52 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jan. 9, 1909. 
who knows? I have seen a brown creeper try¬ 
ing to feed on the ground, and as his bill was 
long, he had to go at his task sidewise. Perhaps 
Bill was in the same boat. 
No day is too cold for our guest, and we 
have come to look upon him as one of the 
family, and rather suspect that he has a hole 
bored somewhere in one of the soft maples in 
front of the house where he not only sleeps 
winter nights, but also keeps house during the 
warm months. However, he has never intro¬ 
duced us to his wife, though undoubtedly he 
has one. The other day a friend of mine noticed 
the bird and cried, “Why do you let that sap- 
sucker stay around the yard? He will kill all 
3'our apple trees.” 
In the first place, a hairy woodpecker is not 
a sap-sucker, and in the second place even if 
Bill did bore holes in the trees he would be 
doing us an invaluable service, for he would 
be destroying insect life that we could not sub¬ 
due with all the spraying at our command. My 
friend was still skeptical when I told him this. 
Birds as Insect Destroyers.* 
The benefits the farmer derives from birds 
far outweigh the occasional damage they do. 
Notwithstanding this, the public, as a rule, is 
much more alive to the depredations of birds 
than to the benefits that accrue from them. Nor is 
this surprising, since the disastrous effects of 
a raid on sprouting corn by crows, or upon 
ripening cherries by robins and cedar birds, are 
too apparent to be overlooked, and the result¬ 
ing loss can be estimated in dollars and cents. 
Not so the benefits. Occasionally, it is true, the 
effects of a combined attack of birds upon cater¬ 
pillars, cankerworms or other insects which are 
present in unusual numbers or have played 
havoc with the foliage, are too evident wholly 
to escape attention; but more often birds work 
unnoticed, and the good they do is not at once 
obvious to the busy farmer. There are few 
visible tokens of the process by which the crop 
of hay or -green feed has been saved from the 
cutworms by crows, or the potato crop rescued 
possible. Once introduced into the country, they 
are here to stay, and the vast sums already spent 
in efforts to stay the ravages of such pests em¬ 
phasize the importance of utilizing to the utmost 
all the allies nature places at our disposal. 
As a means of checking these introduced in¬ 
sect pests, as well as native ones, birds are of 
vast importance. Yet it must be remembered 
that, when once the reproductive powers of in¬ 
sects have had full play and an invasion occurs, 
the farmer cannot suddenly augment Ihe num¬ 
ber of birds and summon the winged hosts to 
his aid. Birds reproduce but slowly, and in the 
natural course of events often suffer immense 
losses during their migrations by climatic ex¬ 
tremes and through the assaults of birds of prey 
and predaceous mammals. Hence a marked in¬ 
crease in the number of birds, either as a class 
or in the case of a given species, must come 
slowly and as a result of favoring conditions 
extending over a term of years. Moreover, as 
stated above, birds alone are inadequate to cope 
with sudden insect irruptions. It is their pro- 
TWO VIEWS OF AN UNCOMMON BOB WHITE. 
The bird was shot by G. F. Elliott, of Port Royal N. C., in 1908. 
and I then had to read him from “Some Com¬ 
mon Birds and their Relation to Agriculture,” a 
bulletin sent out by the Department of Agricul¬ 
ture, and compiled by F. E. L. Beal, B.S.: 
“Farmers are prone to look upon woodpeckers 
with suspicion. When the birds are seen scramb¬ 
ling over fruit trees and pecking holes in the 
bark, it is concluded that they are doing harm. 
Careful observers have noticed that excepting 
in a single species these birds rarely leave any 
conspicuous mark on a healthy tree, except when 
it is affected by wood-boring larvae, which are 
accurately located and devoured by the wood¬ 
pecker.” 
The habit of sap-sucking has, so Mr. Beal states, 
been fastened upon but one of the woodpeckers, 
and that is the yellow-bellied. This bird stands 
indicted upon the charge, but has the defense 
that while he does peck holes in the bark of 
apple and other trees, at the same time he pays 
toll by capturing a large number of noxious in¬ 
sects. Will C. Parsons. 
Uncommon Bob White. 
New York, Dec. 28. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: I am sending you the photographs of 
a nearly white Bob White which you may wish 
to reproduce in the paper. The bird was shot 
by Major General Elliott, of the Marine Corps 
in South Carolina. It was a cock and flew 
strong and well in the covey. 
Samuel Huntington. 
from the Colorado beetle by the grosbeaks. The 
birds have done their work quietly, but none the 
less effectively. They have saved, or greatly as¬ 
sisted in saving, the farmer’s crop, and nobody 
is the wiser, save the few who make it the busi¬ 
ness of their lives to study the habits of birds. 
The time has long passed when the practical 
farmer can afford to ignore the relation of birds 
to agriculture. Larger and larger areas are 
being devoted to tillage every year, and the 
amount of capital invested in agricultural pur¬ 
suits in the United States is constantly increas¬ 
ing. Irrigation, until recently almost unprac¬ 
ticed in the United States, is fast assuming na¬ 
tional importance. The whole world is being 
laid under contribution for new fruits, forage 
plants and crops for the benefit of the Ameri¬ 
can farmer, in order that by his superior energy 
and foresight he may not only feed our own 
people, but create a surplus of American pro¬ 
ducts for consumption in less favored lands. 
Along with these new introductions and as a 
necessary result of international commerce, new 
pests have been introduced. Here, under a 
favorable climate and new conditions, they mul¬ 
tiply till they inflict great damage. The Hessian 
fly, San Jose scale and codling moth are ex¬ 
amples in point. 
Such pests usually go unnoticed until the dam¬ 
age they do forces them on the attention of a 
community, when usually they are so numerous 
and widespread that their extermination is im- 
•From the Yearbook of the Department of-Agriculture. 
vince rather by incessant watchfulness and con¬ 
stant warfare to prevent over-production of in¬ 
sect life rather than to reduce excess, although 
in the latter regard their aid is important. It is 
the part of prudence, therefore, to protect use¬ 
ful birds at all times, and so to augment their 
numbers that they may constantly play their re¬ 
spective parts in the police system ordained by 
nature and be ready, when emergency arises, to 
wage active and aggressive warfare against sud¬ 
den invasions of insect enemies. 
Most of our States have laws which, if fully 
enforced, would go far to secure adequate pro¬ 
tection for birds. The wholesale destruction of 
our songsters and insectivorous birds for mil¬ 
linery purposes has been largely stopped, al¬ 
though even now in some States the statutes 
are frequently violated by unprincipled bird 
hunters for the sake of gain. But laws, while 
wholesome and necessary, are not so effective 
for the protection of birds as is an enlightened 
public sentiment. In a country like our own, 
where education is general, a knowledge of the 
part birds play in the economy of nature is more 
effective for their protection than are any laws, 
however well administered. Instruction of this 
kind should be given to every school child in 
the land, and it is gratifying to note that the 
importance of this practical side of nature study 
is fast being recognized by educators. When the 
value of birds is universally known and they are 
everywhere cherished as friends, protective laws 
will be comparatively unimportant. 
{Continued on page 78.) 
