Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 141, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 June 1916 — Birds of Prey That Help the Farmer Edward B. Clark [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Birds of Prey That Help the Farmer Edward B. Clark

by Edward B. Clark

Most hawks and owls are beneficial. Uncle Sam wants to protect them—why not assist him in his good work I

A AMLET said that he knew a hawk tSa f rom a handsaw. Perhaps It is betKclMm ter to know one hawk from another, fcj! 0$ Counter to the general belief, ■jjra most of our North American hawks SS/N are beneficent in their lives. In the course of a year they do much / more good than harm, and yet they U tup are shot ruthlessly on sight. It [As would profit the man with a poultry yard and a farm to study the habits of hawks a little and to learn to discriminate between the friend and the foe to his interests. ~Let us~Ske first thehawks ordinarily known as hen hawks or chicken hawks. The hawks commonly called by these names rarely kill any chickens. But the trouble is that they get the blame for the bath deeds of birds that “sneak in’ to the poultry yard, do their killing and make their escape while the big bird soaring in plain sight against the heavens is charged with being the culprit and receives the present of a charge of shot if opportunity offers. Take the red-tailed hawk for Instance. He is known to the scientist as Buteo borealis. In the West the soaring “chicken hawk” almost invariably is the redtail. About once a year perhaps the redtail will pick up a chicken, but for the rest of the time he contents himself with a diet of frogs, snakes, crawfish, insects, and small mammals, mostly of an injurious habit of life. The number of field mice that a red-tailed hawk in the course of a month will catch and devour is almost incredible. The good that this “chicken hawk” does so far outweighs the harm that it is a living shame it is hunted so ceaselessly. If there ever was a creature in the world about whom there are a thousand mistaken thoughts that creature is the je<ktailed hawk, the commonest of our “chicken hawks.”

Ordinarily one thinks of birds of prey as being exceedingly bold. Some of them are. But the redtail is on pretty nearly every occasion an arrant coward. He is meekly submissive to the assaults of the kingbird, and he is a perfect poltroon in the face of an attack from a crow. I have seen a crow buffet a red-tailed hawk for half an hour, the hawk making absolutely no attempt to defend himself and apparently being afraid to leave its perch on a fencepost for fear that the crow would get a greater advantage while in flight. As a rule the courageous hawks are the injurious hawks. There is another hawk similar in its habits to tfia, redtail. It is fairly common in many parts of the United States and particularly so east of the Mississippi river. It is called the red-shoul-dered hawk, and with the redtail it shares the ignominy of being known wherever it appears as a chicken hawk. Like the redtail it occasionally kills a chicken. But it dearly loves rats, mice, tree-girdling rabbits, frogs, and insects. The redshouldered hawk soars, and soars, and soars, and when it is seen against the sky the shotgun is brought out and an attempt is made to kill the friend that is' looking for field mice, gophers or something else, and with its thoughts far removed from the chicken coop. In a suburb of Washington, D. C., a friend of mine has a Country place where he raises large numbers of chickens. This friend is a bird lover and he has many species of American birds dwell- - Ing at his doorstep. Back of his house he has about twenty acres of woodland, and in these woods lived two pairs of red-shouldered hawks. My friend asked me if he should kill the hawks in order to save his chickens. I told him to leave the hawks alone and he did so for a long time. Finally on one unfortunate day one of the redshouldered gentlemen descended on the poultry yard and made off with a pullet. Death was decreed for the hawks and soon they were killed. Within a few weeks the chickens began to disappear, or, at any rate, were found dead with their lifeblood gone, and in some cases partly devoured. The weasels were at work. After the hawks were killed the weasels multiplied in great numbers and took their heavy toll of roosters, hens and little chicks of uncertain sex. My friend was sorry that he had killed the hawks. Then there is the sparrow hawk, known to the scientist as Falco sparverlus. This is the smallest of th® hawks of North America, and it has a range all over the United States. The sparrow hawk almost unquestionably is the most beautiful, as it" is the smallest, of our birds of prey. This little hawk is unfortunately named. It was dubbed sparrow hawk long before the day of the English sparrows in this country. It was so called because it occasionally captured and killed some of our native American sparrows, which, for the most part, are beneficent birds. Lately the sparrow hawk when it does any bird killing at all, turns its attention largely to English sparrows, and thereby adds to the services which it otherwise renders. The sparrow hawk lives mostly on small injurious mammals, insects, grasshoppers, caterpillars, and the like. It should be said, however, that fully 25 per cent of the food of the sparrow hawk consists of field mice, house mice and shrews. A pair of sparrow hawks have a nest, or at any rate a resting place, back of a big bronze eagle which spreads its wings near the roof on the face -of the state, wjtr, and navy building in Washington directly across a narrow street from one end of the White House. These two sparrow hawks hunt the White House grounds daily. It may not be the same pair, but two sparrow hawks have been abiding back of the state department eagle for a good many years. When Theodore Roosevelt was president he searched the grounds around the White House every once in a while to discover what he could in the way of wild life. Next to birds, he was particularly interested in field mice. Occasionally he la-

