of work in decimating the pheasant fauna of western China.
Far up in the wilderness of northern Burma, and over the Yunnan border, we often came upon some of the most ingenious examples of native trapping, a system which we found repeated in the Malay States, Borneo, China and other parts of the Far East. A low bamboo fence is built directly across a steep valley or series of valleys, about half way from the summit to the lower end, and about every fifteen feet a narrow opening is left, over which a heavy log is suspended. Any creature attempting to make its way through, treads upon several small sticks and by so doing springs the trap and the dead-fall claims a victim. When a country is systematically strung with traps such as these, sooner or later all but a pitiful remnant of the smaller mammals, birds and reptiles are certain to be wiped out. Morning after morning I have visited such a runway and found dead along its path, what must have been all the walking, running or crawling creatures which the night before had sought the water at the bottom; pheasants, cobras, mouse-deer, rodents, civets, and members of many other groups. In some countries nooses instead of dead-falls guard the openings, but the result is equally deadly.
I have described this method of trapping because of its future importance in the destruction of wild life in the Far East. The Chinaman in all his many millions is undergoing a remarkably swift and radical evolution both of character and dress. In many ways, if only from the viewpoint of the patient, thrifty store-keeper he is a most powerful factor in the East, and is becoming more so. In many cases he imitates the white nations by cutting off his queue and altering his dress. In some mysterious correlated way his diet seems simultaneously affected, and while for untold generations rice and fish has satisfied all his gastronomic desires, a new craving, that for meat, has come to him. The result is apparent in many parts of the East. The Chinaman is willing and able to pay for meat, and the native finds a new market for the creatures about him. Again and again when I wished a few specimens of some certain pheasant I had but to hail passing canoes and bid a few annas or “cash” or “ringits” higher than the prospective Chinese purchaser would give, and the pheasants were mine.
In the catalogues of the brokers’ sales of feathers we read of many thousands of the wonderful ocellated wing feathers of the argus pheasant, but no less horrible is the sight of a canoe crammed with the bedraggled bodies of these magnificent birds on their way to some Chinese hamlet where they will be sold for a pittance, the flesh eaten to the last tendon and the feathers given to the children and puppies to play with. The newly-aroused appetite of the Mongolian will soon be an important factor in the extermination of animals and birds, few species being exempt, for the Chinaman lives up to his reputation and is not squeamish as to the nature of his meat.
Before we leave the subject of Chinamen let us consider another recent factor in the destruction of wild life which is at present widely operative in China itself. This is the cold storage warehouse, of which six or eight enormous ones have gone up in different parts of the East. To speak in detail only of the one at Hankow, six hundred miles up the Yangtze, we found it to be the largest structure in the city. Surrounded by a high wall, with each entrance and exit guarded by armed Sikhs, it seemed like the feudal castle of some medieval baron. Why such secrecy is necessary I could not learn, as there are no laws against its business. But so carefully guarded is its premises that until a short time ago even the British consul-general of Hankow had not been allowed to enter. He, however, at last refused to sign the papers for any more outgoing shipments until he should be allowed to see what was going on within the warehouse. I hoped to be able to look over some of the frozen pheasants for interesting scientific material, but of course was not allowed to do so.
Although here in the heart of China, outside changes are not felt so strongly and the newly-acquired meat diet of the border and emigrant Chinese is hardly apparent, these warehouses have opened up a new source of revenue, which has met with instant response. Thousands and tens of thousands of wild shot or trapped pheasants and other birds are now brought to these establishments by the natives from far and near. The birds are frozen, and twice a year shipped on specially refrigerated P. and O. steamships to England and the continent of Europe where they seem to find a ready sale. Pigs and chickens also figure in the shipments. Now the pheasants have for centuries existed in enormous numbers in the endless ricefields of China, without doing any damage to the crops. In fact they could not be present in such numbers without being an important factor in keeping down insect and other enemies of the grain. When their numbers are decimated as they are being at present, there must eventually result a serious upsetting of the balance of nature. Let us hope that in some way this may be avoided, and that the present famine deaths of thirty thousand or more in some provinces will not be increased many fold.
When I started on this search for pheasants I was repeatedly told by old explorers in the east that my task would be very different from theirs of thirty years ago; that I would find steamers, railroads and automobiles where formerly were only canoes and jungle. I indeed found this as reported, but while my task was different it was made no easier. Formerly, to be sure, one had from the start to paddle slowly or push along the trails made by natives or game animals. But then the wild life was encountered at once, while I found it always far from the end of the steamer’s route or the railroad’s terminal, and still to be reached only by the most primitive modes of travel.
I cite this to give point to my next great cause of destruction; the burning and clearing of vast stretches of country for the planting of rubber trees. The East seems rubber mad, and whether the enormous output which will result from the millions of trees set out month after month will be profitable, I cannot say. I can think only of the vanishing of the _entire fauna_ and _flora_ of many districts which I have seen as a direct result of this commercial activity. One leaves Port Swettenham on the west coast of Selangor, and for the hour’s run to Kuala Lumpur sees hardly anything but vast radiating lines of spindling rubber trees, all underbrush cleared, all native growths vanished. From Kuala Lumpur to Kuala Kubu at the very foot of the mountain backbone of the Malay Peninsula, the same holds true. And where some area appears not under cultivation, the climbing fern and a coarse, useless “lalang” grass covers every inch of ground. One can hardly imagine a more complete blotting out of the native fauna and flora of any one limited region. And ever-extending roads for the increasing motor cars are widening the cleared zone, mile after mile to the north and south.
In this region, as we pushed on over the mountains into the wilderness of Pahang, we saw little of the actual destruction of the primeval native growth, but elsewhere it became a common sight. Once, for many days we studied the wonderful life of a jungle which stretched up to our very camp. Troops of rollicking wa-was or gibbons frequented the forest; squirrels, tupaias, birds and insects in myriads were everywhere during the day. Great fruit-bats, flying lemurs, owls and other nocturnal creatures made the evenings and nights full of interest.
And then, one day without warning came the sound of an ax, and another and another. From that moment the songs, cries, chirps and roars of the jungle were seldom heard from our camp. Every day saw new phalanxes of splendid primeval trees fallen, or half suspended in their rigging of lianas. The leaves withered, the flower petals fell and we heard no more the crackling of bamboos in the wind. Then the pitiful survivors of the destruction were brought to us; now a baby flying lemur, flung from its hole by the falling of some tree; young tupaias, nestling birds; a few out of the thousands of creatures from insects to mammals which were slain so that a Chinaman or Malay might eke a few dollars, four or five years hence, from a grove of rubber trees. I do not say it is wrong. Man has won out, and might is right, as since the dawn of creation; but to the onlooker, to the lover of nature and the animal world it is a terrible, a hopeless thing.
One cannot at present leave the tourist line of travel in the East without at once encountering evidence of the wholesale direct slaughter of wild life, or its no less certain extermination by the elimination of the haunts and the food plants of the various beasts and birds.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXI
THE SAVAGE VIEW-POINT OF THE GUNNER
The mental attitude of the men who shoot constitutes a deadly factor in the destruction of wild life and the extermination of species. Fully ninety-five per cent of the sportsmen, gunners and other men and boys who kill game, all over the world and in all nations, regard game birds and mammals only as things to be killed _and eaten_, and not as creatures worth preserving for their beauty or their interest to mankind. This is precisely the viewpoint of the cave-man and the savage, and it has come down from the Man-with-a-Club to the Man-with-a-Gun absolutely unchanged save for one thing: the latter sometimes is prompted to save to-day in order to slaughter to-morrow.
The above statement of an existing fact may seem harsh; and some persons may be startled by it; but it is based on an acquaintance with thousands of men who shoot all kinds of game, all over the world. My critics surely will admit that my opportunities to meet the sportsmen and gunners of the world are, and for thirty-five years have been, rather favorable. As a matter of fact, I think the efforts of the hunters of my personal acquaintance have covered about seven-tenths of the hunting grounds of the world. If the estimate that I have formed of the average hunter’s viewpoint is wrong, or even partially so, I will be glad to have it proven in order that I may reform my judgment and apologize.
In working with large bodies of bird-shooting sportsmen I have steadily–and also painfully–been impressed by their intentness on. killing, and by the fact that _they seek to preserve game only to kill it!_ Who ever saw a bird-shooter rise in a convention and advocate the preservation of any species of game bird on account of its beauty or its esthetic interest _alive?_ I never did; and I have sat in many conventions of sportsmen. All the talk is of open seasons, bag limits and killing rights. The man who has the hardihood to stand up and propose a five-year close season has “a hard row to hoe.” Men rise and say: “It’s all nonsense! There’s plenty of quail shooting on Long Island yet.”
Throughout the length and breadth of America, the ruling passion is to kill as long as anything killable remains. The man who will openly advocate the stopping of quail-shooting because the quails are of such great value to the farmers, or because they are so _beautiful_ and companionable to man, receives no sympathy from ninety per cent of the bird-killing sportsmen. The remaining ten per cent think seriously about the matter, and favor long close seasons. It is my impression that of the men who shoot, it is only among the big-game hunters that we find much genuine admiration for game animals, or any feeling remotely resembling regard for it.
The moment that a majority of American gunners concede the fact that game birds are worth preserving for their beauty, and their value as living neighbors to man, from that moment there is hope for the saving of the Remnant. That will indeed be the beginning of a new era, of a millennium in fact, in the preservation of wild life. It will then be easy to enact laws for ten-year close seasons on whole groups of species. Think what it would mean for such a close season to be enacted for all the grouse of the United States, all the shore-birds of the United States, or the wild turkey wherever found!
To-day, the great–indeed, the _only_–opponents of long close seasons on game birds are the gunners. Whenever and wherever you introduce a bill to provide such a season, you will find that this is true. The gun clubs and the Downtrodden Hunters’ and Anglers’ Protective Associations will be quick to go after their representatives, and oppose the bill. And state senators and assemblymen will think very hard and with strong courage before they deliberately resolve to do their duty regardless of the opposition of “a large body of sportsmen,”–men who have votes, and who know how to take revenge on lawmakers who deprive them of their “right” to kill. The greatest speech ever made in the Mexican Congress was uttered by the member who solemnly said: “I rise to sacrifice ambition to honor!”
Unfortunately, the men who shoot have become possessed of the idea that they have certain inherent, God-given “rights” to kill game! Now, as a matter of fact, a sportsman with a one-hundred-dollar Fox gun in his hands, a two-hundred-dollar dog at his heels and five one-hundred-dollar bills in his pocket has no more “right” to kill a covey of quail on Long Island than my milkman has to elect that it shall be let alone for the pleasure of his children! The time has come when the people who don’t shoot must do one of two things:
1. They must demonstrate the fact that they have rights in the wild creatures, and demand their recognition, or
2. See the killable game all swept off the continent by the Army of Destruction.
Really, it is to me very strange that gunners never care to save game birds on account of their beauty. One living bob white on a fence is better than a score in a bloody game-bag. A live squirrel in a tree is poetry in motion; but on the table a squirrel is a rodent that tastes as a rat smells. Beside the ocean a flock of sandpipers is needed to complete the beautiful picture; but on the table a sandpiper is beneath contempt. A live deer trotting over a green meadow, waving a triangular white flag, is a sight to thrill any human ganglion; but a deer lying dead,–unless it has an exceptionally fine head,–is only so much butcher’s meat.
