
FOREST AND STREAM. 






Useful Birds.* 
THERE has recently been published, under 
direction of the Massachusetts State Board of 
Agriculture, a valuable work on “Useful Birds 
and Their Protection,’ by Mr. Edward Howe 
Forbush, ornithologist for the board. 
Mr. Forbush’s studies of birds and bird life 
have covered many _ sections of North 
America, and for a number of years past he has 
occupied the position of official ornithologist 
for the State of Massachusetts. In that posi- 
tion he has done remarkably good work. He 
has had many perlexing problems to face, among 
them the increase and spread of the gipsy moth, 
an introduced species whose ravages have stirred 
Massachusetts and indeed all New England. Be- 
sides the considerable appropriation made by the 
Commonwealth, a single citizen has expended 
over $75,000 to protect the trees and plants on 
his estate from this pest. 
There is no subject in the field of natural 
science that is of greater general interest than 
the living birds. If it be true that the well being 
of the community depends on agriculture, it is 
no less true that agriculture depends in very 
large measure on the services of the birds. It 
is on the annual flux and reflux of the spring 
and fall migration, supplemented by the work 
done by the summer residents and in less degree 
by that done by the winter residents, that the 
prosperity of our land depends. The structure 
of birds enables them “to perform the office of 
a swiftly moving force of police, large bodies 
of which can be assembled at once to correct 
disturbances caused by abnormal outbreaks of 
plant or animal life.’ So, when a form of .ob- 
noxious insects appears, many birds congregate 
to feed upon them. If field mice or lemmings 
become too abundant, birds of prey gather to 
upon them. In the same way, as has many 
times been pointed out, birds perform the office 
of scavenger. 
fee 

The ability to pass over great distances in a 
very short time differentiates a bird from all 
other creatures. Correlated with that power 
is the keenness of vision which has become 
proverbial, and which results chiefly from the 

ability of the eye to focus itself instantly on an 
object close at hand, or one far off. The extra- 
ordinary problem of the struggle for existence 
for each species and the enormous number of 
different factors which come in to act favorably 
or unfavorably on any species in the strugele are 
very fully discussed by Mr. Forbush in his in- 
troduction on the Utility of Birds in Nature. 
Here he refers not only to the good and the evil 
done by the different species in destroying 
noxious or beneficial insects, but to the different 
birds which destroy each other and thus indi 
rectly affect the supply of insects, harmful or 
helpful. Birds also play an important part in 
the distribution of plants. Seeds are carried 
in mud attached to the feet of birds; fruit-eating 
birds distribute seeds far and wide. 
The interest had in birds by primitive man 
was only that which he felt in any other possible 
food, but when man began to practice agricul- 
ture and birds began to devour his grain, they 
began to be regarded as enemies. Ignorant of 
the good they might do, man knew only that 
they despoiled his crops. In the same way at 
the present day, the fruit grower, seeing the 
cherry or the strawberry that the robin takes, 
insists on killing the bird, though the benefit re- 
ceived from it during the year might outweigh 
a hundred times the price of injury that it 
causes, 
When the new world was settled the invaders 
Degan at once to carry on a systematic war with 

*Useful Birds and Their Protection. 
g By Edward Howe 
Zorbush. Ill. Cloth, pp 487. 
nature. As fast as possible the forests were cut 
down, the larger animals destroyed. As the 
mammals became scarce birds were attacked and 
the larger ones killed off. 
When the balance of nature began to be in- 
terfered with by the destruction of the natural 
things of an earlier time, by the introduction of 
new plants, and by the necessities forced upon 
certain forms of life of changing their habits, 
conditions became very grave. Insect pests in- 
ceased, and finding new sources of food in the 
new crop plants, occurred in swarms which de- 
stroyed crops by wholesale. 
The numbers of insects are quite beyond be- 
lief, and there are more species of insects than 
of all other living creatures combined. More 
than 300,000 species have been described, and an 
eminent entomologist has estimated that there 
may be a million species of insects, and the in- 
dividuals of each species are astonishingly 
abundant. A cherry tree ten feet in height was 
found by Dr. Fitch to be infested with plant 
lice. By counting the number of insects on a 
leaf the number of plant lice for this single tree 
was calculated at 12,000,000, and this was only 
one of a row similarly infested. Insects repro- 
duce themselves with marvelous rapidity, so that 
a single pair of Colorado potato beetles, if al- 
lowed to increase without molestation, would 
in one season produce 60,000,000 of insects. The 
voracity of insects is remarkably. Many cater- 
pillars eat daily twice their own weight in 
leaves. Flesh-feeding larve sometimes consume 
in twenty-four hours two hundred times their 
original weight; as if a human infant should 
consume on the first days of its existence 1,500 
pounds of food. Some caterpillars within thirty 
days increase in size ten thousand times. The 
loss to crops, while understood only by farmer 
and statistician, is often heard of by the average 
man. Far less well known is the loss to our 
forests. In Central Europe 537 species of in- 
sects injurious to the oak are known; 107 to 
the elm; 264 to the poplars; 295 to coniferous 
trees. The Hessian fly, the chinch bug, the cot- 
tonworm and the Rocky Mountain locust are 
well known insects that destroy our most valu- 
able crops. They are working all the time, in- 
creasing all the time, and man, unaided, is quite 
unable to cope with them. 
Birds feed largely on insects and it is only by 
the help of birds that man can continue the prac- 
tice of agriculture. Birds need a great deal of 
food and devour an incredible number of in- 
sects; and like the insects, the birds are at work 
all the time. It is interesting and significant 
to know that young birds grow almost as fast 
as insects and often reach the power of flight 
as soon as insects reach their power of flight. 
For this rapid growth enormous quantity of food 
is required, and this food consists almost wholly 
of insects. It is shown that robins, thrushes, 
crows and, no doubt, a multitude of other birds 
require daily an amount of food equivalent to 
half their own weight. A little less than this 
and the bird loses weight and will ultimately 
starve; a littke more and it gains slowly in 
weight. 
Young birds are always hungry and their 
parents are at work through the hours of day- 
light searching for food to supply their wants. 
A pair of vireos under observation were fed four- 
teen times between 7 and 8 A. M,, nine times 
between 8 and 09, twelve times between 9 and 
10, and so on through the day, the total number 
of feedings being 125 during the hours of day- 
light. The bird does not bring a single insect 
to its young, but spares itself labor by gathering 
a beak full of insects which are brought to the 
nest in a single journey. This is only of the 
young, yet the adult bird is hardly less vora- 
cious. Thirty grasshoppers were found in the 
stomach of a catbird; a kingbird kept in a cage 

