The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-09-18
OUR VANISHING BIRDS
Not the SpOrtsman's Gun, but Modern
Methods of Farming, Destroys Them.


Maurice Thompson, in the Independent.
Sentimental reflections are not of much
value to a column of statistical figures, or
to any dry problem of science in the way
of aiding our understanding. 1t is better to
be right than oratorical or poetical when
we have to deal with facts, no matter how
pathetic may be the significance of those
facts. Even the unwelcome evidence that
forces itself upon us year by year, tending
to prove a constant and rapid decrease in
the number of our familiar and interesting
American birds, should be studied without
prejudice We love the birds of orchard.
field, flood and wood; but that is no good
ground for neglecting any fact in consider
irg the causes of their vanishing from the
areas once teeming with them.
The birds disappear, and in our grievous
disappointment when they do not come
back We hastily look about for somebody to
lay the blame upon and to scold with due
vigor. Then it is time for sDortsmen to
dodge and vince. The man with the gun
must be ready to bear almost infinite abuse,
or he must betake himself beyond reach of
ii. He is guilty of sundry depredations,
sins against the law of universal bird pro-
lection, that he cannot deny; but he may
we'll object to vicarious receptivity WREN
the day of punitive gift-offering comes, and
somebody proposes making him the recip-
lent of every other transgressor's share as
we'll as his own.
The boy who shoots an airgun, or cheap
fowlng piece, or an india-rubber sling must
take second place in the rank of martyrs.
He kills a few little birds and frghtens
many. He is a nuisance and should be puri-
fed; but he gets far more blame than his
actual msdemeanors deserve. Then comes
the collector of skins and feathers, the man
who supplies museums. private collections
and milliners shops He is bad fellow; he
kills for money. Still, his slaughterings, nu-
merous as they certainly are, seem insignfi-
cant when compared with the enormous de-
crease of bird life.
The reports once in a while made out by
geological societies and other organizations
in the interest of natural history study are
valuable in a way; but one cannot read
them without smelling book dust where the
pure air of outdoors ought to be, and feel
ing that they are based upon scattered and
somewhat insignificant details, rather than
upon the larger and more generally lnfiuen-
tial facts of nature and lite. This is espe-
claliy true as regards what mas peen Done
able disappearance of birds from large ais
tricts in their natural domain. The gum
bearer the feather hunter and the murder
Gus small boy with the sling not the
main agents Of bird destruction, and / wish
to give few items of evidence In this con-
nection.
Game laws for the protection of deer cam
not prevent the complete disappearance OF
those beautiful animals from country de-
voted to modern agriculture. When all the
woods are cut down, and ali the plains are
put to the pillow, there is no home left for
the bear and the bison. Drain the boys, and
what can the woodcock do for living2
Reclaim all the wet lands, and ditch away
the waters of ponds and lakes, but after
that look in vain for snipe and duck. De-
stroy the thickets and briery tangles they
are unsightly and Improbable on the farm,
no matter how necessary they are to the
quail, and then look in vain for bevies in
the neatly shorn fields. Your bluebirds, that
once had the old worm fences with hollow
stakes to build in, cannot accept barbed
wire substitute; where shall their nests be
hidden? What are the gay woodpeckers to
do when you carefully cut away and burn
every dead tree and Dough?
Every summer l am more and more
curious to know how the meadow lark sur
wives, how it succeeds in rearing brood,
when year by year the meadows in which
it builds are cut closer and closer with the
changing moving machine, and when the
seeds it loves are not permitted to ripen-
Where do the quails find winter shelter on
our highly cultivated and smoothly shorn
farms? The food of the wild pigeon is gone,
and gone forever are the countless hosts
of pigeons. When / was a child the beauu-
fIl and magnificent log cock was every
1t is rare, save in a few remote wildernesses.
Why? Because the rotten wood in which its
food is found has been long ago made into
heaps and burned by the sturdy men who
have caused farms and plantations to super
sede the forests.
In the old days of bramble tangles and
hazel thickcts there were no frozen bevies.
Lately / have seen sixteen quails,. stiff as
icicles, In a tiful little cluster where, all
unprotr' ted, 1e zero weather had caught
them, as Tennyson has 1T, In its frozen
palms." Then the hungry hawks have their
will Of birds where there Is no thick cover
cats prow lin from eld to Held and from
orchard to orchard, devour every hedgling
that they can find; BY night the owls hunt
with the cats. The farmers pigs, nosing
everywhere, eat up the eggs of all birds that
nest on the ground.
1t is true that the plume gatherers have
er's drains-the canals and covered bitches
whereby vast areas of watery feeding
grounds have been made dry-have killed
millions. Fifty years ago the sloppy prai-
ries and queachy bog lands of Illinois, Iowa,
Indiana, Michigan and Ohio were The haunts
of countless swarms of migrating herons,
geese, brant, duck, crane. Now very few
are seen, because this intermediate resting
and feeding ground has been unavailable for
years. Even tho small herons and bitter1s,
never much shot, are becoming scarce for
the same reason. Hundreds of small
streams once in their feeding and breeding
places are now dry as bone. Not long
ago L revisited a spot where formerly the
wood ducks bred. / found that the wood
and the pond had disappeared and there
Give wild things the least bit of wilder
ness and they will survive in spite of nature
and man. The other day a wildcat attacked
a child in one of the oldest settled parts Of
Indiana. 1t came out of an unreclaimed
ravine on the banks of the Ohio river.
saw a lone log cock in a considerable wood
of the Kankakee region few years ago.
But you cannot save the birds and at the
same time starye them and refuse them
both nesting places and shelter from the
cold. Women's hats and mems guns are
hard or BIRDS but civilized beings are hard
er on them. Enlightened farming the MAX
ing of productive and neatly shorn estates,
the march of the pillow, the ditching ma
chine. the underground tile, the patent reap
er and mower and thresher, the cats, the
dogs, the hawks, the owls. winter without
shelter summer without food, spring with
out nesting places, these are the agencies
that are destroying birds by the wholesale.
And then there is the English sparrow.
murrain seize him! What is left he takes.
"The Sea Is His"
Almighty wisdom made the land
Subject to mans disturbing hand,
And left ii all for him to fill
With marks of his ambitious will.
But differently devised the sea