The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1916-07-07
WHAT BIRD LIFE MEANS TO Us

| WHAT blltD LIFE MEANS ~ US
Bird life, meaning the common wild
birds with which every country boy
is familiar, from the old black crow to
the meadow lark, black bird, bobo-
link, and all the rest Of the song birds,
is Of much more value each year to
the people of the United States than
the biggest railroad system in the
country. That may seem to be a
pretty broad statement, yet it falls
far short of stating the actual facts.
The agricultural department of the
United States Government has kept
tab ON the birds, what they do, what
they eat every day in the year, and
what their habits are, until now their
lives are an open book. This work,
done by the biological survey, has
brought out some very astonishing
things besides natural history, for it
has been so thoroughly and so pains
takingly done that not only is the list
Of foods for each bird for the entire
year accurately tabulated but the
average bulk amount of each kind Of
food is known so closely that values
in dollars and cents can be reckoned,
and thus the actual live value to the
nation of each individual bird be cas-
lily computed.
For 40 years | have made it a part
Of my daily life to watch and to study
all nature, and especially to study our
common song birds. This has given
me great volume of accurate infor-
nation so that have for years had a
very good working idea of the value
of birds as insect and weed seed de-
stroyers. spD
1t remained for the biological sur
vey, however, to get these things down
to scientific accuracy because, where
| was only one man, they put hundreds
Of observers into the field, and thus
were able to carry on a system of es-
pionage that covered every State in
the Union simultaneously. In addi-
ton to this they were able to bring in
expert scientific observers and labor
atory men whose life business is the
study of birds, good, bad and indiffer-
emit. This system was organized and
the laboratory men began to exam
inc the crops Of birds sent in by hunt
ers from all over the country.
Immediately things began to hap
pen; certain insects were found Tin
whole specimens and fragments) in
the crops of many birds; certain other
insects were found only in the crops
of certain birds. Some crops contain
ed only weed seeds of one kind or an
other; others contained a great mix
ture of seeds of various weeds, and
many others contained both seeds and
bugs.
The strangest thing developed by
this work was that robins and certain
other birds, long accused of being
fruit eaters and therefore detrimental
to mankind, were absolutely cleared
of the charge because their diet is al
most entirely insects with only here
and there a cherry! Every Robin is
entitled to the few cherries he eats
because without him there would be
no cherries for anybody, for he de-
stroys the insects that destroy cher
ries and when he is in the cherry tree
he is eating more insects than cher
! ries.
| Many other supposed-to-b harmful
1 birds were found to be just as help
full, and there is no guess work about
it now! ~
The common Bob White quail, kill
ed all over the country for sport, is
worth each year considerably more
/ than his own weight in pure gold be-
cause he destroys harmful insects
| (like the potato bug, chinch bug, and
others) enough to save more than the
value of his own weight in gold in
crops for the farmer. Remember that
each and every quail is worth that
for bug destroying alone, to say no.
thing Of the weed seeds he destroys on
top Of that, so the farmer with a flock
of quails on his land should protect
them because in doing so he is saving
money for himself and the crop sup
| ply for all.
J If it were not for the common fork
ed-tail swallow we could not raise a
cotton crop in the United States, sim
ply because the food Of the swallow
in its migrations over the cotton belt
is the cotton boil weevil, and the bird
eats the insect in the moth or egg
laying stage, so he,strikes at the wee
vii in his weakest spot.
| There is not one single wild bird
Of any species mot even excepting
| hawks and owls long killed on sight by
| everybody but what is of very great
value to man, and every man, woman
and child should protect every bird
because it means tremendous crop
increase to us all.--El Comanchio, in
"Our Dumb Animals"