Economic Value of Hawks and 
Owls in Maine. 
In 1893 there was published a book entitled 
“The Hawks and Owls of the United States in 
their Relation to Agriculture.” This book was 
prepared by Dr. A. K. Fisher, under the direc¬ 
tion of Dr. C. Hart Merriam, with the object 
of proving that hawks and owls are the friends 
of the farmers. 
In his letter of transmittal to the Department 
of Agriculture Dr. Merriam says: “The state¬ 
ments herein contained respecting the food of 
the various hawks and owls are based on criti¬ 
cal examination by scientific experts of the ac¬ 
tual contents of about 2,700 stomachs of these 
birds, and consequently may be fairly regarded 
as a truthful showing of the normal food of 
each species.” (The italics are mine.) He also 
says: “Only six of the seventy-three species 
and subspecies of hawks and owls of the United 
States are injurious. Of these, three are so ex¬ 
tremely rare they need hardly be considered, and 
another (the fish hawk) is only indirectly in¬ 
jurious, leaving but two (the sharp-shinned and 
Cooper’s hawks) that really need to be taken 
into account as enemies of agriculture.” 
In this book the hawks and owls are divided 
into four classes: A, those wholly beneficial or 
,wholly harmless; B, those chiefly beneficial; C, 
those in which the beneficial and the harmful 
qualities seem to balance each other; D, those 
positively harmful. In making these divisions 
the marsh hawk, the barred, snowy, Richardson’s 
and hawk owls were placed in class B, those 
chiefly beneficial, while the great-horned owl and 
the pigeon hawk are in the honorable class C. 
No doubt the intention was to treat all the birds 
fairly, but anyone looking over the list will see 
that the larger part of stomachs examined came 
from the South and West, where, in many cases, 
the food is different from that in New England. 
An average for the whole country may not be 
quite just to the bird in any part of it. No one 
would call it fair to examine a lot of stomachs 
of the bobolink from the North, where they eat 
insects and pronounce them wholly beneficial; 
or from the South, where they eat rice and 
brand them as wholly injurious. 
But aside from this, some of the classifications 
according to the contents of the stomachs seem 
rather singular. Of the fifty-seven stomachs of 
the pigeon hawk, five were empty. Of the other 
fifty-one, two contained poultry and forty-one 
small birds, so that forty-three out of fifty-one, 
or 84 per cent., contained the remains of birds, 
sometimes of several birds, each one of which 
(seven English sparrows excepted) would have 
done more good if permitted to live than the 
hawk ever did. And yet on this showing this 
pirate is classed as doing as much good as harm. 
Next look at the great-horned owl, which is 
put in the same class. I will quote from pages 
175 and 176 of this report to show what a friend 
to farmers, game preservers and the public gen¬ 
erally is the bird placed in ^his class: “Among 
the birds most often taken may be included all 
kinds of poultry (including half-grown turkeys), 
grouse, quail, doves and wild ducks. Even 
hawks, crows and other owls do not escape the 
voracity of this tiger among birds.” * * * “Of 
all the birds of prey with the exception possibly 
of the goshawk and Cooper’s hawk the great¬ 
horned owl is the most destructive to poultry.” 
Dr. B. H. Warren’s report on the birds of Penn¬ 
sylvania is quoted as showing a still larger pro¬ 
portion of this class of food: “My own records 
of sixteen great-horned owls, which, with one 
exception, were taken in the winter months, re¬ 
vealed in eleven individuals only the remains of 
poultry; two other portions, of rabbits, and of 
the remaining three birds of this series it was 
found that one had taken two mice; another 
showed a small amount of hair, apparently that 
of an opossum. The sixteenth and last bird con¬ 
tained a mouse and parts of beetles.” 
Dr. P. R. Hoy is quoted: “The specimen in 
the Academy [of Sciences, Philadelphia], was 
known to carry off from one farm, in the space 
of a month, not less than twenty-seven indi¬ 
viduals of various kinds of poultry before it 
was shot.” 
“Dr. C. Hart Merriam gives the following 
account of its depredations: ‘Indeed, I have 
known one to kill and decapitate three turkeys 
and several hens in a single night, leaving the 
bodies uninjured and fit for the table.’” 
To plain farmers it would look as though a 
bird with such a record should be classed as 
“bad,” but no, he is put in class C, those which 
do as much good as hurt. 
