Tensas gazette. [volume] (St. Joseph, La.) 1886-current, 1916-07-14


az 4 barn swallow. purple martin and chip
M ping sparrow
birds whose good deeds man should
rejoice the ornithoogist said, But the list is
longer. There other birds and many Of
them, that work hard nearly hard for
man those which have named. Between
80 and 40 species there is small room for choice.
but let the ten stand because the list perhaps
cannot be improved upon"
Later the scientist wanted to hedge little.
for he said that there were some birds of prey
which at least should have place side by side
with the familiars of orchard and garden to
which he had given first rank. The cause of the
birds of prey however has been pleaded before
Inc barn owl. the sparrow hawk and some
others have been given their credit marks, but
1t Is to be doubted, perhaps If anything which
can be said in behalf of predatory which
occasionally picks up chicken will serve to
save its life when it is caught in the act of lar
ceny. Not one of the birds in the Table of Ten
is thief. Honest, well-meanng. cheerful, and
Tor the most part neighborly they go through
their lives working which means eating, in order
that man more fully may reap what he has sown.
1t is admittedly probable that some close stu
dents of the habits Of birds may dispute the &C
curacy OF the list as it is given, but it is not
likely that anyone who has watched the daily
operations of these friends in feathers from night
hawk to chipping sparrow will be able to prove
that so much one black mark should be entered
on the daily records of their lives.
By their appetites We hall know them. A bird
is good or bad from the agriculturists' viewpoint
according to what and how much it eats. This
is plain tale of the birds bill of fare. 1t is
lucky. perhaps. for the songsters, as well as for
the tuneless ones. that the birds of the best
habits of life are well known by sight to all
Americans. The trouble that the bird protectors
have found lies almost wholly in the fact that
fha hahi tc Of rdc Epnuy
the birds themselves
1t DR.. A. X Fisher of the Biological Sur
vey who named the ten most useful birds. He
is in charge of economic investigations" in the
Bureau of the Biological Survey Of the Depart
ment of Agriculture. In the bureau kept
the bird records The papers in the pigeon holes
In part read like the catalogues OF a seed store
and the collection lists of an entomologist. One
say of the birds that seeds and insects form
the chief Of their diet"
! To go to the mammals for figure of speech
II has taken years of closest work and field work
to separate the sheep from the goats In the
bird world there many more sheep than there
goats. but the job of separation has been
hard. In the little flock of best friends of the
farmer there only two birds which. perhaps,
are not well known to all suburban jewellers. The
two are the killdeer plover and the yellow-billed
cuckoo The nighthawk, which heads the list,
is. or ought to be, known to everybody or course
it is known in the North ern states. has hurt it.
Paraphrasing it might be said. Give bird
bad name and it will shoot it," In the Southern
states the nighthawk is known the bull-bat
In the fall and winter it is killed ruthlessy and
to no purpose except that of socalled sport, for
It is useless, or virtually useless as food.
Nighthawks are wholly nsectivorous. They do
no damage to crops. F. f. L. Beal. who has
made field studies for the Biological Survey of
the dietary of virtually all the commoner BIRDS
says OF the food of the nighthawk True bugs.
moths. flies. grasshoppers and crickets i'm
portant elements of its food. Several species of
mosquitoes, including the transmitter of malaria.
are eaten. Other wellknown pests consumed
by the nghthawk are Colorado potato beetles.
cucumber beetles. rice. cloverleaf and cotton
boil weevils. bill bugs. bark beetles squash bugs
and moths of the cotton worm
The killdeer plover is of the noisy birds
part of its Latin name is ''Vociferus" which
speaks for itself While the killdeer ordinarily
is accounted game bird IL is poor eating The
good that il does should save il from persecu-
ton. but gunners not apt to discriminate.
and the killdeer frequently suffers This bird
lives in the open country. More than 80 per
cent of its food consists of animal matter. The
record shows: Beetles. 3706 per cent: other in
sects. as grasshoppers. caterpillars, ants, bugs,
cadds flies, dragon flies and twowinged fies
1884 per cent. and other invertebrates as cent?
pedes spiders, ticks. oyster worms. earthworms
snas crabs and other crustacea, Pip per cent
Vegetable matter composes 2.2S per cent OF the
total food and is chiefly made up of weedseeds
such as buttonweed. smartweed foxtail grass and
nightshade. The alfalfa weevil, new and de-