22 
Allen on Insectivorous Birds. 
INSECTIVOROUS BIRDS IN THEIR RELATION 
TO MAN. 
BY J. A. ALLEN. 
Doubtless many ornithologists who have attentively exam- 
ined the contents of birds’ stomachs have suspected that were 
the truth known it would be found that the insectivorous species 
are not to so great an extent the ally of man in his contest with 
voracious insect hordes as is generally believed. The commun- 
ity at large fails to recognize in this connection two important 
facts, namely : that there are beneficial insects as well as injurious 
ones, and that birds are indiscriminate i® their captures. Were 
it an established fact that birds, in so far as they are insectivorous, 
are the friends of man, the notion that birds are useful in propor- 
tion to the number of insects they destroy could hardly have a 
firmer hold. On all sides the cry is raised “Protect the birds,” 
while their actual r 61 e in relation to the insect world has scarcely 
received a serious thought. “ Birds destroy insects, therefore 
they are an invaluable aid to man in his unequal struggle with 
these insidious foes,” is a natural and general conclusion. That 
there are rapacious and parasitic insects, that these are the great 
natural check upon the undue increase of the plant-eating species, 
and that birds are useful only in proportion to the number of the 
latter they destroy as compared with the former, are facts that are 
generally ignored. 
As above stated, it has not escaped the notice of those ornithol- 
ogists who have a smattering of entomological knowledge that 
insectivorous birds may do much harm as well as great good, and 
that the popular and almost universal demand for their protection, 
while perhaps harmless, is at least based on ignorance of the real 
state of the case. I well recall being pained years ago by finding, 
with the cutworms and caterpillars, a conspicuous proportion of 
“lady bugs,” rapacious ground beetles, and other predaceous 
insects in the stomachs of Thrushes, and of ichneumons with the 
soft aphides and caterpillars in those of Warblers. As an 
enthusiastic lover of birds, I feared the results to which a 
critical study of the food of insectivorous birds might lead ; and 
