The Cape Girardeau Democrat. (Cape Girardeau, Mo.) 1876-1909, 1899-11-25
A BIRD TALK.
The Common Birds of the CountPy
Are Not Decreasing
in Number.

One CT the good signs of the times
is the interest our young people
are taking in the birds, and the numer-
Gus clubs and societies that are being
formed throughout the country for bird
protection and cultivation. In my
youth but little was heard about the
birds. They were looked upon as of
treated as the farmers natural ene-
mics. Crows and all kinds of hawks
and owls were destroyed whenever
chance offered. l knew a farmer who
every summer caught and killed all the
red-tailed hawks he could. He stood
up poles in his meadows, upon the tops
of which be would set steel traps. The
hawks, looking for meadow mice,
would alight upon them and be caught.
The farmer was thus Staying his best
friends, as these large hawks live al
most entirely upon mice and vermin.
The redtail, or hen-hawk, is very vary
of a man with a gun, but he has not
yet learned of the danger that turks
in a steel trap on the top of 4 pole.
If a strict account could be kept with
Dur crows and hawks for a year, Il
would be found at the end OF that time
that most of them had a balance to
their credit. That is, they do US more
good than injury. \ few of them, like
the fish crow and the sharp-shinned
hawk, Cooper's-hawk and the duck
hawk. are destructive to the birds and
wild fowls; but the others live mainly
upon insects and vermin.
l do not share the alarm expressed
in some quarters over the seeming de-
crease in the number of our birds.
People are always more or less gloomy
in regard to the present time and pres
ent things. As we grow older the num-
Der of beautiful things in the world
-eems TO be fewer. THE Indian sum-
mer is not what it used to be; the win
tiers are moi so bracing; the spring is
more uncertain; and honest men are
fewer" But there is not much change,
after all. The change is mainly in us.
1 see no decrease in the great body of
our common field, orchard and wood
birds. l do not see the clif-swallows
[ used to see in my youth; they go far
Their north, to northern New England
and Canada. At Rangeley Lake, in
Maine, l saw the caves of barns as
crowded with their mud nests as l used
to see the caves of my fathers barns
amid the CatSkills. In the cliffs along
the Yukon in Alaska they are said to
swarm in great numbers. Nearly all
our game birds are decreasing in num-
bers, because sportsmen are more and
more numerous and skillful, and their
guns more and more deadly. The bobo-
links are fewer than they were a decade
or two age, because they are slaugh-
tered more and more in the marshes and
rice fields of the south. The bluebirds
and hermit-thrushes were threatened
with extinction by n cold wave and
a severe storm in the southern states
a few years ago. These birds appear
to have beer slain by the hundred thou
sand. But they are slowly recovering
lost ground, and in ten or more years
will no doubt be as numerous as ever.
/ see along the Hudson river fewer
eagles than I used TO see Is years ago.
The collectors and the rifiemen are no |
doubt responsible for this decrease.
But the robins. thrushes, finches, war
blers, blackbirds. orioles, fycatchers,
vireos ana woodpeckers are quite rs
abundant as they were a quarter of n
century ago. if not more so.
The English sparrows, no doubt.
fan6 m vi ont n1r native hIrlS in |
towns and smaller cities, but in the
country their effect is not noticeable.
They are town birds anyway, and nat
urally take their place with a thou
sand other town abominations.-John
Burroughs, in St. Nicholas.