One of the finest sights I ever saw in Montana was a big flock of sage grouse slowly stalking over a grassy flat thinly sprinkled with sage-brush. It was far more inspiring than any pile of dead birds that I ever saw. I remember scores of beautiful game birds that I have seen and not killed; but of all the game birds that I have eaten or tried to eat in New York, I remember with sincere pleasure only _one_. Some of the ancient cold-storage candidates I remember “for cause,” as the lawyers say.
[Illustration: ONE MORNING’S CATCH OF TROUT, NEAR SPOKANE Another Line of Extermination According to law. Three Times too Many Fish for one rod. In those Cold Mountain Streams, Fish Grow Slowly, and a Stream is Quickly “Fished out”]
Sportsmen and gunners, for God’s sake elevate your viewpoint of the game of the world. Get out of the groove in which man has run ever since the days of Adam! There is something in a game bird over and above its pound of flesh. You don’t “need” the meat any longer; for you don’t know what hunger is, save by reading of it. Try the field-glass and the camera, instead of the everlasting gun. Any fool can take a five-dollar gun and kill a bird; but it takes a genius to photograph one wild bird and get “a good one.” As hunters, the camera men have the best of it. One good live-bird photograph is more of a trophy and a triumph than a bushel of dead birds. The birds and mammals now are literally dying for _your_ help in the making of long close seasons, and in the real stoppage of slaughter. Can you not hear the call of the wild remnant?
It is time for the people who don’t shoot to call a halt on those who do; “and if this be treason, then let my enemies make the most of it!”
Since the above was written, I have read in the _Outdoor World_ for April, 1912, the views of a veteran sportsman and writer, Mr. Emerson Hough, on the wild-life situation as it seems to him to-day. It is a strong utterance, even though it reaches a pessimistic and gloomy conclusion which I do not share. Altogether, however, its breadth of view, its general accuracy, and its incisiveness, entitle it to a full hearing. The following is only an extract from a lengthy article entitled, “God’s Acre:”
* * * * *
EMERSON HOUGH’S VIEW OF THE SITUATION
The truth is none the less the truth because it is unpleasant to face. There is no well posted sportsman in America, no manufacturer of sporting goods in America, no man well versed in American outdoor matters, who does not know that we are at the evening of the day of open sport in America. Our old ways have failed, all of them have failed. The declining fortunes of the best sportsman’s journals of America would prove that, if proof were asked. Our sportsmanship has failed. Our game laws have failed, and we know they have failed. Our game is almost gone, and we know it is almost gone. America has changed and we know that it has changed, although we have not changed with it. The old America is done and it is gone, and we know that to be the truth. The old order passeth, and we know that the new order must come soon if it is to work any salvation for our wild game and our life in the open in pursuit of it.
There are many reasons for this fact, these facts. Perhaps the greatest lies in the steady advance of civilization into the wilderness, the usurpation for agricultural or industrial use of many of the ancient breeding and feeding places of the wild game. All over the West and now all over Canada, the plow advances, that one engine which cannot be gainsaid, which never turns a backward furrow.
Another great agency is the rapid perfection of transportation all over the world. Take the late influx of East African literature. If there really were not access to that country we would not have this literature, would not have so many pictures from that country. And if even Africa will soon be overrun, if even Africa soon will be shot out, what hope is there for the game of the wholly accessible North American continent?
It is all too easy now for the slaughterer to get to his work, all too easy for him to transport the fruits of the slaughter. At the hands of the ignorant, the unscrupulous and the unsparing, our game has steadily disappeared until it is almost gone. We have handled it in a wholly greedy, unscrupulous and selfish fashion. This has been our policy as a nation. If there is to be success for any plan to remedy this, it must come from a few large-minded men, able to think and plan, and able to do more than that–to follow their plans with deeds.
I have seen the whole story of modern American sportsmanship, so called. It has been class legislation and organized selfishness–that is what it has been, and nothing else. I do not blame country legislators, game dealers, farmers, for calling the sportsmen of America selfish and thoughtless. I do not blame them for saying that the so-called protective measures advanced by sportsmen have been selfish measures, and looking to destruction rather than to protection. At least that has been their actual result. I have no more reverence for a sportsman than for anyone else, and no reverence for him at all because he is or calls himself a sportsman. He has got to be a man. He has got to be a citizen.
I have seen millions of acres of breeding and feeding grounds pass under the drain and under the plow in my own time, so that the passing whisper of the wild fowl’s wing has been forgotten there now for many years. I have seen a half dozen species of fine game birds become extinct in my own time and lost forever to the American people.
And you and I have seen one protective society after another, languidly organized, paying in a languid dollar or so per capita each year, and so swiftly passing, also to be forgotten. We have seen one code and the other of conflicting and wholly selfish game laws passed, and seen them mocked at and forgotten, seen them all fail, as we all know.
We have seen even the nation’s power–under that Ark of the Covenant known as the Interstate Commerce Act–fail to stop wholly the lessening of our wild game, so rapidly disappearing for so many reasons.
We have seen both selfish and unselfish sportsmen’s journals attempt to solve this problem and fail to do so. Some of them were great and broad-minded journals. Their record has not been one of disgrace, although it has been one of defeat; for some of them really desired success more than they desired dividends. These, all of them, bore their share of a great experiment, an experiment in a new land, under a new theory of government, a theory which says a man should be able to restrain himself, and to govern himself. Only by following their theory through to the end of that experiment could they know that it was to fail in one of its most vitally interesting and vitally important phases.
But now, as we know, all of these agencies, selfish or unselfish, have failed to effect the salvation of American wild game. Not by any scheme, device, or theory, not by any panacea can the old days of America be brought back to us.
* * * * *
Mr. Hough’s views are entitled to respectful consideration; but on one vital point I do not follow him.
I believe most sincerely–in fact, _I know_,–that it is _possible_ to make a few new laws which, in addition to the many, many good protective laws we already have, will bring back the game, just as fast and as far as man’s settlements, towns, railroads, mines and schemes in general ever can permit it to come back.
If the American People as a whole elect that our wild life shall be saved, and to a reasonable extent brought back, then by the Eternal it will be saved and brought back! The road lies straight before us, and the going is easy–_if_ the Mass makes up its mind to act. But on one vital point Mr. Hough is right. The sportsman alone never will save the game! The people who do not kill must act, independently.
* * * * *
PART II.–PRESERVATION
CHAPTER XXII
OUR ANNUAL LOSSES BY INSECTS
“You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live.”
“In no country in the world,” says Mr. C.L. Marlatt, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “do insects impose a heavier tax on farm products than in the United States.” These attacks are based upon an enormous and varied annual output of cereals and fruits, and a great variety and number of trees. For every vegetable-eating insect, native and foreign, we seem to have crops, trees and plant food galore; and their ravages rob the market-basket and the dinner-pail. In 1912 there were riots in the streets of New York over the high cost of food.
In 1903, this state of fact was made the subject of a special inquiry by the Department of Agriculture, and in the “Yearbook” for 1904, the reader will find, on page 461, an article entitled, “The Annual Loss Occasioned by Destructive Insects in the United States.” The article is not of the sensational type, it was not written in an alarmist spirit, but from beginning to end it is a calm, cold-blooded analysis of existing facts, and the conclusions that fairly may be drawn from them. The opinions of several experts have been considered and quoted, and often their independent figures are stated.
With the disappearance of our birds generally, and especially the slaughter of song and other insect-eating birds both in the South and North, the destruction of the national wealth by insects forges to the front as a subject of vital importance. The logic of the situation is so simple a child can see it. Short crops mean higher prices. If ten per cent of our vegetable food supply is destroyed by insects, as certain as fate we will feel it _in the increased cost of living_.
I would like to place Mr. Marlatt’s report in the hands of every man, boy and school-teacher in America; but I have not at my disposal the means to accomplish such a task. I cannot even print it here in full, but the vital facts can be stated, briefly and in plain figures.
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CROPS AND INSECTS.
CORN.–The principal insect enemies of corn are the chinch bug, corn-root worm (_Diabrotica longicornis_), bill bug, wire worm, boll-worm or ear-worm, cut-worm, army worm, stalk worm, grasshopper, and plant lice, in all a total of about fifty important species! Several of these pests work secretly. At husking time the wretched ear-worm that ruins the terminal quarter or fifth of an immense number of ears, is painfully in evidence. The root-worms work insidiously, and the moles and shrews are supposed to attack them and destroy them. The corn-root worm is charged with causing an annual loss of two per cent of the corn crop, or $20,000,000; the chinch bug another two per cent; the boll or ear-worm two per cent more. The remaining insect pests are charged with two per cent, which makes eight per cent in all, or a total of $80,000,000 lost each year to the American farmer through the ravages of insects. This is not evenly distributed, but some areas suffer more than others.
[Illustration: THE CUT-WORM, (_Peridroma Sancia_) Very Destructive to Crops]
WHEAT.–Of all our cereal crops, wheat is the one that suffers most from insects. There are three insects that cause to the wheat industry an annual loss of about ten per cent. The _chinch bug_ is the worst, and it is charged with five per cent ($20,000,000) of the total loss. The _Hessian fly_ comes next in order, and occasionally rolls up enormous losses. In the year 1900, that insect caused to Indiana and Ohio alone the loss of 2,577,000 _acres_ of wheat, and the total cost to us of that insect in that year “undoubtedly approached $100,000,000.” Did that affect the price of wheat or not? If not, then there is no such thing as a “law of supply and demand.”
_Wheat plant-lice_ form collectively the third insect pest destructive to wheat, of which it is reported that “the annual loss occasioned by wheat plant-lice probably does not fall short of two or three per cent of the crop.”
HAY AND FORAGE CROPS.–These are attacked by locusts, grasshoppers, army worms, cut-worms, web worms, small grass worms and leaf hoppers. Some of these pests are so small and work so insidiously that even the farmer is prone to overlook their existence. “A ten per cent shrinkage from these and other pests in grasses and forage plants is a minimum estimate.”
COTTON.–The great enemies of the cotton-planter are the cotton boll weevil, the bollworm and the leaf worm; but other insects inflict serious damage. In 1904 the loss occasioned by the boll weevil, chiefly in Texas, was conservatively estimated by an expert, Mr. W.D. Hunter, at $20,000,000. The boll worm of the southwestern cotton states has sometimes caused an annual loss of $12,000,000, or four per cent of the crops in the states affected. Before the use of arsenical poisons, the leaf worm caused an annual loss of from twenty to thirty million dollars; but of late years that total has been greatly reduced.
