The Monticellonian., 1916-06-01

 birds whose good deeds man should rejoice the ornithologist said. But the list is longer There other birds and many of them, that work as hard nearly as hard for those which l have named. Between 30 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 birds of prey which at least should have place side by side with the famars of orchard and garden to which he had given first rank. The of the birds of prey, however. has been pleaded before The 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 one which occasionally picks up chicken will serve to save its life when it is caught in the act of lar eeny. Not one of the birds in the Table of Ten is thief. Honest. welmeaning, cheerful and for the most part neighborly. they go through their lives working. which means eating. in order that man more fully may reap what he has
 It Is admittedly probable that some close stu dents of the habits of birds may dispute the ae- euracy of the list as 1t is given. but 1t 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
 Ky their appetites ye sh all know them. bird is good or bad from the agricuturists' viewpoint according to what and how much it eats This Is plain tale of the birds bill of fare. It is lucky. perhaps. for the songsters, as well as for the tuneless ones, that the birds of the best habits of life we'll known by sight to all Americans. The trouble that the bird protectors have found lies almost wholly in the fact that the habits of birds are not as we'll known as the birds themselves
 It was Dr. A. K. Fisher of the Biological Sur yavN bo ad tba 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 entomoogist, 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 are only two birds which, perhaps not well known to all suburban dwellers The two are the kideer blower and the yellow-billed cuckoo. The nghthawk which heads the list. is, or ought to be. known to everybody Of course 1t is not hawk at all, and the name by which it is known in the North ern states, has hurt it. Paraphrasing t might be said, Give bird
 
 states the nghthawk is known as the bull-bat. In the fall and winter it Is killed ruthlessly and to no purpose except that of socalled sport for 1t is useless, virtually useless as food.
 Nighthawks are wholly insectiyorous. They do damage to crops F E. 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 nghthawk, True bugs. moths, flies. grasshoppers and crickets are inn portant elements of It's food. Several species of mosquitoes. including the transmtter of malaria, are eaten Other well-known pests consumed by the nghthawk Colorado potato beetles, cucumber beetles rice, eleYer-leaf and cotton boil weeyils. bill bugs. bark beetles squash bugs and moths of the cotton worm
 The kllldeer blower is of the noisy birds. A part of it's Latin name is "Vociferus" which speaks for itself While the kildeer ordinarily is accounted game bird it is poor eating The good that it does should save 1t from persecu- ton, but gunners not apt to discriminate. and so the kIiideer frequently suffers This bird lives in the open country More than 99 per cent of it's food consists Of animal matter. The record shows; Beetles. 3706 per cent; other in- sects. grasshoppers. eaterpillars, ants, bugs. caddis flies. dragon flies and two-wnged flies. 3954 per cent. and other invertebrates eenti- pedes, spiders, ticks. oyster worms earthworms. snas, crabs and other crustacea. 2112 per cent Vegetable matter composes 22S per cent of the total food and is chiefly made up of weedseeds snch as buttonweed smartweed. foxtail grass and nghtshade. The alfalfa weeyil new and de-