SOME OHIO BIRDS 
3 
to the list upon authority of Oberholser, (Proceeding's of U. S. 
National Museum, Vol. XXIV, No. 1271, 812.) The Palm Warbler 
was admitted upon the authority of Mr. A. I. Good. This species 
was observed by the junior writer to be plentiful in Ashland county 
very near to the boundary line of Wayne in the spring of 1903. 
Holboell’s Grebe is admitted upon authority of Mr. R. W. Glenn, 
who examined and identified a specimen shot on Wooster Reservoir 
in 1904. The Nashville Warbler is likewise listed upon authority of 
Mr. Glenn, who shot and identified the specimen. To these and 
others who have assisted with various data we hereby express our 
thanks. 
The migration dates or resident periods have been extended 
either earlier or later than former records for about sixty species. 
ECONOMIC FUNCTIONS OF BIRDS 
The character of the food eaten by birds, insects, or animals 
decides their economic status. When the food of a bird consists of 
insects or mammals injurious to crops, forest trees, or toother 
property, that bird is of service to man and, therefore, beneficial. 
A bird, animal, or insect, is beneficial or injurious to the degree that 
harmful or useful forms are eaten or destroyed by it. 
Their mode of locomotion, together with their structural fitness 
for their natural functions, make birds a very important 
economic factor in the animal kingdom, especially from the stand¬ 
point of their usefulness to man. Endowed with the power of flight, 
they speedily cover great distances, thus controlling outbreaks of 
insects or rodents in widely separated sections of country. 
Aside from their destruction of noxious insects and animals, 
birds are useful as weed-seed destroyers, also as scavengers, and 
again are instrumental in the dissemination of the seeds of trees and 
other plants. The place of birds in nature is entirely unique. Each 
species performs a service which no other can so well accomplish; 
each is structurally modified for the particular work nature demands 
of it. These modifications, in such species as the Cross-bill, Wry-bill, 
Spoon-bill, and others are very marked, giving them an unnatural and 
grotesque appearance, even to the point of deformity. In other 
species, various structural modifications in feet, legs, wings, necks, 
or other parts are found, but always for the purpose of facilitating 
the specific task which each must perform. 
So complex are the food habits of birds, that they are little under¬ 
stood, and probably never will be fully known. A species may be 
useful part of the year, and harmful at certain other times; an active 
destroyer of insects within the breeding range may become a pillager 