FRUITS.–The insects that reduce our annual fruit crop attack every portion of the tree and its product. The woolly aphis attacks the roots of the fruit tree, the trunk and limbs are preyed upon by millions of scale insects and borers, the leaves are devastated by the all-devouring leaf worms, canker worms and tent caterpillars, while the fruit itself is attacked by the codling moth, curculio and apple maggot. To destroy fruit is to take money out of the farmer’s pocket, and to attack and injure the tree is like undermining his house itself. By an annual expenditure of about $8,250,000 in cash for spraying apple trees, the destructiveness of the codling moth and curculio have been greatly reduced, but that money is itself a cash loss. Add to this the $12,000,000 of actual shrinkage in the apple crop, and the total annual loss to our apple-growers due to the codling moth and curculio is about $20,000,000. In the high price of apples, a part of this loss falls upon the consumer.
In 1889 Professor Forbes calculated that the annual loss to the fruit-growers of Illinois from insect ravages was $2,375,000. In 1892, insects caused to Nebraska apple-growers a loss computed at $2,000,000 and, in 1897, New York farmers lost $2,500,000 from that cause. “In many sections of the Pacific Northwest the loss was from fifty to seventy-five per cent.” (Yearbook, page 470.)
FORESTS.–“The annual losses occasioned by insect pests to forests and forest products (in the United States) have been estimated by Dr. A.D. Hopkins, special agent in charge of forest insect investigations, at not less than $100,000,000…. It covers both the loss from insect damages to standing timber, and to the crude and manufactured forest products. The annual loss to growing timber is conservatively placed at $70,000,000.”
[Illustration: THE GYPSY MOTH, (_Portheria dispar_) Very Destructive to the Finest Shade Trees]
There are other insect damages that we will not pause to enumerate here. They relate to cattle, horses, sheep and stored grain products of many kinds. Even cured tobacco has its pest, a minute insect known as the cigarette beetle, now widespread in America and “frequently the cause of very heavy losses.”
The millions of the insect world are upon us. Their cost to us has been summed up by Mr. Marlatt in the table that appears below.
* * * * *
ANNUAL VALUES OF FARM PRODUCTS, AND LOSSES CHARGEABLE TO INSECT PESTS.
_Official Report in the Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture, 1904_.
% OF
PRODUCT VALUE LOSS AMOUNT OF LOSS
Cereals $2,000,000,000 10 $200,000,000 Hay 530,000,000 10 53,000,000 Cotton 600,000,000 10 60,000,000 Tobacco 53,000,000 10 5,300,000 Truck Crops 265,000,000 20 53,000,000 Sugars 50,000,000 10 5,000,000 Fruits 135,000,000 20 27,000,000 Farm Forests 110,000,000 10 11,000,000 Miscellaneous Crops 58,000,000 10 5,800,000
Total $3,801,000,000 $420,100,000
Animal Products 1,750,000,000 10 175,000,000 Natural Forests and 100,000,000 Forest Products
Products in Storage 100,000,000
GRAND TOTAL $5,551,000,000 $795,100,000
The millions of the insect world are upon us. The birds fight them for us, and when the birds are numerous and have nestlings to feed, the number of insects they consume is enormous. They require absolutely nothing at our hands save _the privilege of being let alone while they work for us!_ In fighting the insects, our only allies in nature are the songbirds, woodpeckers, shore-birds, swallows and martins, certain hawks, moles, shrews, bats, and a few other living creatures. All these wage war at their own expense. The farmers might just as well lose $8,250,000 through a short apple crop as to pay out that sum in labor and materials in spraying operations. And yet, fools that we are, we go on slaughtering our friends, and allowing others to slaughter them, under the same brand of fatuous folly that leads the people of Italy to build anew on the smoking sides of Vesuvius, after a dozen generations have been swept away by fire and ashes.
In the next chapter we will consider the work of our friends, The Birds.
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CHAPTER XXIII.
THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS
To-day, from Halifax to Los Angeles, and from Key West to Victoria, a deadly contest is being waged. The fruit-growers, farmers, forest owners and “park people” are engaged in a struggle with the insect hordes for the possession of the trees, shrubs and crops. Go out into the open, with your eyes open, and you will see it for yourself. Millions of dollars are being expended in it. Look at this exhibit of what is going on around me, at this very moment,–July 19, 1912:
The bag insects, in thousands, are devouring the leaves of locust and maple trees.
The elm beetles are trying to devour the elms; and spraying is in progress.
The hickory-bark borers are slaughtering the hickories; and even some park people are neglecting to take the measures necessary to stop it!
The tent caterpillars are being burned.
The aphis (scale insects) are devouring the tops of the _white potatoes_ in the New York University school garden, just as the potato beetle does.
The codling moth larvae are already at work on the apples.
The leaves affected by the witch hazel gall fly are being cut off and burned.
These are merely the most conspicuous of the insect pests that I now see daily. I am not counting those of second or third-rate importance.
Some of these hordes are being fought with poisonous sprays, some are being killed by hand, and some are being ignored.
In view of the known value of the remaining trees of our country, each woodpecker in the United States is worth twenty dollars in cash. Each nuthatch, creeper and chickadee is worth from five to ten dollars, according to local circumstances. You might just as well cut down four twenty-inch trees and let them lie and decay, as to permit one woodpecker to be killed and eaten by an Italian in the North, or a negro in the South. The downy woodpecker is the relentless enemy of the codling moth, an insect that annually inflicts upon our apple crop damages estimated by the experts of the U.S. Department of Agriculture at twelve million dollars!
Now, is a federal strong-arm migratory bird law needed for such birds or not? Let the owners of orchards and forests make answer.
THE CASE OF THE CODLING MOTH AND CURCULIO.–The codling moth and curculio are twin terrors to apple-growers, partly because of their deadly destructiveness, and partly because man is so weak in resisting them. The annual cost of the fight made against them, in sprays and labor and apparatus, has been estimated at $8,250,000. And what do the birds do to the codling moth,–when there are any birds left alive to operate? The testimony comes from all over the United States, and it is worth while to cite it briefly as a fair sample of the work of the birds upon this particularly deadly pest. These facts and quotations are from the “Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture,” for 1911.
[Illustration: DOWNY WOODPECKER]
_The Downy Woodpecker_ is the champion tree-protector, and also one of the greatest enemies of the codling moth. When man is quite unable to find the hidden larvae, Downy locates it every time, and digs it out. It extracts worms from young apples so skillfully that often the fruit is not permanently injured. Mr. F.M. Webster reports that the labors of this bird “afford actual and immediate relief to the infected fruit.” Testimony in favor of the downy woodpecker has come from New York, New Jersey, Texas and California, “and no fewer than twenty larvae have been taken from a single stomach.”
Take the _Red-Shafted Flicker_ vs. the codling moth. Mr. A.P. Martin of Petaluma, Cal., states that during the early spring months (of 1890) they were seen by hundreds in his orchard, industriously examining the trunks and larger limbs of the fruit trees; and he also found great numbers of them around sheds where he stored his winter apples and pears. As the result of several hours’ search, Mr. Martin found only one worm, and this one escaped only by accident, for several of the birds had been within a quarter of an inch of it. “So eager are woodpeckers in search, of codling moths that they have often been known to riddle the shingle traps and paper bands which are placed to attract the larvae about to spin cocoons.”
Behold the array of birds that devour the larvae of the codling moth to an important extent.
* * * * *
BIRDS THAT DEVOUR THE CODLING MOTH
Downy Woodpecker (_Dryobates pubescens_). Hairy Woodpecker (_Dryobates villosus_). Texan Woodpecker (_Dryobates scalaris bairdi_). Red-Headed Woodpecker (_Melanerpes erythrocephalus_). Red-Shafted Flicker (_Colaptes cafer collaris_). Pileated Woodpecker (_Phloeotomus pileatus_). Kingbird (_Tyrranus tyrranus_).
Western Yellow-Bellied Flycatcher (_Empidonax difficilis_). Blue Jay (_Cyanocitta cristata_).
California Jay (_Aphelocoma californica_). Magpie (_Pica pica hudsonia_).
Crow Blackbird (_Quiscalus quiscula_). Brewer Blackbird (_Euphagus cyanocephalus_). Bullock Oriole (_Icterus bullocki_).
English Sparrow (_Passer domesticus_). Chipping Sparrow (_Spizella passerina_). California Towhee (_Pipilo crissalis_).
Cardinal (_Cardinalis cardinalis_). Black Headed Grosbeak (_Zamelodia melanocephala_). Lazuli Bunting (_Passerina cyanea_).
Barn Swallow (_Hirundo erythrogastra_). Western Warbling Vireo (_Vireosylva gilva swainsoni_). Summer, or Yellow Warbler (_Dendroica aestiva_). Lutescent Warbler (_Vermivora celata lutescens_). Brown Creeper (_Certhia familiaris americana_). White-Breasted Nuthatch (_Sitta carolinensis_). Black-Capped Chickadee (_Penthestes atricapillus_). Plain Titmouse (_Baeolophus inornatus_). Carolina Chickadee (_Penthestes carolinensis_). Mountain Chickadee (_Penthestes gambeli_). California Bush Tit (_Psaltriparus minimus californicus_). Ruby-Crowned Kinglet (_Regulus calendula_). Robin (_Planesticus migratorius_).
Bluebird (_Sialia sialis_).
* * * * *
In all, says Mr. W.L. McAtee, thirty-six species of birds of thirteen families help man in his irrepressible conflict against his deadly enemy, the codling moth. “In some places they destroy from sixty-six to eighty-five per cent of the hibernating larvae.”
Now, are the farmers of this country content to let the Italians of the North, and the negroes of the South, shoot those birds for food, and devour them? What is the great American farmer going to _do_ about this matter? What he should do is to write and urge his members of Congress to work for and vote for the federal migratory bird bill.
THE COTTON BOLL WEEVIL.–Let us take one other concrete case. The cotton boll weevil invaded the United States from Mexico in 1894. Ten years later it was costing the cotton planters an annual loss estimated at fifteen million dollars per year. Later on that loss was estimated at twenty million dollars. The cotton boll weevil strikes at the heart of the industry by destroying the boll of the cotton plant. While the total loss never can be definitely ascertained, we know that it has amounted to many millions of dollars. The figure given above has been widely quoted, and so far as I am aware, never disputed.
Fortunately we have at hand a government publication on this subject which gives some pertinent facts regarding the bird enemies of the cotton boll weevil. It is Circular No. 57 of the Biological Survey, Department of Agriculture. Any one can obtain it by addressing that Department. I quote the most important portions of this valuable document:
* * * * *
BIRDS USEFUL IN THE WAR AGAINST THE COTTON BOLL WEEVIL.
