Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 169, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1917 — The Busy Birds. [ARTICLE]

The Busy Birds.

Qne form of national waste w’hich is far more serious than the American people realize is a result of the deplorable neglect to conserve bird life in this heedless and ungrateful country. Ornithologists and other intelligent observers of nature who have made a study of the subject.say with the sanction of crop experts that Insects destroy one-tenth of the products of agriculture in the United States. Nearly all birds destroy insect life. The federal department of agriculture has found that among the birds which most effectively aid the farmers are phoebes, kingbirds, catbirds, swallows, brown thrushes, rosebreasted grosbeaks, house wrens, vlreos, native sparrows, cuckoos, orioles, warblers, shore larks, loggerhead'Shrikes and meadow larks. Even the crow and the crow blackbird, which have rested under suspicion so long, do more good than harm to the farmers.— Chicago News.