faltat eco BLOB Ne a Bib yi ele 13 
the land as a better bird than the crow, is indeed more beautiful, and 
better eating. But the pheasant’s diet is mainly corn and cultivated 
grain, with about five per cent weed seeds. He eats some grasshoppers, 
but his diet is less than three and a half per cent insect life, whereas 
the crow destroys many times that bulk in insects. Minnesota farmers 
sent in claims against the pheasant for crop destruction. According to 
the “Hunting Annual,” this game bird was exonerated because it did 
not take much sprouting corn, and because some of the grain con- 
sumed had already been injured by rodents. The crow, the fox, the 
hawk and the owl, all good rodent hunters, which have been slain in 
more or less numbers in behalf of the pheasant, would have helped 
save the farmers’ corn from rats, mice, gophers and many other pests. 
Well, let us have some pheasants, and more bobwhites. But why is it 
necessary to kill the crow? We all remember more quail and more 
crows too, in the old days. Who protected them then, as Mr. Eifrig 
has asked. Quail and pheasant want “cover,” ragweed, which they 
both like, hedges and thickets. The real enemy of the game bird is 
the man with the gun. 
Five-sixths of the breeding grounds in Canada is beyond the 
range of the common crow, so that shooting crows here lest they 
disturb Canada water fowl is far-fetched indeed. It becomes evident 
that the groups who really benefit from this drastic “crow control’ 
are the ammunition makers and the sportsmen, who feel justified in 
shooting crows at all seasons. These make up but a small per cent 
of all the people and their end is sport rather than necessity. They, 
too, must help pay the bill of seven hundred million dollars, which 
is the cost of damage caused in the United States by insects. The 
quail is a great insect eater, but his kind will scarcely increase while 
the hunters increase so rapidly. Crows are good beetle hunters in 
fallen wood; let us save them for trial on these strange new tree 
destroyers. They have three times the capacity of the average bird, 
and a peculiar mob instinct for “ganging up” on an insect invasion. 
With crow, hawk and owl depleted in number, the agriculturalist must 
resort to poison. Small birds must cope with more leafless trees, or 
spray, sticky bands and poisoned fields. Through these roosts of the 
Middle West there may pass temporarily a large part of the crow 
population of that region, birds that will fly over many states, hunting 
insects on thousands of farms. They can be driven away with a few 
shots or a few dead crows hanging about. Has any one man or group 
a right to bomb them, leaving them broken-winged and dead by 
tens of thousands? 
My father, who lived eighty-five years on an Illinois farm, remem- 
bered the passenger pigeon in flocks that moved like dark clouds on 
the sky. He saw them go, their great numbers weakened by man’s 
net and gun, later a prey to disease. He deplored the killing of the 
crow. No species can stand against the nation-wide persistent propa- 
ganda and persecution which allows every schoolboy to regard the 
crow as an enemy. Grasshoppers coming! One solitary crow flying 
over the corn fields cannot save us. Let us have more game birds but 