By H.W. Henshaw, Chief of the Biological Survey.
The main purpose of this circular is to direct the attention of cotton growers and others in the cotton growing states to the importance of birds in the boll weevil war, to emphasize the need of protection for them, and to suggest means to increase the numbers and extend the range of certain of the more important kinds.
Investigations by the Biological Survey show that thirty-eight species of birds eat boll weevils. While some eat them only sparingly others eat them freely, and no fewer than forty-seven adult weevils have been found in the stomach of a single cliff swallow. Of the birds known at the present time to feed on the weevil, among the most important are the orioles, nighthawks, and, foremost of all, the swallows (including the purple martin).
ORIOLES.–Six kinds of orioles live in Texas, though but two inhabit the southern states generally. Orioles are among the few birds that evince a decided preference for weevils, and as they persistently hunt for the insects on the bolls, they fill a place occupied by no other birds. They are protected by law in nearly every state in the Union, but their bright plumage renders them among the most salable of birds for millinery purposes, and despite protective laws, considerable numbers are still killed for the hat trade. It is hardly necessary to point out that their importance as insect eaters everywhere demands their protection, but more especially in the cotton belt.
NIGHTHAWK.–The nighthawk, or bull-bat, also renders important service in the destruction of weevils, and catches them on the wing in considerable numbers, especially during its migration. Unfortunately, _the nighthawk is eaten for food in some sections of the South, and considerable numbers are shot for this purpose_. The bird’s value for food, however, is infinitesimal as compared with the service it renders the cotton grower and other agriculturists, and every effort should be made to spread broadcast a knowledge of its usefulness as a weevil destroyer, with a view to its complete protection.
SWALLOWS.–Of all the birds now known to destroy weevils, swallows are the most important. Six species occur in Texas and the southern states. The martin, the barn swallow, the bank swallow, the roughwing, and the cliff swallow breed locally in Texas, and all of them, except the cliff swallow, breed in the other cotton states. The white-bellied, or tree swallow, nests only in the North, and by far the greater number of cliff swallows nest in the North and West.
[Illustration: THE BALTIMORE ORIOLE
The Deadly Enemy of the Cotton-Boll Weevil From the “American Natural History”]
As showing how a colony of martins thrives when provided with sufficient room to multiply, an experiment by Mr. J. Warren Jacobs, of Waynesburg, Pa., may be cited. The first year five pairs were induced to occupy the single box provided, and raised eleven young. The fourth year three large boxes, divided into ninety-nine rooms, contained fifty-three pairs, and they raised about 175 young. The colony was thus nearly three hundred strong at the close of the fourth season. The effect of this number of hungry martins on the insects infesting the neighborhood may be imagined.
From the standpoint of the farmer and the cotton grower, swallows are among the most useful birds. Especially designed by nature to capture insects in midair, their powers of flight and endurance are unexcelled, and in their own field they have no competitors. Their peculiar value to the cotton grower consists in the fact that, like the nighthawk, they capture boll weevils when flying over the fields, which no other birds do. Flycatchers snap up the weevils near trees and shrubbery. Wrens hunt them out when concealed under bark or rubbish. Blackbirds catch them on the ground, as do the killdeer, titlark, meadow lark, and others; while orioles hunt for them on the bolls. But it is the peculiar function of swallows to catch the weevils as they are making long flights, leaving the cotton fields in search of hiding places in which to winter or entering them to continue their work of devastation.
Means have been taken to inform residents of the northern states of the value of the swallow tribe to agriculturists generally, and particularly to cotton planters, in the belief that the number of swallows breeding in the North can be substantially increased. The cooperation of the northern states is important, since birds bred in the North migrate directly through the southern states in the fall on their way to the distant tropics, and also in the spring on their return.
[Illustration: THE NIGHTHAWK
A Goatsucker, not a Song-bird; but it Feeds Exclusively Upon Insects]
Important as it is to increase the number of northern breeding swallows, it is still more important to increase the number nesting in the South and to induce the birds there to extend their range over as much of the cotton area as possible. Nesting birds spend much more time in the South than migrants, and during the weeks when the old birds are feeding young they are almost incessantly engaged in the pursuit of insects.
It is not, of course, claimed that birds alone can stay the ravages of the cotton boll weevil in Texas, but they materially aid in checking the advance of the pest into the other cotton states. Important auxiliaries, in destroying these insects, birds aid in reducing their numbers within safe limits, and once within safe limits in keeping them there. Hence it is for the interests of the cotton states that special efforts be made to protect and care for the weevil-eating species, and to increase their numbers in every way possible.–(End of the circular.)
* * * * *
CONDENSED NOTES ON THE FOOD HABITS OF CERTAIN NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS.
Millions of Americans and near-Americans, both old and young, now need to be shown the actual figures that represent the value of our birds as destroyers of the insects, weeds and the small rodents that are swarming to overrun and devour our fields, orchards and forests. Will our people never learn that in fighting pests the birds are worth ten times more to men than all the poisons, sprays and traps that ever were invented or used?
We cannot spray our forests; and if the wild birds do not protect, them from insects, _nothing will_! If you will watch a warbler collecting the insects out of the top of a seventy-foot forest oak, busy as a bee hour after hour, it will convince you that the birds do for the forests that which man with all his resources cannot accomplish. You will then realize that to this country every woodpecker, chickadee, titmouse, creeper and warbler is easily worth its weight in gold. The killing of any member of those groups of birds should be punished by a fine of twenty-five dollars.
[Illustration: THE PURPLE MARTIN
A Representative of the Swallow Family. A Great Insect-eater; one of the Most Valuable of all Birds to the Southern Cotton planter, and Northern farmer. Shot for “Food” in the South. Driven out of the North by the English Sparrow Pest.]
THE BOB-WHITE.–And take the _Bob White Quail_, for example, and the weeds of the farm. To kill weeds costs money–hard cash that the farmer earns by toil. Does the farmer put forth strenuous efforts to protect the bird of all birds that does most to help him keep down the weeds? Far from it! All that the _average_ farmer thinks about the quail is of killing it, for a few ounces of meat on the table.
It is fairly beyond question that of all birds that influence the fortunes of the farmers and fruit-growers of North America, the common quail, or bob white, is one of the most valuable. It stays on the farm all the year round. When insects are most numerous and busy, Bob White devotes to them his entire time. He cheerfully fights them, from sixteen to eighteen hours per day. When the insects are gone, he turns his attention to the weeds that are striving to seed down the fields for another year. Occasionally he gets a few grains of wheat that have been left on the ground by the reapers; but he does _no damage_. In California, where the valley quail once were very numerous, they sometimes consumed altogether too much wheat for the good of the farmers; but outside of California I believe such occurrences are unknown.
Let us glance over the bob white’s bill of fare:
_Weed Seeds_.–One hundred and twenty-nine different weeds have been found to contribute to the quail’s bill of fare. Crops and stomachs have been found crowded with rag-weed seeds, to the number of one thousand, while others had eaten as many seeds of crab-grass. A bird shot at Pine Brook, N.J., in October, 1902, had eaten five thousand seeds of green fox-tail grass, and one killed on Christmas Day at Kinsale, Va., had taken about ten thousand seeds of the pig-weed. (Elizabeth A. Reed.) In Bulletin No. 21, Biological Survey, it is calculated that if in Virginia and North Carolina there are four bob whites to every square mile, and each bird consumes one ounce of seed per day, the total destruction to weed seeds from September 1st to April 30th in those states alone will be 1,341 tons.
In 1910 Mrs. Margaret Morse Nice, of Clark University, Worcester, Mass., finished and contributed to the Journal of Economic Entomology (Vol. III., No. 3) a masterful investigation of “The Food of the Bob-White.” It should be in every library in this land. Mrs. Nice publishes the entire list of 129 species of weed seeds consumed by the quail,–and it looks like a rogue’s gallery. Here is an astounding record, which proves once more that truth is stranger than fiction:
* * * * *
NUMBER OF SEEDS EATEN BY A BOB-WHITE IN ONE DAY
Barnyard grass 2,500 Milkweed 770 Beggar ticks 1,400 Peppergrass 2,400 Black mustard 2,500 Pigweed 12,000 Burdock 600 Plantain 12,500 Crab grass 2,000 Rabbitsfoot clover 30,000 Curled dock 4,175 Round-headed bush clover 1,800 Dodder 1,560 Smartweed 2,250 Evening primrose 10,000 White vervain 18,750 Lamb’s quarter 15,000 Water smartweed 2,000
NOTABLY BAD INSECTS EATEN BY THE BOB-WHITE
(Prof. Judd and Mrs. Nice.)
Colorado potato beetle
Cucumber beetle
Chinch bug
Bean-leaf beetle
Wireworm
May beetle
Corn billbug
Imbricated-snout beetle
Plant lice
Cabbage butterfly
Mosquito
Squash beetle
Clover leaf beetle
Cotton boll weevil
Cotton boll worm
Striped garden caterpillar
Cutworms
Grasshoppers
Corn-louse ants
Rocky Mountain locust
Codling moth
Canker worm
Hessian fly
Stable fly
SUMMARY OF THE QUAIL’S INSECT FOOD
Orthoptera–Grasshoppers and locusts 13 species. Hemiptera–Bugs 24 “
Homoptera–Leaf hoppers and plant lice 6 ” Lepidoptera–Moths, caterpillars, cut-worms, etc 19 ” Diptera–Flies 8 “
Coleoptera–Beetles 61 ” Hymenoptera–Ants, wasps, slugs 8 ” Other insects 6 “
—
Total 145 “
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE BOB-WHITE
For the Smaller Pests of the Farm, This Bird is the Most Marvelous Engine of Destruction Ever put Together of Flesh and Blood.]
_A few sample meals of insects_.–The following are records of single individual meals of the bob white:
Of grasshoppers, 84; chinch bugs, 100; squash bugs, 12; army worm, 12; cut-worm, 12; mosquitoes, 568 in three hours; cotton boll weevil, 47; flies, 1,350; rose slugs, 1,286. Miscellaneous insects consumed by a laying hen quail, 1,532, of which 1,000 were grasshoppers; total weigh of the lot, 24.6 grams.
“F.M. Howard, of Beeville, Texas, wrote to the U.S. Bureau of Entomology, that the bob whites shot in his vicinity had their crops filled with the weevils. Another farmer reported his cotton fields full of quail, and an entire absence of weevils.” Texas and Georgia papers (please copy.)
And yet, because of its few pitiful ounces of flesh, two million gunners and ten thousand lawmakers think of the quail _only as a bird that can be shot and eaten!_ Throughout a great portion of its former range, including New York and New Jersey, the species is surely and certainly on the verge of _total extinction_. And yet sportsmen gravely discuss the “bag limit,” and “enforcement of the bag-limit law” as a means of bringing back this almost vanished species! Such folly in grown men is very trying.