devoured 120 locusts in a single day. Prof. 
Beal says: “The majority of people have no 
idea of how much these insects can be com- 
pressed in the stomach of a bird. It is often the 
case that when a stomach has been opened and 
the contents placed in a pile the heap is fully 
three times as large as the original stomach with 
the food all in it.’ In the stomach of a yellow- 
billed cuckoo 250 tent caterpillars were found. 
Five thousand ants in the stomach of a flicker, 
500 mosquitoes in that of a nighthawk, 7,500 
seeds of the yellow wood sorrel in that of a 
mourning dove. A multitude of other examples 
might be given, together with a great deal of 
testimony showing how that during the occur- 
rence of certain insect plagues like the western 
locust plague vast numbers of birds appeared 
soon after the insect, and in a short time de- 
stroyed them, saving the crop, wholly or in part. 
In like manner it is shown that the deStruction 
of birds has been followed by a great increase 
in the number of insects. Indeed, one has only 
to read over the first chapter of Mr. Forbush’s 
work to recognize that in the birds the land 
possesses a vast number of constantly working 
unpaid servants without whose services human 
life would be impossible—one might even go 
further and say mammalian life would be impos- 
sible. 
The utility of the birds in woodlands, in or- 
chards along roadsides, and in undergrowth are 
fully discussed. The song birds and the song- 
less birds of orchard and woodland and their 
services are described. So of those species which 
inhabit the field and gardens, of those that pass 
most of their time in the air, and of those of 
the marsh and the waterside. 
Man is the useful bird’s worst enemy—man 
and the domesticated animals that he has brought 
with him. Of natural and indigenous enemies 
they have many, but against these they could 
hold their own. It is high time that man should 
—as happily he is now beginning to do—extend 
his protection over forms of life which are really 
his best friends and helpers, should see that the 
birds are not destroyed, should try to attract 
them about his home, should protect them against 
their natural enemies; in fact, should do every- 
thing that he can to secure from them a con- 
stantly increased service. All this is looking at 
the thing from a purely economic side, and with- 
out any consideration of the esthetic side, which 
to most of us means so very, very much. 
Mr. Forbush’s work is one of the most im- 
portant bird protective volumes that has been 
published. It ought to be in the library of every 
farmer in the land. It is admirably illustrated 
by a_colored plate of the woodduck done by 
Mr. Fuertes and by half tones and line draw- 
ings, and comes very near being a manual of 
ornithology for New England. It is heartily to 
be commended and has been thoroughly appre- 
ciated. It ran through its first edition within 
three weeks and another edition of 5,000 was 
printed which is being sold at cost. It should 
have, and we believe will have, a very wide 
public. 

Fly-Catching Woodpeckers. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
A contributor in your last number forestalls 
what I had to say on the subject of woodpeckers 
catching flies, but I can confirm what he says 
that fly catching on the wing is a common habit 
of the red-headed woodpecker. Mr, Samuels’ 
doubts about the matter seem to be based on a 
theory of tongue formation. The insect, when 
seized in the air, appears to be caught between 
the bird’s mandibles and is carried to a nearby 
perch, or to the nest to be disposed of. 
3 CoAHOMA, 



















































































































Ne 










