Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1893 — Hawks, Owls and Farmers. [ARTICLE]

Hawks, Owls and Farmers.

The Department of Agriculture at Washington has recently published a work prepared by Dr. A. K. Fisher, assistant ornithologist of the department, under the title, “The Hawks and Owls of the United States in Their Relation to Agriculture.” It is the general belief of scientific men that such birds—birds of prey, as they are called—are, on the whole, or great service to farmers; but this belief is directly opposed to that which has commonly been held by farmers themselves. F 3?he ornithologists of the department have therefore undertaken to *s certain wbe j# Tight, the farmer or

the man of science. To this end about twenty-seven hundred stomachs of newly killed hawks and owls have been critically examined. The result may be summarized in a few words. Oftheseventy-threekindsof hawks and owls found within the United States, only six are, on the whole, ini jurious. Of these, three are so ex--1 tremely rare as hardly to call for at- ; teotion, and another—the flsh hawk —is only indirectly harmful; so that j of only two—the sharp-shinned hawk ! and Cooper’s hawk—need any practical account be taken. But this is only half the story. Not only are the overwhelming majority of such birds not injurious to the agriculturist-—t]iey render him continual and extremely valuable service by the destruction of numberless plant-destroying rodents and insects. The red-shouldered hawk, for in. stance, is the commonest large hawk in many parts of the country, and is commonly known—as is the redtailed hawk also—as the “hen-hawk.” Of this hawk two hundred and twenty stomachs frere examined, and of the food found in them less than two per cent, was poultry. The remainder consisted of mice, grasshoppers and a great variety of other things. More than sixty-five per cent, of the Whole was made up of noxious mammals—mice and shrews especially. Concerning Swainson's hawk, we are told that it is particularly fond of grasshoppers. One bird has been estimated to consume at least two hundred grasshoppers in a day. In the course of a month a flock of about one hundred and sixty-flve, “which is a small estimate of the number actually seen together in various localities feeding upon grasshoppers,” would destroy a million of these pests. Facts like these should be taken into account by law-makers; but it is not many years since the legislature of at least one of the Western States —Colorado—passed a bounty act, intended to encourage the killing of hawks, Swainson’s hawk included, and as a result thousands of grass-hopper-eating hawks were actually killed at the State’s expense!