_To my friend, the Epicure_:–The next time you regale a good appetite with blue points, terrapin stew, filet of sole and saddle of mutton, touched up here and there with the high lights of rare old sherry, rich claret and dry monopole, pause as the dead quail is laid before you, on a funeral pyre of toast, and consider this: “Here lies the charred remains of the Farmer’s Ally and Friend, poor Bob White. In life he devoured 145 different kinds of bad insects, and the seeds of 129 anathema weeds. For the smaller pests of the farm, he was the most marvelous engine of destruction that God ever put together of flesh and blood. He was good, beautiful and true; and his small life was blameless. And here he lies, dead; snatched away from his field of labor, and destroyed, in order that I may be tempted to dine three minutes longer, after I have already eaten to satiety.”
Then go on, and finish Bob White.
THE CASE OF THE ROBIN.–For a long time this bird has been slaughtered in the South for food, regardless of the agricultural interests of the North. No Southern gentleman ever shoots robins, or song birds of any kind, but the negroes and poor whites do it. The worst case of recent occurrence was the slaughter in the town of Pittsboro, North Carolina.
It was in January, 1912. The Mayor of the town, Hon. Bennet Nooe, was away from home; and during a heavy fall of snow “the robins came into the town in great numbers to feed upon the berries of the cedar trees. In order that the birds might be killed without restriction, the Board of Aldermen suspended the ordinance against the firing of guns in the town, and permitted the inhabitants to kill the robins.”
A disgraceful carnival of slaughter immediately followed in which “about all the male population” participated. Regarding this, Mayor Nooe later on wrote to the editor of Bird Lore as follows:
“Hearing of this, on my return, I went to the Aldermen, _all of whom were guilty_, and told them that they and all others who were guilty would have to be fined. Three out of the five submitted and paid up, but they insisted that the ordinance be changed to read exactly as it is written here, with the exception that _all could shoot_ robins in the town until the first of March; whereupon I resigned, as was stated.”–(_Bird Lore,_ XIV, 2. p. 140.)
The Mayor was quite right. The robin butchers of Pittsboro were not worthy to be governed by him.
THE MEADOW LARK is one of the most valuable birds that frequent farming regions. Throughout the year insects make up 73 per cent of its food, weed-seeds 12 per cent, and grain only 5 per cent. During the insect season, insects constitute 90 per cent of its food.
THE BALTIMORE ORIOLE is as valuable to man as it is beautiful. Its nest is the most wonderful example of bird architecture in our land. In May insects constitute 90 per cent of this bird’s food. For the entire year, insects and other animal food make 83.4 per cent and vegetable matter 16.6 per cent.
THE CROW BLACKBIRD feeds as follows, throughout the whole year: insects, 26.9 per cent; other animal food 3.4; corn 37.2; oats, 2.9; wheat, 4.8; other grain, 1.6; fruits, 5; weed seeds and mast 18.2! This report was based on the examination (by the Biological Survey) of 2,346 stomachs, and “the charge that the blackbird is an habitual robber of birds’ nests was disproved by the examinations.” (F.E.L. Beal.)
FLYCATCHERS.–The high-water mark in insect-destruction by our birds is reached by the flycatchers,–dull-colored, modest-mannered little creatures that do their work so quietly you hardly notice them. All you see in your tree-tops is a two-foot flit or glide, now here and now there, as the leaves and high branches are combed of their insect life.
Bulletin No. 44 of the Department of Agriculture gives the residuum of an exhausting examination of 3,398 warbler stomachs, from seventeen species of birds, and the result is: 94.99 per cent of insect food,–mostly bad insects, too,–and 5.01 per cent vegetable food. What more can any forester ask of a bird?
[Illustration: THE ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK “The Potato-bug Bird,” Greatest Enemy of the Potato Beetles From the “American Natural History”]
THE SPARROWS.–All our sparrows are great consumers of weed seeds. Professor Beal has calculated the total quantity consumed in Iowa in one year,–in the days when sparrows were normally numerous,–at 1,750,000 pounds.
THE AMERICAN GOLDFINCH as a weed destroyer has few equals. It makes a specialty of the seeds of the members of the Order Compositae, and is especially fond of the seeds of ragweed, thistles, wild lettuce and wild sunflower. But, small and beautiful as this bird is, there are hundreds of thousands of grown men in America who would shoot it and eat it if they dared!
THE HAWKS AND OWLS.–Let no other state repeat the error that once was made in Pennsylvania when that state enacted in 1885, her now famous hawk-and-owl bounty law. In order to accomplish the wholesale destruction of her birds of prey, a law was passed providing for the payment of a bounty of fifty cents each for the scalps of hawks and owls. Immediately the slaughter began. In two years 180,000 scalps were brought in, and $90,000 were paid out for them. It was estimated that the saving to the farmers in poultry amounted to one dollar for each $1,205 paid out in bounties.
The awakening came even more swiftly than the ornithologists expected. By the end of two years from the passage of “the hawk law,” the farmers found their fields and orchards thoroughly overrun by destructive rats, mice and insects, and they appealed to the legislature for the quick repeal of the law. With all possible haste this was brought about; but it was estimated by competent judges that in damages to their crops the hawk law cost the people of Pennsylvania nothing less than two million dollars.
Moral: Don’t make any laws providing for the destruction of hawks and owls until you have exact knowledge, and know in advance what the results will be.
In the space at my disposal for this subject, it is impossible to treat our species of hawks and owls separately. The reader can find in the “American Natural History” fifteen pages of text, numerous illustrations and many figures elucidating this subject. Unfortunately Dr. Fisher’s admirable work on “The Hawks and Owls” has long been out of print, and unobtainable. There are, however, a few observations that must be recorded here.
Each bird of prey is a balanced equation. Each one, I think without a single exception, does _some_ damage, chiefly in the destruction of valuable wild birds. The value of the poultry destroyed by hawks and owls is very small in comparison with their killing of wild prey. _Many of the species do not touch domestic poultry_! At the same time, when a hawk of any kind, or an owl, sets to work deliberately and persistently to clean out a farmer’s poultry yard, and is actually doing it, that farmer is justified in killing that bird. But, the _occasional_ loss of a broiler is not to be regarded as justification for a war of extermination on _all_ the hawks that fly! Individual wild-animal nuisances can occasionally become so exasperating as to justify the use of the gun,–when scarecrows fail; but in all such circumstances the greatest judgment, and much forbearance also, is desirable and necessary.
The value of hawks and owls rests upon their perpetual warfare on the millions of destructive rats, mice, moles, shrews, weasels, rabbits and English sparrows that constantly prey upon what the farmer produces. On this point a few illustrations must be given. One of the most famous comes via Dr. Fisher, from one of the towers of the Smithsonian buildings, and relates to
THE BARN OWL, (_Strix flammea_).–Two hundred pellets consisting of bones, hair and feathers from one nesting pair of these birds were collected, and found to contain 454 skulls, of which 225 were of meadow mice, 179 of house mice, 2 of pine mice, 20 were of rats, 6 of jumping mice, 20 were from shrews, 1 was of a mole and 1 a vesper sparrow. _One_ bird, and 453 noxious mammals! Compare this with the record of any cat on earth. Anything that the barn owl wants from me, or from any farmer, should at once be offered to it, on a silver tray. This bird is often called the Monkey-Faced Owl, and it should be called the Farmer’s-Friend Owl.
THE LONG-EARED OWL, (_Asio wilsonianus_) has practically the same kind of a record as the barn owl,–scores of mice, rats and shrews destroyed, and only an occasional small bird. Its nearest relative, the _Short-eared Owl (A. accipitrinus_) may be described in the same words.
[Illustration: THE BARN OWL
Wonderfully Destructive of Rats and Mice, and Almost Never Touches Birds]
The GREAT HORNED OWL fills us with conflicting passions. For the long list of dead rats and mice, pocket gophers, skunks, and weasels to his credit, we think well of him, and wish his prosperity. For the song-birds, ruffed grouse, quail, other game birds, domestic poultry, squirrels, chipmunks and hares that he kills, we hate him, and would cheerfully wring his neck, wearing gauntlets. He does an unusual amount of good, and a terrible amount of harm. It is impossible to strike a balance for him, and determine with mathematical accuracy whether he should be shot or permitted to live. At all events, whenever _Bubo_ comes up for trial, we must give the feathered devil his due.
The names “CHICKEN HAWK or HEN HAWK” as applied usually refer to the RED-SHOULDERED or RED-TAILED species. Neither of these is really very destructive to poultry, but both are very destructive to mice, rats and other pestiferous creatures. Both are large, showy birds, not so very swift in flight, and rather easy to approach. Neither of them should be destroyed,–not even though they do, once in a great while, take a chicken or wild bird. They pay for them, four times over, by rat-killing. Mr. J. Alden Loring states that he once knew a pair of red-shouldered hawks to nest within fifty rods of a poultry farm on which there were 800 young chickens and 400 ducks, not one of which was taken. (See the American Natural History, pages 229-30.)
HAWKS THAT SHOULD BE DESTROYED.–There are two small, fierce, daring, swift-winged hawks both of which are so very destructive that they deserve to be shot whenever possible. They are COOPER’S HAWK _(Accipiter cooperi_) and the SHARP-SHINNED HAWK _(A. velox_). They are closely related, and look much alike, but the former has a rounded tail and the latter a square one. In killing them, _please do not kill any other hawk by mistake_; and if you do not positively recognize the bird, don’t shoot.
THE GOSHAWK is a bad one, and so is the PEREGRINE FALCON, or DUCK HAWK. Both deserve death, but they are so rare that we need not take them into account.
Some of the hawks and owls are very destructive to song-birds, and members of the grouse family. In 159 stomachs of sharp-shinned hawks, 99 contained song-birds and woodpeckers. In 133 stomachs of Cooper’s hawks, 34 contained poultry or game birds, and 52 contained other birds. The game birds included 8 quail, 1 ruffed grouse and 5 pigeons.
THE WOODPECKERS.[I]–These birds are the natural guardians of the trees. If we had enough of them, our forests would be fairly safe from insect pests. Of the six or seven North American species that are of the most importance to our forests, the DOWNY WOODPECKER, (_Dryobates pubescens_) is accorded first rank. It is one of the smallest species. The contents of 140 stomachs consisted of 74 per cent insects, 25 per cent vegetable matter and 1 per cent sand. The insects were ants, beetles, bugs, flies, caterpillars, grasshoppers and a few spiders.
[Footnote I: The reader is advised to consult Prof. F.E.L. Beale’s admirable report on “The Food of Woodpeckers,” Bulletin No. 7, U.S. Department of Agriculture.]
THE HAIRY WOODPECKER, (_Dryobates villosus_), a very close relation of the preceding species, is also small, and his food supply is as follows: insects, 68 per cent, vegetable matter 31, mineral 1.
