The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1913-08-07

| ing to starve? What harm had that
flicker done you? Besides, Johnny, that
flicker was one of my very best friends.
| She was helping me to make money
farming"
"Why, papa; didn't know that.
How was she helping you?'
Don't you remember, Johnny, what a
time we had last summer to keep the
chinch bugs out of the corn after the
wheat was ripe? How we plowed dp
a row of corn along the side of the field
and made furrow in the very dry dirt,
and how your brother had to drag log
back and forth to gather up the chinch
bugs that we're trying to get in the
corn: and how he complained that it
was very hot day, and he almost had
a sun-stroke?"
eyes; but that didn't have anything
to do with the old flicker"
Flickers eat chinch bugs, and keep
them from increasing. The chinch
bugs are among our worst enemies.
The flicker eats them, and therefore
she is my friend, and the little birds
would have been my friends and your
friends, if you had not shot the mother
bird. One of those scientific chaps at
the college made up his mind he would
a hot nd n
little boys like you sometimes shoot
witho ut meaning any harm. So he shot
flicker, opened up its stomach very
carefully, and counted thousand
chinch bugs that it had eaten that morn
ing. If there are plenty of hickers,
chinch bugs can't increase so that they
will eat our corn"
81 didn't know that papa"
"Let me tell you something about
birds. You know those little wrens
that insisted on making their nest in
the mail box? How they filled it up
with sticks, and when ] threw them
out, they filled it up again. Finally. |
they gave it up because would not let |
them stay there. That was mean
thing for me to do. One of those col |
lege fellows put up box for some J
wrens, and watched pair of them
when they were feeding their young
stayed there all day watching them.
He found that they took six hundred |
insects from the garden in that one day.
They were friends of the gardener, you
see.
"What do you suppose those robins
live on? Another man watched a rob-
in one day and saw it eat hundred and
siXty-tive cut worms. lle watched an
other for fifteen days and found that it
ate from fifty to seventy-ive cut worms
a day. Would that be great help
to the gardener? Did you ever notice
that they follow me around the garden,
apparently not afraid of me, and pick
up the cut worms when | am digging?
You remember that Baltimore oriole
that has her nest in branch of the old
l
elm tree? One-third of the food of the
oriole is caterpillars. You have seen
boys shoot meadow larks. Three.qrar-
ters of the food of the meadow lark is
animal matter, and nearly all insects.
During the summer that they staid with
US, almost third of their food was
and when grasshoppers
were plentiful in August and Septem-
Der, they ate hardly anything else.
$50 you see, johnny, that not only the
tlickers, but nearly all birds are our
friends in more ways than one. They
sing to us in the morning. Sometimes
they wake US up when we would like
TO take another nap. They come to us
in the summer and help eat up the in
sects that give all farmers so much
trouble. Whatever you do, JOHNNY, do
not shoot song bird. When you get
older, you may shoot hawk, if you
find it after the chickens, or crow if
you see it sucking eggs. If you want
TO shoot, shoot at mark to give you
practice, but don take the life of any
thing unless you know that it is doing
harm, and more harm than good"