mented the fact that he could not find more species of the little mammals than he did in the White House yard. I always have thought that the reason was to be found back of the eagle on the state department front. The two sparrow hawks kept the lawns pretty well clear of the minor rodents. The marsh hawk, Circus hudsonius, is one of the most beautiful birds of prey in the United States and one of the most useful. The adult male has a bluish slate body, streaked with white, and becoming pure white just above the tall and underneath. The underparts are lightly specked with reddish brown. The adult female and the young are rusty in color, with a good many streaks. Marsh hawks, as their name suggests, haunt the wet places, but frequently they are seen flying low over the dry fields and the prairies. Perhaps one cannot do better than to quote Vernon Bailey on the subject of the marsh hawk. He writes: “The intelligent farmer usually recognizes th® value of this hawk and the fact that it almost never touches his poultry. He sees it skimming over his meadows and diving into the grass for mice, and wisely lets its live; but nevertheless he would be surprised if he could figure out how many dollars it saves hip during the year.’’ It is virtually impossible within the scope of a comparatively short article to give anything like a full list with descriptions of all the beneficial hawks in the United States. They form a feathered legion. Let us, however, take one or more of these birds of prey for a little advisory discourse. The Swalnson hawk, Buteo swainsonl, is distributed from the'far arctic regions way southward to the Argentine Republic. In the United States, it id* fairly common from the western ocean to Wisconsin and Illinois, and occasionally it is found In the East * Major Bendire, the army ornithologist, wrote of this hawk, which he studied for a long time: The food of Swainson’s hawk consists almost entirely of the smaller rodents, principally striped gophers and mice, as well as grasshoppers and the large black cricket which is very common, as well as destructive, in certain seasons, and. the bane of the farmers in eastern Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, and other localities in the Great Basin, destroying and eating up every green thing as they move along. I cannot recall a single instance where one of these birds visited a poultry yard. From an economic point of view I consider it by far the most useful and beneficial of all our hawks.” Now for something about a few of our beneficial : owls. Everybody knows, or ought to know, the little screech owl which sits at the entrance to _ its hold ta a hollow tree and utters its querulous, curious cry This little bird has two upstanding

tufts of feathers which serve to distinguish it from a less common but very much similar owl of which something will be written further on. Of owls which are not described here at length, among the most useful are the barred owl, the long-eared and the short-eared owls. The screech owl is one of the best mousers in the world. It also is a great destroyer of insects. It starts its hunting about sunset and it Journeys round and round the buildings in the country looking for its favorite quarry. It kills thousands upon thousands of mice every year. Dr. A. K. Fisher, the government’s expert in all matters pertaining to hawks and owls, says of the little screech owls that their economic relations are of the greatest importance, “particularly on account of the abundance of the species in farming districts; and whoever destroys them through ignorance dr prejudice should be severely condemned.” It was the barn owl, or a species closely, allied to it, of which Gray wrote in his “Elegy,” “the moping owl doth to the moon complain.” Sometimes the barn owl is called the monkey-faced owl because its countenance does look a trifle like that of the monkey. In recent years the barn owls have been decreasing in numbers because of the mistaken belief that they kill poultry. The trouble is that barn owls frequently live in barns or in other structures reared by man, and because they are seen therefore about the poultry yards frequently the impression is given that they are chicken thieves. The barn owl, however, is one of the most beneficial of all our rapacious birds. It dearly loves rats and mice, and one barn owl is worth a dozen cats as a ratter and mouser. There is a little owl commonly called the “sawwhet,” which is an interesting and beneficial creature.’ At first glance one might think that the saw-whet owl is a screech owl, but on taking a second look it will be seen that the saw-whet lacks the ear tufts or feathered horns that are worn by its little cousin.

The saw-whet owl gets its name from the fact that its note sounds like the whetting of a saw. It can be readily understood, therefore, that this bird is not much of a musician. It is a great mouser, and like most of the other owls, seems to prefer these small rodents to almost any other article of diet. t „ The saw-whet owl raises a I&rgb family each year. It keeps the father and mother exceedingly busy to get enough mice to feed the offspring, but they keep at the hunting work for hours at a time and probably deny themselves many a mouse morsel in order that the young may get enough to eat. It is an easy matter for a person to get from the government full knowledge of the habits of the beneficial hawks and owls of the United States. The biological survey of the department of agriculture has the records in the case, and it will be glad enough to furnish information to persons seeking it Uncle Sam wants to save most of his hawks and owls. Why not help him do it?