THE GOLDEN-WINGED WOODPECKER, (_Colaptes auratus_), is the largest and handsomest of all the woodpeckers that we really see in evidence. The Pileated is one of the largest, but we never see it. This bird makes a specialty of ants, of which it devours immense numbers. Its food is 56 per cent animal matter (three-fourths of which is ants), 39 per cent is vegetable matter, and 5 per cent mineral matter.
THE RED-HEADED WOODPECKER is a serious fruit-eater, and many complaints have been lodged against him. Exactly one-half his food supply consists of vegetable matter, chiefly wild berries, acorns, beechnuts, and the seeds of wild shrubs and weeds. We may infer that about one-tenth of his food, in summer and fall, consists of cultivated fruit and berries. His proportion of cultivated foods is entirely too small to justify any one in destroying this species.
In view of the prevalence of insect pests in the state of New York, I have spent hours in trying to devise a practical plan for making woodpeckers about ten times more numerous than they now are. Contributions to this problem will be thankfully received. Yes; we _do_ put out pork fat and suet in winter, quantities of it; but I grieve to say that to-day in the Zoological Park there is not more than one woodpecker for every ten that were there twelve years ago. Where have they gone? Only one answer is possible. They have been shot and eaten, by the guerrillas of destruction.
[Illustration: GOLDEN-WINGED WOODPECKER A Bird of Great Value to Orchards and Forests, now Rapidly Disappearing, Undoubtedly Through Slaughter as “Food”]
Surely no man of intelligence needs to be told to protect woodpeckers to the utmost, and to _feed them in winter_. Nail up fat pork, or large chunks of suet, on the south sides of conspicuous trees, and encourage the woodpeckers, nuthatches, chickadees and titmice to remain in your woods through the long and dreary winter.
THE ENGLISH SPARROW is a nuisance and a pest, because it drives away from the house and the orchard the house wren, bluebird, phoebe, purple martin and swallow, any one of which is more valuable to man than a thousand English sparrows. I never yet have seen one of the pest sparrows catch an insect, but Chief Forester Merkel says that he has seen one catching and eating small moths.
There is one place in the country where English sparrows have not yet come; and whenever they do appear there, they will meet a hostile reception. I shall kill every one that comes,–for the sake of retaining the wrens, catbirds, phoebes and thrushes that now literally make home happy for my family. A good way to discourage sparrows is to shoot them en masse when they are feeding on road refuse, such as the white-throated, white-crowned and other sparrows never touch. Persistent destruction of their nests will check the nuisance.
THE SHORE BIRDS.–Who is there who thinks of the shore-birds as being directly beneficial to man by reason of their food habits? I warrant not more than one man in every ten thousand! We think of them only as possible “food.” The amount of actual cash value benefit that the shore-birds confer upon man through the destruction of bad things is, in comparison with the number of birds, enormous.
The Department of Agriculture never publishes and circulates anything that has already been published, no matter how valuable to the public at large. Our rules are different. Because I know that many of the people of our country need the information, I am going to reprint here, as an object lesson and a warning, the whole of the Biological Survey’s valuable and timely circular No. 79, issued April 11, 1911, and written by Prof. W.L. McAtee. It should open the eyes of the American people to two things: the economic value of these birds, and the fact that they are everywhere far on the road toward extermination!
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OUR VANISHING SHOREBIRDS
By Prof. W.L. McAtee
The term shorebird is applied to a group of long-legged, slender-billed, and usually plainly colored birds belonging to the order Limicolae. More than sixty species of them occur in North America. True to their name they frequent the shores of all bodies of water, large and small, but many of them are equally at home on plains and prairies.
Throughout the eastern United States shorebirds are fast vanishing. While formerly numerous species swarmed along the Atlantic coast and in the prairie regions, many of them have been so reduced that extermination seems imminent. The black-bellied plover or beetlehead, which occurred along the Atlantic seaboard in great numbers years ago, is now seen only as a straggler. The golden plover, once exceedingly abundant east of the Great Plains, is now rare. Vast hordes of long-billed dowitchers formerly wintered in Louisiana; now they occur only in infrequent flocks of a half dozen or less. The Eskimo curlew within the last decade has probably been exterminated and the other curlews greatly reduced. In fact, all the larger species of shorebirds have suffered severely.
So adverse to shorebirds are present conditions that the wonder is that any escape. In both fall and spring they are shot along the whole route of their migration north and south. Their habit of decoying readily and persistently, coming back in flocks to the decoys again and again, in spite of murderous volleys, greatly lessens their chances of escape.
The breeding grounds of some of the species in the United States and Canada have become greatly restricted by the extension of agriculture, and their winter ranges in South America have probably been restricted in the same way.
Unfortunately, shorebirds lay fewer eggs than any of the other species generally termed game birds. They deposit only three or four eggs, and hatch only one brood yearly. Nor are they in any wise immune from the great mortality known to prevail among the smaller birds. Their eggs and young are constantly preyed upon during the breeding season by crows, gulls, and jaegers, and the far northern country to which so many of them resort to nest is subject to sudden cold storms, which kill many of the young. In the more temperate climate of the United States small birds, in general, do not bring up more than one young bird for every two eggs laid. Sometimes the proportion of loss is much greater, actual count revealing a destruction of 70 to 80 per cent of nests and eggs. Shorebirds, with sets of three or four eggs, probably do not on the average rear more than two young for each breeding pair.
It is not surprising, therefore, that birds of this family, with their limited powers of reproduction, melt away under the relentless warfare waged upon them. Until recent years shorebirds have had almost no protection. Thus, the species most in need of stringent protection have really had the least. No useful birds which lay only three or four eggs should be retained on the list of game birds. The shorebirds should be relieved from persecution, and if we desire to save from extermination a majority of the species, action must be prompt.
The protection of shorebirds need not be based solely on esthetic or sentimental grounds, for few groups of birds more thoroughly deserve protection from an economic standpoint. Shorebirds perform an important service by their inroads upon mosquitoes, some of which play so conspicuous a part in the dissemination of diseases. Thus, nine species are known to feed upon mosquitoes, and hundreds of the larvae or “wigglers” were found in several stomachs. Fifty-three per cent of the food of twenty-eight northern phalaropes from one locality consisted of mosquito larvae. The insects eaten include the salt-marsh mosquito (_Aedes sollicitans_), for the suppression of which the State of New Jersey has gone to great expense. The nine species of shorebirds known to eat mosquitoes are:
Northern phalarope (_Lobipes lobatus_). Semipalmated sandpiper (_Ereunetes pusillus_). Wilson phalarope (_Steganopus tricolor_). Stilt sandpiper (_Micropalama himantopus_). Killdeer (_Oxyechus vociferus_).
Pectoral sandpiper (_Pisobia maculata_). Semipalmated plover (_Aegialitis semipalmata_). Baird sandpiper (_Pisobia bairdi_).
Least sandpiper (_Pisobia minutilla_).
Cattle and other live stock also are seriously molested by mosquitoes as well as by another set of pests, the horse-flies. Adults and larvae of these flies have been found in the stomachs of the dowitcher, the pectoral sandpiper, the hudsonian godwit, and the killdeer. Two species of shorebirds, the killdeer and upland plover, still further befriend cattle by devouring the North American fever tick.
Among other fly larvae consumed are those of the crane flies (leather-jackets) devoured by the following species:
Northern phalarope (_Lobipes lobatus_). Pectoral sandpiper (_Pisobia maculata_). Wilson phalarope (_Steganopus tricolor_). Baird sandpiper (_Pisobia bairdi_).
Woodcock (_Philohela minor_).
Upland plover (_Bartramia longicauda_). Jacksnipe (_Gallinago delicata_).
Killdeer (_Oxyechus vociferus_).
Crane-fly larvae are frequently seriously destructive locally in grass and wheat fields. Among their numerous bird enemies, shorebirds rank high.
Another group of insects of which the shorebirds are very fond is grasshoppers. Severe local infestations of grasshoppers, frequently involving the destruction of many acres of corn, cotton, and other crops, are by no means exceptional. Aughey found twenty-three species of shorebirds feeding on Rocky Mountain locusts in Nebraska, some of them consuming large numbers, as shown below.
9 killdeer stomachs contained an average of 28 locusts each. 11 semipalmated plover stomachs contained an average of 38 locusts each. 16 mountain plover stomachs contained an average of 45 locusts each. 11 jacksnipe stomachs contained an average of 37 locusts each. 22 upland plover stomachs contained an average of 36 locusts each. 10 long-billed curlew stomachs contained an average of 48 locusts each.
[Illustration: TWO MEMBERS OF THE GROUP OF SHORE-BIRDS The Killdeer Plover The Jacksnipe
These, with 28 other species, destroy enormous numbers of locusts, grasshoppers, crane-fly larvae, mosquito larvae, army-worms, cut-worms, cotton-worms, boll-weevils, curculios, wire-worms and clover-leaf weevils. It is insane folly to shoot any birds that do such work! Many species of the shore-birds are rapidly being exterminated.]
Even under ordinary conditions grasshoppers are a staple food of many members of the shorebird family, and the following species are known to feed on them:
Northern phalarope (_Lobipes lobatus_). Avocet (_Recurvirostra americana_).
Black-necked stilt (_Himantopus mexicanus_). Woodcock (_Philohela minor_).
Jacksnipe (_Gallinago delicata_).
Dowitcher (_Macrorhamphus griseus_). Robin snipe (_Tringa canutus_).
White-rumped sandpiper (_Pisobia fuscicollis_). Baird sandpiper (_Pisobia bairdi_).
Least sandpiper (_Pisobia minutilla_). Buff-breasted sandpiper (_Tryngites subruficollis_). Spotted sandpiper (_Actitis macularia_). Long-billed curlew (_Numenius americanus_). Black-bellied plover (_Squatarola squatarola_). Golden plover (_Charadrius dominicus_).
Killdeer (_Oxyechus vociferus_).
Semipalmated plover (_Aegialitis semipalmata_). Marbled godwit _(Limosa fedoa)_.
Ringed plover _(Aegialitis hiaticula)_. Yellowlegs _(Totanus flavipes)_.
Mountain plover _(Podasocys montanus)_. Solitary sandpiper _(Helodromas solitarius)_. Turnstone _(Arenaria interpres)_.
Upland plover _(Bartramia longicauda)_.
Shorebirds are fond of other insect pests of forage and grain crops, including the army worm, which is known to be eaten by the killdeer and spotted sandpiper; also cutworms, among whose enemies are the avocet, woodcock, pectoral and Baird sandpipers, upland plover, and killdeer. Two caterpillar enemies of cotton, the cotton worm and the cotton cutworm, are eaten by the upland plover and killdeer. The latter bird feeds also on caterpillars of the genus _Phlegethontius_, which includes, the tobacco and tomato worms.
