FOREST AND STREAM 
662 
our planet. It exists merely on the surface and 
by no means in every part of our world, and is 
dependent on delicate conditions which from the 
point of view of geology or astronomy, are in¬ 
significant. If we, with our superior powers of 
destruction, wipe out that life or any part of it 
we are destroying what, so far as our knowledge 
extends, exists no where else in the universe. 
The species we exterminate is gone forever. 
The purple martin is a bird which people all 
over the country are trying to encourage by 
building pretty colony boxes for him. They love 
him for his beauty and clever quaint character; 
and as an excuse for saving him from our gen¬ 
eral war of extermination, they make prominent 
the good he does in killing so many injurious 
insects. He is valuable, they say, just for dol¬ 
lars and cents. Yes; but among the insects he 
so industriously kills and eats are honey bees; 
and if you talk to a bee keeper he will tell you 
that he intends to shoot all your purple martins 
at sight and that he wants the legislature to put 
a bounty on the rascal’s head. 
On the other hand the bees while undoubtedly 
useful for honey and for assisting in the pollina¬ 
tion of plants are often injurious to orchards, 
because they spread certain diseases, especially 
fireblight among the fruit trees. There you are 
again. So soon as you adopt the plan of ex¬ 
terminating the injurious and saving the bene¬ 
ficial, you find yourself reasoning round and 
round in a vicious circle, to which there is no 
end. 
Ignorant of the balance of nature, we are al¬ 
ways rushing to the legislature with some half- 
baked or selfish idea, that will destroy natural 
utility or beauty. A man who had had some pet 
ducks killed by stray dogs, went to the recent 
session of the Pennsylvania legislature, and 
worked up a case in support of a bill which, if 
it had been passed, would have almost exter¬ 
minated dogs from the State, made the breeders 
and owners of fine animals the victims of graft, 
annoyance and excessive taxes and expense, and 
yet given them no property rights in their ani¬ 
mals which, if found at large anywhere outside 
of a town, could be killed at sight by any one. 
In New Jersey some of the forestry people 
want all of the game of the State abolished be¬ 
cause they suppose that sportsmen start forest 
fires. 
Instances innumerable could be multiplied. 
Everything destroys something. Even your chick¬ 
ens valuable to you, will often destroy your 
neighbor’s garden, and there are quarrels all over 
the country on this subject. Several species of wild 
ducks, notably the large blue bill, destroy a certain 
number of oysters. Other people rise up and say 
that wild ducks, however, are destroyers of mos¬ 
quito eggs. The sheep owner, like the man 
whose ducks were killed, wants to exterminate 
all dogs and sets poison for them. The dog lover 
replies let us have both; live and let live. We 
have been protecting wood-peckers as destroyers 
of noxious insects and in Europe the forestry 
people greatly value them; but now they are 
charged with helping to spread the disease that 
is destroying the valuable chestnut forests in 
America. 
Some state laws will not protect from destruc¬ 
tion that most interesting and attractive bird, 
the kingfisher, merely because he eats a few little 
fish which, nevertheless, they cannot deny he 
captures with the high skill of a sportsman and 
not as a potter. Why not also exterminate the 
beautiful fishhawk or osprey, which fishes along 
the sea shore with such wonderful plunges into 
the glistening water that he scatters like dia¬ 
monds from his plumage as he rises with his 
prey. They have sadly reduced his numbers and 
his big nests and fascinating life are not seen 
as much as formerly. 
A physician and naturalist whom I know well 
has made a considerable study of the osprey and 
his nest along the shores of Delaware Bay. In 
some cases, where the nest was placed on live 
trees in woods where it was somewhat shaded 
from the sun, he found a ball of damp blackish 
mud or clay about the size of one’s fist. The 
osprey relies largely on the sun to incubate his 
“The Popular Talk About the Marauding 
Hawk Is Nine-Tenths Nonsense.” 
eggs in the day time; and one wonders if the 
damp mud was used by the birds to judge how 
much sun reached the eggs. 
