foxes have been seen quite frequently. I believe that the 
State should in some way make a decided stand in de- 
stroying the vermin in the reservations, if they desire to - 
make this a favorite breeding ground for the birds.” ' 
Considerable further evidence of this same_ character 
was received. There is at least one reservation where 
foxes are not protected. Mr. Charles P. Price, superin- . 
tendent of the Middlesex Fells Reservation, tells me that' 
the foxes have been all killed or driven out of the reser- 
vation, and that game birds have increased there. About ; 
fifteen foxes per year were killed for three years. 
Mr. Henry B. Bigelow, of Cohasset, says : “Foxes are , 
particularly destructive to* quail and partridges in this 
neighborheod ; the entrance to every fox hole is strewn 
with their feathers, and to my certain knowledge one fox, 
in 1899, killed, during the autumn, six out of a covey of 
twelve to- fourteen quail. Partridges also- suffer, as , 
shown by the presence of their feathers about the dens, 
as do also- domestic fowls.” 
Mr. S. J. Harris, of East Dedham, writes : “I once 
shot at a fox having a partridge in his mouth. I did not- 
know that it was a partridge when I fired at the fox, but; 
he dropped it when I fired, and, of course, I got the 
partridge.” 
The limits of this report will not permit the printing- 
of half the evidence received against the fox. Some evi- ' 
dence from, other parts of the State is given in brief 
below. “A common occurrence to- find where foxes have 
caught and eaten partridges, both on snow and bare; 
ground.” (Herbert A. Bent, Franklin, Norfolk county.) ‘ 
“Have never yet seen a section of country where foxes 
and partridges were plentiful at the same time.” (H. R. , 
Packard, Attleborough, Bristol county.) “Have seenj 
feathers of birds around his burrow. Where the fox,j 
lives, the game disappears.” (A. C. Southworth, Lake-] 
ville, Plymouth county.) ] 
This evidence, like the rest, is largely circumstantial 
but it seems sufficient to prejudice the case of the fox, 
somewhat, and leads to the belief that in some localities 
we may have too many foxes. The. fox is well able to 
take care of itself. Its natural enemies have been nearly 
all extirpated, and- it must be kept within bounds, or it 
may become a pest. . Under ordinary conditions, however, 
there, are- fox hunters enough to hold the fox in check; - ' 
A COATING OF MANY-USE OIL 
a gun dean and rustless, really for v,ss,—Adv, . •. 