The principal farm crops have many destructive beetle enemies also, and some of these are eagerly eaten by shorebirds. The boll weevil and clover-leaf weevil are eaten by the upland plover and killdeer, the rice weevil by the killdeer, the cowpea weevil by the upland plover, and the clover-root curculio by the following species of shorebirds:
Northern phalarope _(Lobipes lobatus)_. White-rumped sandpiper _(Pisobia fuscicollis)_. Pectoral sandpiper _(Pisobia maculata_). Upland plover _(Bartramia longicauda)_.
Baird sandpiper _(Pisobia bairdi)_. Killdeer _(Oxyechus vociferus)_.
The last two eat also other weevils which attack cotton, grapes and sugar beets. Bill-bugs, which often do considerable damage to corn, seem to be favorite food of some of the shorebirds. They are eaten by the Wilson phalarope, avocet, black-necked stilt, pectoral sandpiper, killdeer, and upland plover. They are an important element of the latter bird’s diet, and no fewer than eight species of them have been found in its food.
Wireworms and their adult forms, click beetles, are devoured by the northern phalarope, woodcock, jacksnipe, pectoral sandpiper, killdeer, and upland plover. The last three feed also on the southern corn leaf-beetle and the last two upon the grapevine colaspis. Other shorebirds that eat leaf-beetles are the Wilson phalarope and dowitcher.
Crayfishes, which are a pest in rice and corn fields in the South and which injure levees, are favorite food of the black-necked stilt, and several other shorebirds feed upon them, notably the jacksnipe, robin snipe, spotted sandpiper, upland plover, and killdeer.
Thus it is evident that shorebirds render important aid by devouring the enemies of farm crops and in other ways, and their services are appreciated by those who have observed the birds in the field. Thus W.A. Clark, of Corpus Christi, Tex., reports that upland plovers are industrious in following the plow and in eating the grubs that destroy garden stuff, corn, and cotton crops. H.W. Tinkham, of Fall River, Mass., says of the spotted sandpiper: “Three pairs nested in a young orchard behind my house and adjacent to my garden. I did not see them once go to the shore for food (shore about 1,500 feet away), but I did see them many times make faithful search of my garden for cutworms, spotted squash bugs, and green flies. Cutworms and cabbage worms were their special prey. After the young could fly, they still kept at work in my garden, and showed no inclination to go to the shore until about August 15th. They and a flock of quails just over the wall helped me wonderfully.”
In the uncultivated parts of their range also, shorebirds search out and destroy many creatures that are detrimental to man’s interest. Several species prey upon the predaceous diving beetles _(Dytiscidae),_ which are a nuisance in fish hatcheries and which destroy many insects, the natural food of fishes. The birds now known to take these beetles are:
Northern phalarope _(Lobipes lobatus)_. Dowitcher _(Macrorhamphus griseus)_.
Wilson phalarope _(Steganopus tricolor)_. Robin snipe _(Tringa canutus)_.
Avocet _(Recurvirostra americana)_. Pectoral sandpiper _(Pisobia maculata)_. Black-necked stilt _(Himantopus mexicanus_). Red-backed sandpiper _(Pelidna alpina sakhalina)_. Jacksnipe _(Gallinago delicata)_.
Kill deer _(Oxyechus vociferus)_.
Large numbers of marine worms of the genus _Nereis_, which prey upon oysters, are eaten by shorebirds. These worms are common on both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and are eaten by shorebirds wherever they occur. It is not uncommon to find that from 100 to 250 of them have been eaten at one meal. The birds known to feed upon them are:
Northern phalarope _(Lobipes lobatus)_. White-rumped sandpiper _(Pisobia fuscicollis)_. Dowitcher _(Macrorhamphus griseus_).
Stilt sandpiper _(Micropalama himantopus)_. Red-backed sandpiper _(Pelidna alpina sakhalina)_. Robin snipe _(Tringa canutus)_.
Purple sandpiper _(Arquatella maritima_). Killdeer _(Oxyechus vociferus)_.
The economic record of the shorebirds deserves nothing but praise. These birds injure no crop, but on the contrary feed upon many of the worst enemies of agriculture. It is worth recalling that their diet includes such pests as the Rocky Mountain locust and other injurious grasshoppers, the army worm, cutworms, cabbage worms, cotton worm, cotton cutworm, boll weevil, clover leaf weevil, clover root curculio, rice weevil, corn bill-bugs, wireworms, corn leaf-beetles, cucumber beetles, white grubs, and such foes of stock as the Texas fever tick, horseflies, and mosquitoes. Their warfare on crayfishes must not be overlooked, nor must we forget the more personal debt of gratitude we owe them for preying upon mosquitoes. They are the most important bird enemies of these pests known to us.
Shorebirds have been hunted until only a remnant of their once vast numbers is left. Their limited powers of reproduction, coupled with the natural vicissitudes of the breeding period, make their increase slow, and peculiarly expose them to danger of extermination.
In the way of protection a beginning has been made, and a continuous close season until 1915 has been established for the following birds: The killdeer, in Massachusetts and Louisiana; the upland plover, in Massachusetts, and Vermont; and the piping plover in Massachusetts. But, considering the needs and value of these birds, this modicum of protection is small indeed.
The above-named species are not the only ones that should be exempt from persecution, for all the shorebirds of the United States are in great need of better protection. They should be protected, first, to save them from the danger of extermination, and, second, because of their economic importance. So great, indeed, is their economic value, that their retention on the game list and their destruction by sportsmen is a serious loss to agriculture.–(End of the circular.)
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The following appeared in the _Zoological Society Bulletin_, for January, 1909, from Richard Walter Tomalin, of Sydney, N.S.W.:
“In the subdistricts of Robertson and Kangaloon in the Illawarra district of New South Wales, what ten years ago was a waving mass of English cocksfoot and rye grass, which had been put in gradually as the dense vine scrub was felled and burnt off, is now a barren desert, and nine families out of every ten which were renting properties have been compelled to leave the district and take up other lands. This is through the grubs having eaten out the grass by the roots. Ploughing proved to be useless, as the grubs ate out the grass just the same. Whilst there recently I was informed that it took three years from the time the grubs were first seen until to-day, to accomplish this complete devastation;. in other words, three years ago the grubs began work in the beautiful country of green mountains and running streams.
“The birds had all been ruthlessly shot and destroyed in that district, and I was amazed at the absence of bird life. The two sub-districts I have mentioned have an area of about thirty square miles, and form a table-land about 1200 feet above sea level.”
The same kind of common sense that teaches men to go in when it rains, and keep out of fiery furnaces, teaches us that as a business proposition it is to man’s interest to protect the birds. Make them plentiful and keep them so. When we strike the birds, we hurt ourselves. The protection of our insect-eating and seed-eating birds is a cash proposition,–protect or pay.
Were I a farmer, no gun ever should be fired on my premises at any bird save the English sparrow and the three bad hawks. Any man who would kill my friend Bob White I would treat as an enemy. The man who would shoot and eat any of the song-birds, woodpeckers, or shorebirds that worked for me, I would surely molest.
_Every farmer should post every foot of his lands, cultivated and not cultivated_. The farmer who does not do so is his own enemy; and he needs a guardian.
At this stage of wild life extermination, it is impossible to make our bird-protection laws too strict, or too far-reaching. The remnant of our birds should be protected, with clubs and guns if necessary. All our shore birds should be accorded a ten-year close season. Don’t ask the gunners whether they will _agree_ to it or not. _Of course they will not agree to it,–never_! But our duty is clear,–to go ahead and _do it_!
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CHAPTER XXIV
GAME AND AGRICULTURE; AND DEER AS A FOOD SUPPLY
As a state and county asset, the white-tailed deer contains possibilities that as yet seem to be ignored by the American people as a whole. It is quite time to consider that persistent, prolific and toothsome animal.
The proposition that large herds of horned game can not becomingly roam at will over farms and vineyards worth one hundred dollars per acre, affords little room for argument. Generally speaking, there is but one country in the world that breaks this well-nigh universal rule; and that country is India. On the plains between and adjacent to the Ganges and the Jumna, for two thousand years herds of black-buck, or sasin antelope, have roamed over cultivated fields so thickly garnished with human beings that to-day the rifle-shooting sportsman stands in hourly peril of bagging a five-hundred-rupee native every time he fires at an antelope.
Wherever rich agricultural lands exist, the big game must give way,–_from those lands_. To-day the bison could not survive in Iowa, eastern Nebraska or eastern Kansas, any longer than a Shawnee Indian would last on the Bowery. It was foredoomed that the elk, deer, bear and wild turkey should vanish from the rich farming regions of the East and the middle West.
To-day in British East Africa lions are being hunted with dogs and shot wholesale, because they are a pest to the settlers and to the surviving herds of big game. At the same time, the settlers who are striving to wrest the fertile plains of B.E.A, from the domain of savagery declare that the African buffalo, the zebra, the kongoni and the elephant are public nuisances that must be suppressed by the rifle.
Even the most ardent friend of wild life must admit that when a settler has laboriously fenced his fields, and plowed and sowed, only to have his whole crop ruined in one night by a herd of fence-breaking zebras, the event is sufficient to abrade the nerves of the party most in interest. While I take no stock in stories of dozens of “rogue” elephants that require treatment with the rifle, and of grown men being imperiled by savage gazelles, we admit that there are times when wild animals can make nuisances of themselves. Let us consider that subject now.
WILD ANIMAL NUISANCES.–Complaints have come to me, at various times, of great destruction of lambs by eagles; of trout by blue herons; of crops (on Long Island) by deer; of pears destroyed by birds, and of valuable park trees by beavers that chop down trees not wisely but too well. I do not, however, include in this category any cherries eaten by robins, or orioles, or jays; for they are of too small importance to consider in this court.
[Illustration: A FOOD SUPPLY OF WHITE-TAILED DEER The Killing of the Does was Wrong]
To meet the legitimate demands for the abatement of unbearable wild-animal nuisances, I recommend the enactment of a law similar to Section 158 of the Game laws of New York, which provides for the safe and legitimate abatement of unbearable wild creatures as follows:
Section 158. _Power to Take Birds and Quadrupeds_. In the event that any species of birds protected by the provisions of section two hundred and nineteen of this article, or quadrupeds protected by law, shall at any time, in any locality, become destructive of private or public property, the commission shall have power in its discretion to direct any game protector, or issue a permit to any citizen of the state, to take such species of birds or quadrupeds and dispose of the same in such manner as the commission may provide. Such permit shall expire within four months after the date of issuance.
This measure should be adopted by every state that is troubled by too many, or too aggressive, wild mammals or birds.
But to return to the subject of big game and farming. We do not complain of the disappearance of the bison, elk, deer and bear from the farms of the United States and Canada. The passing of the big game from all such regions follows the advance of real civilization, just so surely and certainly as night follows day.