Here in Maine we have few kinds of hawks 
and owls which are either resident or come 
here in summer to breed, or as occasional strag¬ 
glers. I have observed our hawks and owls 
carefully for nearly seventy years and I have 
examined many specimens of some eight species 
of each, and my candid opinion is that without 
any exception they are a damage to the far¬ 
mers, to the game and to the small useful birds. 
Fortunately for us, unlike States South and 
West, we are not troubled to any extent by 
grasshoppers or field mice. Although not a far¬ 
mer, for some thirty years I raised on an aver¬ 
age one hundred tons of hay a year,, and I do 
not believe that grasshoppers, moles or mice ever 
damaged me a dollar’s worth in all that time. 
The only damage I have ever heard any farmer 
complain of is, in some winters, damage to young 
fruit trees by mice, and in such cases one weasel 
will do more good than all the hawks and owls 
on a township. Our farmers are somewhat 
troubled in buildings by rats and mice, but when 
hawks and owls—the little Acadian owl ex¬ 
cepted ; we do not have the screech owl—come 
near buildings it is always after poultry. In 
all I have examined I have never found a trace 
of their having taken either mice, moles or 
rats. 
In her “Among the Isles of Shoals,” Mrs. 
Celia Thaxter speaks of the snowy owl watch¬ 
ing for rats. I have examined some twenty sent 
me in the flesh from different parts of our sea 
coast, and though they may have watched for 
% 
rats, I am sure they never caught any, but I 
have known of their catching ducks. 
Most people are not aware how destructive 
owls are to our small fur-bearing animals, espe¬ 
cially the great-horned and the barred owls. 
During the spring and summer these owls live 
largely upon muskrats and feed their young on 
the same. One pair of owls will thus destroy 
a great many muskrats in a season, probably 
many thousands in the whole State of Maine. 
They commence catching them when they first 
begin to swim and they catch them until it 
freezes. Muskrats are so easily caught that 
while they can be obtained, the owls do not 
trouble other animals much before the streams 
freeze. Owls also kill a good many minks. This 
is not theory or hearsay. I have found owls in 
the act of taking muskrats from my traps and 
have seen many partly eaten ones. I once also 
found a mink killed by an owl and have seen 
skins of several which had been partly eaten. 
With mink as now quoted, at from six to eight 
dollars each, and muskrats at twenty-four to 
thirty-six cents each for fall rats, I think it 
safe to say that the owls cost the State of Maine 
several thousands of dollars each year. The 
only good I ever knew an owl or a hawk to 
do was when a great-horned owl killed a barred 
owl and a pigeon hawk killed English sparrows. 
In Maine we are fortunate in having only 
occasionally a Cooper’s pigeon or duck hawk. 
I have a mounted Cooper’s hawk sent me by 
F. T. Pember, of Granville, N. Y., which that 
season had killed sixty-five chickens. Red-tailed 
and red-shouldered hawks are also scarce here. 
The only red-tailed hawk I ever examined had 
his crop full of a hen which he had just killed. 
Here our most common hawks are the marsh 
hawk, goshawk, broad-winged hawk and sharp- 
shinned and sparrow hawks. The goshawk is 
resident, although more plentiful some seasons 
than others. This bird is properly classed as 
injurious. He lives almost entirely upon game 
and poultry and often kills more than he can 
use. The marsh hawk, classed as “mainly bene¬ 
ficial” is one of our worst hawks. While he 
may sometimes kill mice or moles, I never knew 
of an instance. I have had three brought to me 
which were caught beside hens which they had 
just killed, and I once took from one a chicken 
which weighed more than he did. I have known 
of more cases of large chickens and hens killed 
by them than by any other hawk except possibly 
the goshawk. They also very often kill wood- 
ducks, as I have several times seen where they 
had eaten them. Those who give them a good 
character do not know them intimately. 
The broadwing is also classed in B, “chiefly 
beneficial.” While too sluggish to do as much 
harm as some others, of the stomachs of four 
birds examined one had just eaten a part of a 
rabbit, one a red squirrel, one a snake and the 
crop of the fourth was filled with the bones of 
young birds taken from the nests. I have sev¬ 
eral times seen this hawk catching grasshoppers, 
but never a mouse. 
The little sparrow hawk is quite abundant 