Theoretically, technically the osprey is classi¬ 
fied as injurious, because he takes from the sea 
some of the food that man also takes. But this, 
like the ban on the kingfisher, is mere formal 
ridiculous classification; and as an excuse for 
exterminating, you might just as well say you 
will exterminate him or any other bird, because 
they occupy space and air that man also occupies. 
There is no telling the lengths to which human 
meanness may go. 
All water birds, including the beautiful gulls, 
were close to extinction, some years ago, and 
are not safe yet. But we are making some head¬ 
way in protecting them. What water birds, even 
the predacious ones that feed on fish, can do for 
man is seen in the history of the Guano Islands. 
These islands, the Chinchas off Peru, began to 
be worked about the year 1840 for the millions 
of tons of droppings of sea birds which had 
roosted on them since the world began. Tho 
stuff was carried by ships to Europe and Amer¬ 
ica to be used as fertilizer for the fields, until 
the supplies were exhausted. Then for some 
years, as the islands were undisturbed, the birds 
returned to them and to the surprise of every¬ 
one, the guano accumulated at a rapid rate, 10,- 
000 tons a year in some places; and now the 
birds are protected and the working of the de¬ 
posits forbidden by the Peruvian government 
during the nesting season. If the birds are let 
alone it is believed that guano for export to 
Europe and America will be available forever; 
and if such birds can be increased they will oc¬ 
cupy other islands and increase the product. 
(Hall, Fertilizers and Manures, p. 232.) 
The injury to poultry and crops by predacious 
creatures in my experience, is always greatly 
exaggerated, and an absurd fuss made over it. 
I lived until I was sixteen years old on a farm, 
where we had chickens and pigeons and there 
were always three or four hawks about pretty 
much all the year round. I never knew of a 
chicken being taken. Once, during a heavy 
storm, a hawk, no doubt desperate from hunger, 
entered my pigeon loft and killed several of 
the birds. I was able to capture him alive be¬ 
fore he could escape from the loft. I built a 
slatted box for him to live in and expected to 
have an interesting pet; but the stern bird of 
freedom pined away and died. It was a good 
experience, however. I had made his acquaint¬ 
ance, studied him in crude boy fashion, drew 
closer to one of nature’s strongest characters; 
and if such knowledge is as good for us as I 
think it is, the two or three pigeons he killed 
were well lost. 
In those days of abundant hawks and since 
then in places I have known where they were 
also abundant, people easily protected their 
property by various devices which have been in 
use the world over for hundreds of years. A 
“scare crow” or anything hung up on a pole or 
in a way that it sways about in the wind, 
especially if it is shiny like a piece of tin, will 
keep hawks entirely away. Other forms of 
scare or threat are used. But they do not often 
have to be used. I have known of many farms 
which for long periods of years have suffered 
no depredations although there were hawks all 
about; and this was years ago when hawks were 
far more numerous than they are now. Depre¬ 
dations are the exception and when the country 
at large and all farms are considered, the in¬ 
significant exception. To make this slight ex¬ 
ception an excuse for exterminating interesting 
and useful birds is shameful and a penny wise 
and pound foolish economy. 
The popular talk about the marauding hawk 
and voracious, predacious wicked hawk, is nine- 
tenths nonsense. It is something like the ex¬ 
aggeration of “fish stories.” Every one likes to 
make the hawk out terrible for the literary and 
dramatic or tragic effect. He is supposed to be 
always rushing about killing and devouring other 
birds, the frightened victims fleeing with screams 
in every direction at the sight of him. As a 
matter of fact, however, I have frequently seen 
hawks sitting solemnly on trees for hours or 
the greater part of a day, especially in the far 
south, with small birds or flocks of blackbirds 
all round them and sometimes on the same tree. 
In my observation small birds are not alarmed 
at a hawk unless he actually starts for. one of 
them. The large majority of hawks feed on in- 
