The Holbrook news., 1911-07-07

R HE term shorebird is applied to
 a group of long-legged, slender
 billed, and usually plainly col
 ored birds belonging to the or
 der Limicolae, writes W. L. Me Atee in bulletin issued by the bureau of biological survey, United States de- partment of agriculture. More than sixty species of them occur in North America. True to their name they frequent the shores of all bodies of water, large and small, but many of them are equally at home on plains and prairies.
 Throughout the eastern United States shorebirds are fast vanishing. While formerly numerous species swarmed along the Atlantic, coast and In the prairie regions, many of them have been so reduced that extermina- tion seems imminent The black-bel- lied blower or beetlehead, which oc- cured along the Atlantic seaboard in great numbers years ago, is now seen only as a straggler. The golden plover, once exceedingly abundant east of the great plains, is now rare. Vast hordes of long-billed dowitchers formerly win tered in Louisiana; now they occur only in infrequent hocks of a half dozen or less. The Eskimo curlew within the last decade has probably been exterminated and the other cur Jews greatly reduced. In fact, all the larger species of shorebirds have sui tered severely.
 So adverse to shorebirds are present conditions that the wonder is that any escape. In both fall and spring they are shot along the whole route of their migration, north and south. Their habit of decoying readily and per sistently, coming back in focks to the decoys again and again. in spite of murderous volleys. greatly lessens their chances of escape.
 The breeding grounds of some of the species in the United States and Canada have become greatly restrict ed by the extension of agriculture. and their winter ranges in South America have probably been restricted in the same way.
 Unfortunately, shorebirds lay fewer eggs than any of the other species generally termed game birds. They deposit only three or four eggs, and hatch only one brood yearly. Nor are they in any wise immune from the great mortality known to prevail among the smaller birds. Their eggs and young are constantly preyed upon during the breeding season by crows, gulls and jaegers, and the far north ern country to which so many of them resort to nest is subject to sudden cold storms, which kill many of the young. In the more temperate climate of the United States small birds, in general. do not bring up more than one young bird for every two eggs laid. Some times the proportion of loss Is much greater, actual count revealing de struction of seventy to eighty per cent. of nests and eggs. Shorebirds, with sets of three or four eggs, prob ably do not on the average rear more than two young for each breeding pair.
 It is not surprising, therefore. that birds of this family, with their limited powers of reproduction, melt away under the relentless warfare waged upon them. Until recent years shore birds have had almost no protection Thus. the species most in need of stringent protection have really had the least. No useful birds which lay only three or four eggs should be re- tatned on the list of game birds. The shorebirds should be relieved from persecution, and If we desire to save from extermination a majority of the species, action must be prompt.
 The protection of shorebirds need not be based solely on esthetic or sen timental grounds, for few groups of birds more thoroughly deserve protec- tfon from an economic standpoint. Shorebirds perform an important serv- ice by their inroads upon mosquitoes, some of which play so conspicuous mart in the dissemination of disease. Thus. nine species are known to feed mon mosquitoes, and hundreds of the larvae or "wigglers" were found in several stomachs. F1fty-three per cent. of the food of 2s northern phala- roDes from one locality consisted of mosoufto larvae. The insects eaten include the salt-marsh mosquito, for the suppression of which the state of New Jersey has gone to great expense. The nine species of shorebirds known to eat mosquitoes are: Northern phal- arope. Wilson phalarope, Stilt sand piper, Pectoral sandpiper. Baird sand piper, Least sandpiper, Semipaimated sandpiper, Kildeer and Semipalmated plover.
 Cattle and other live stock also are seriously molested by mosquitoes as well as by another set of pests, the