Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 170, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 July 1919 — Birds Farmers’ Best Friends. [ARTICLE]

Birds Farmers’ Best Friends.

Examination of hundreds of stomachs of birds, taken in different localities and at all seasons, painstaking scientific observations of the birds* habits by trained experts, have now for many years been establishing, beyond question, the . fact that they are one of nature’s most effective checks on the undue increase of insect and rodent pests. In the early days, the days before we had scientific study of the habits of birds, the connection in the popular mind between birds sowing of seed principally took' the form of speculation as to what proportion of the sown seed or its product the birds would get. Crows ahd blackbirds were observed to pull com. The fact that some kernels were left in the hill uneaten did not suggest to the farmer that it was the cutworm that the crows were really after, not the corn. —B. S. Bovjdish, in Christian Herald.