June 3, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
851 
been accustomed to see the wjld pigeon flying 
through the sky in uncountable multitudes, when 
suddenly they found there were none left, either 
where they had been or in any other part of 
North America, believed that some terrible cata¬ 
clysm had swept them off the earth; specifically 
that they had been carried out, either over the 
Gulf of Meocico or the Great Lakes, and there 
struck down into the water and drowned. 
A number of North American birds have be¬ 
come extinct, and while we cannot in all cases 
say that they were exterminated by man, we 
may feel very confident that except for man they 
never would have been exterminated. To many 
minds the case of the great auk, the passenger 
pigeon, and the wild turkey over great areas 
that he may be fortunate enough to find and 
killing of them all that he can. Then when the 
next season comes around and he finds fewer 
birds than ever, he expends much breath in 
abusing foxes, hawks and owls, and very likely 
makes an effort to induce his assemblyman to 
introduce a bill providing that the State shall 
turn out foreign birds for him to shoot. 
ENEMIES OF GAME BIRDS. 
Among the most obvious enemies of game 
birds are carnivorous mammals, as domestic dogs 
and cats, together with foxes, wolves, weasels 
of various sorts, including skunks and a few 
rodents, notably the red squirrel, and to a less 
extent the gray squirrel. Hawks and owls of 
or even turkeys, but this is unusual and seldom 
occurs, except when the fowls are permitted to 
wander far afield, or when they are not properly 
secured at night. 
Anyone who will go out into the winter 
weather when a light mantle of snow covers 
the ground, and will follow a fox in his devious 
wanderings over hill and dale, through swamp 
and along hedgerow, will soon recognize that— 
so far as winter is concerned—the fox's diet 
consists chiefly of mice, with an occasional gray 
squirrel, and at rarer intervals a rabbit. From 
the first gray light of early dawn until the mid¬ 
dle of the morning the fox trots along, looking, 
listening and above all, smelling. Where the 
indications are right he quickly digs a little ho’e 
SKIMMERS IN THE GULF OF MEXICO. 
From a photograph by Frank M. Miller. 
are conclusive, but who as yet can give a 
reason for the extinction of the Labrador 
duck ? 
It is on the Atlantic Coast where population 
is thickest that game of whatever kind is most 
rapidly disappearing, and it is not until its dis¬ 
appearance is almost complete that the average 
man wakes up to the fact that something must 
be done. When he rouses himself from his 
state of complacent satisfaction, he does not 
know what to do. It does not occur to him to 
put aside his gun; he is not willing to abandon 
the pursuit of the last ruffed grouse, quail, wood¬ 
cock or prairie chicken. It never occurs to him 
that he more than anything else is responsible 
for the dearth of birds. He blames their scar¬ 
city on foxes, minks, skunks, cats, hawks and 
owls. A remedy very commonly suggested is 
that the State should offer a bounty on the dif¬ 
ferent predaceous creatures that are supposed to 
destroy the game. Meantime he goes ahead, and 
every shooting season spends out of doors all 
the time he can spare, chasing up the few birds 
certain species destroy these birds, as do also 
snakes. 
On the other hand all these flesh-eating creat¬ 
ures do much good by preying on noxious ani¬ 
mals or insects. No one, so far as we know, 
has been able to weigh justly the good and the 
evil done by any predaceous animal, because no 
one knows all the facts, and no one knows how 
far-reaching the influence of any bird, mammal 
or insect may be. Almost everyone, however, is 
perfectly willing to announce with great positive¬ 
ness his views as to the usefulness or harmful¬ 
ness of any of these creatures, and give his rea¬ 
sons for these views, though often these reasons 
are founded on erroneous observation or on a 
failure to logically bring together cause and 
effect. 
One of the most unpopular animals along the 
Atlantic coast is the fox. We received from the 
Old World the legend that he is a robber of 
hen roosts, and little children are brought up on 
this belief. Sometimes, no doubt, when oppor¬ 
tunity occurs, a fox may kill chickens or ducks, 
in the snow and is often rewarded by a mouse, 
a few tufts of whose fur may be scattered on 
the snow where the meal, was had. 
Old fox hunters, of whom in New England 
there are still many, and who make it their 
business to search for and find the secluded dens 
among the hills where the vixen brings forth 
her young, declare that anyone who will keep 
watch of the food that the mother fox brings to 
her pups will recognize .that the harm that they 
do to bird life is very slight. Mice, squirrels, 
young woodchucks, sometimes the head of a 
chicken, and rarely a feather of a bird, will be 
found about the mouth of the den, but in many 
cases it is thought the heads of chickens are 
those that have been thrown out by the farmer’s 
wife, and not captures made by the fox herself. 
On the other hand it can hardly be doubted that 
in summer the foxes destroy the nests of many 
ground-nesting birds. It is not conceivable that 
they should be unaware of the fact that many 
sparrows and other small birds nest on or near 
the ground, and they must make a business of 
