Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 May 1895 — BIRDS HELP FARMERS. [ARTICLE]

BIRDS HELP FARMERS.

Evidently Natnre Knows How to Take Care of Her Business. Dr. C. Hart Merriam, chief of the division of ornithology of the Agricultural Department, has analyzed the contents of the stomachs of hawks, owls, blackbirds, meadow larks and other birds of North America, which are supposed to be strikingly beneficial to or injurious to the crops of farmers. The stomachs of over 7,000 birds , taken at different seasons of the year have been alrendy analyzed and tha contents determined, while some 12,000 are still unexamined. The results in some cases have been remarkable, showing that popular ideas regarding the injurious effects of certain birds were wholly mistaken. This has been found to be especially the case with hawks and owls, for the slaughter of which many States give bounties. Pennsylvania in two years gave over SIOO,OOO in hawk and owl bounties. Examinations of the stomachs of these birds proved conclusively that 95 per cent of their food was field mice, grasshoppers, crickets, etc., which were infinitely more injurious to farm crops than they. It was found that only five kinds of hawks and owls ever touch poultry, and then to a very limited extent. The crow is not as black as he is painted by the farmer. The charges against the crow were that he ate corn and destroyed eggs, poultry and wild birds. Examination of their stomachs showed that they ate noxious insects and other animals, and, though 25 per cent of their food is corn, it was mostly waste corn, picked up in the fall and winter. With regard to eggs, it was found that the shells were eaten to a very limited extent for the limeThey eat ants, beetles, caterpillars, bugs, flies, grubs, etc., which do much damage. Bulletins are also being prepared on the cuckoo and other black birds, king birds, meadow larks, cedar birds, thrushes, cat birds, sparrows, etc. In many cases popular ideas are found to be untrue. In the case of the king bird, killed by the farmer under the impression that he eats bees, it was found that he ate only drones and robbed flies, which themselves feed on bees, and which destroy more bees in a day than the king bird does in a year. The king bird, therefore, is to be encouraged rather than slaughtered.