But this vast land of ours is not wholly composed of rich agricultural lands; not by any means. There are millions of acres of forest lands, good, bad and indifferent, worth from nothing per acre up to one hundred dollars or more. There are millions of acres of rocky, brush-covered mountains and hills, wholly unsuited to agriculture, or even horticulture. There are other millions of acres of arid plains and arboreal deserts, on which nothing but thirst-proof animals can live and thrive. The South contains vast pine forests and cypress swamps, millions of acres of them, of which the average northerner knows less than nothing.
We can not stop long enough to look it up, but from the green color on our national map that betokens the forest reserves, and from our own personal knowledge of the deserts, swamps, barrens and rocks that we have seen, we make the estimate that _fully one-third_ of the total area of the United States is incapable of supporting the husbandman who depends for his existence upon tillage of the soil. People may talk and write about “dry farming” all they please, but I wish to observe that from Dry-Farming to Success is a long shot, with many limbs in the way. When it rains sufficiently, dry farming is a success; but otherwise it is not; and we heartily wish it were otherwise.
The logical conclusion of our land that is utterly unfit for agriculture is a great area of land available for occupancy by valuable wild animals. Every year the people of the United States are wasting uncountable millions of pounds of venison, because we are neglecting our opportunities for producing it practically without cost. Imagine for a moment bestowing upon land owners the ability to stock with white-tailed and Indian sambar deer all the wild lands of the United States that are suitable for those species, and permitting only bucks over one year of age to be shot. With the does even reasonably protected, the numerical results in annual pounds of good edible flesh fairly challenges the imagination.
About six years ago, Mr. C.C. Worthington’s deer, in his fenced park, at Shawnee-on-Delaware, Pennsylvania, became so numerous and so burdensome that he opened his fences and permitted about one thousand head to go free.
We are losing each year a very large and valuable asset in the intangible form of a million hardy deer that we might have raised but did not! Our vast domains of wooded mountains, hills and valleys lie practically untenanted by big game, save in a few exceptional spots. We lose because we are lawless. We lose because we are too improvident to conserve large forms of wild life unless we are compelled to do so by the stern edict of the law! The law-breakers, the game-hogs, the conscienceless doe-and-fawn slayers are everywhere! Ten per cent of all the grown men now in the United States are to-day poachers, thieves and law-breakers, or else they are liable to become so to-morrow. If you doubt it, try risking your new umbrella unprotected in the next mixed company of one hundred men that you encounter, in such a situation that it will be easy to “get away” with it.
We could raise two million deer each year on our empty wild lands; but without fences it would take half a million real game-wardens, on duty from dawn until dark, to protect them from destructive slaughter. At present our land of liberty contains only 9,354 game wardens.[J] The states that contain the greatest areas of wild lands naturally lack in population and in tax funds, and not one such state can afford to put into the field even half enough salaried game wardens to really protect her game from surreptitious slaughter. The surplus of “personal liberty” in this liberty-cursed land is a curse to the big game. The average frontiersman never will admit the divine right of kings, but he does ardently believe in the divine right of settlers,–to reach out and take any of the products of Nature that they happen to fancy.
[Footnote J: Of this force, there are only 1,200 salaried wardens. The most of those who serve without salaries naturally render but little continuous or regular service.]
WILD MEAT AS A FOOD SUPPLY.–We hear much these days about the high cost of living, but thus far we have made no move to mend the situation. With coal going straight up to ten dollars per ton, beef going up to fifteen dollars per hundred on the hoof and wheat and hay going-up–heaven alone knows where, it is time for all Americans who are not rich to arouse and take thought for the morrow. _What are we going to do about it_? The tariff on the coarser necessities of life is now booked to come down; but what about the fresh meat supply?
I desire to point out that between Bangor and San Diego and from Key West to Bellingham, our country contains millions of acres of wild, practically uninhabited forests, rough foot-hills, bad-lands and mountains that could produce two million deer each year, without deducting $50,000 a year from the wealth of the country. I grant that in the total number of deer that would be necessary to produce two million deer per annum, the farms situated on the edges of forests, and actually within the forests, would suffer somewhat from the depredations of those deer. As I will presently show by documentary records, every one of those individual damages that exceeds two dollars in value could be compensated in cash, and afterward leave on the credit side of the deer account an enormous annual balance.
Stop for a moment, you enterprising and restless men and women who travel all over the United States, and think of the illimitable miles of unbroken forest that you have looked upon from your Pullman windows in the East, in the South, in the West and in southern Canada. Recall the wooded mountains of the Appalachian system, the White Mountain region, the pine forests of the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf States, the forests of Tennessee, Arkansas and southern Missouri; of northern Minnesota, and every state of the Rocky Mountain region. Then, think of the silent and untouched forests of the Pacific Coast and tell me whether you think five million deer scattered through all those forests would make any visible impression upon them. That would be only about twenty-five times as many as are there now! I think the forests would not be over populated; and they would produce _two million killable deer each year_!
Last year, 11,000 deer were forced down out of their hiding places in the Rocky Mountains, and were killed in Montana. Even the natives had not dreamed there were so many available; and they were slaughtered not wisely but too ill. It is not right that six members of one family should “hog” twelve deer in one season. At present no deer supply can stand such slaughter.
Assuming that the people of the United States _could_ be educated into the idea of so conserving deer that they could draw two million head per year from the general stock, what would it be worth?
It is not very difficult to estimate the value of a deer, when the whole animal can be utilized. In various portions of the United States, deer vary in size, but I shall take all this into account, and try to strike a fair average. In some sections, where deer are large and heavy, a full-grown buck is easily worth twenty-five dollars. Let him who doubts it, try to replace those generous pounds of flesh with purchased beef and mutton and veal, and see how far twenty-five dollars will go toward it. Every man who is a householder knows full well how little meat one dollar will buy at this time.
I think that throughout the United States as a whole every full-grown deer, male or female contains on an average ten dollars worth of good meat. I know of one large preserve which annually sells its surplus of deer at that price, wholesale, to dealers; and in New York City (doubtless in many other cities, also) venison often has sold in the market at one dollar per pound!
Two million deer at $10 each mean $20,000,000. The licenses for the killing of two million deer should cost one million men one dollar each; and that would pay 1,666 new game wardens each fifty dollars per month, all the year round. The damages that would need to be paid to farmers, on account of crops injured by deer, would be so small that each county could take care of its own cases, from its own treasury, as is done in the State of Vermont.
There are certain essentials to the realization of a dream of two million deer per year that are absolutely required. They are neither obscure nor impossible.
Each state and each county proposing to stock its vacant woods with deer must resolutely educate its own people in the necessity of playing fair about the killing of deer, and giving every man and every deer a square deal. This is _not_ impossible! Not as a general thing, even though it may be so in some specially lawless communities. If the _leading men_ of the state and the county will take this matter seriously in hand, it can be done in two years’ time. The American people are not insensible to appeals to reason, when those appeals are made by their own “home folks.” The governors, senators, assemblymen, judges, mayors and justices of the peace could, _if they would_, make a campaign of education and appeal that would result in the creation of an immense volume of free wild food in every state that possesses wild lands.
When the shoe of Necessity pinches the People hard enough, remember the possibilities in deer.
[Illustration: WHITE-TAILED DEER
If Honestly and Intelligently Conserved, this Species could be made to Produce on our Wild Lands Two Million Deer per annum, as a new Food Supply From the “American Natural History”]
The best wild animal to furnish a serious food supply is the white-tailed deer. This is because of its persistence and fertility. The elk is too large for general use. An elk carcass can not be carried on a horse; it is impossible to get a sled or a wagon to where it lies; and so, fully half of it usually is wasted! The mule deer is good for the Rocky Mountains, and can live where the white-tail can not; but it is _too easy to shoot_! The Columbian black-tail is the natural species for the forests of the Pacific states; but it is a trifle small in size.
THE EXAMPLE OF VERMONT.–In order to show that all the above is not based on empty theory,–regarding the stocking of forests with deer, their wonderful powers of increase, and the practical handling of the damage question,–let us take the experience and the fine example of Vermont.
In April, 1875, a few sportsmen of Rutland, of whom the late Henry W. Cheney was one, procured in the Adirondacks thirteen white-tailed deer, six bucks and seven does. These were liberated in a forest six miles from Rutland, and beyond being protected from slaughter, they were left to shift for themselves. They increased, slowly at first, then rapidly, and by 1897, they had become so numerous that it seemed right to have a short annual open season, and kill a few. From first to last, many of those deer have been killed contrary to law. In 1904-5, it was known that 294 head were destroyed in that way; and undoubtedly there were others that were not reported.
ACCOUNT OF DEER KILLED IN VERMONT, OF RECORD SINCE KILLING BEGAN, IN 1897
_From John W. Titcomb, State Game Commissioner, Lyndonville, Vt., Aug. 23, 1912_
By By By Wounded By By Average Gross Year Hunters, Hunters, Dogs Deer Railroad Various Weight Weight Legally Illegally Killed Trains Accidents (lbs.) (lbs.)
1897* 103 47
1898 131 30 40 3
1899 90
1900 123
1901 211
1902 403 81 50 13 14 171 68,747 1903 753 199 190 142,829 1904 541
1905 497 163 74 22 18 17 198 1906 634 200 127,193 1907 991 287 208 62 31 21 196 134,353 1908 2,208 207 457,585 1909 4,597 381 168 69 24 72 155 716,358
* First open season after deer restored to state in 1875.
DAMAGES TO CROPS BY DEER.–For several years past, the various counties of Vermont have been paying farmers for damages inflicted upon their crops by deer. Clearly, it is more just that counties should settle these damages than that they should be paid from the state treasury, because the counties paying damages have large compensation in the value of the deer killed each year. The hunting appears to be open to all persons who hold licenses from the state.
In order that the public at large may know the cost of the Vermont system, I offer the following digest compiled from the last biennial report of the State Fish and Game Commissioner:
DAMAGES PAID FOR DEER DEPREDATIONS IN VERMONT DURING TWO YEARS
Total damages paid from June 8, 1908, to June 22, 1910 $4,865.98 Total number of claims paid 311 Total number of claims under $5 80 Number between $5 and $10, inclusive 102 Number over $25 and under $51 23 Number between $50 and $100 11 Number in excess of $100 4 Number in excess of $200 1 Largest claim paid $326.50
VALUE OF WHITE-TAILED DEER.–Having noted the fact that in two years (1908-9), the people of Vermont paid out $4,865 in compensation for damages inflicted by deer, it is of interest to determine whether that money was wisely expended. In other words, did it pay?
We have seen that in the years 1908 and 9, the people of Vermont killed, legally and illegally, and converted to use, 7,186 deer. This does not include the deer killed by dogs and by accidents.
Regarding the value of a full-grown deer, it must be remembered that much depends upon the locality of the carcass. In New York or Pittsburg or Chicago, a whole deer is worth, at wholesale, at least twenty-five dollars. In Vermont, where deer are plentiful, they are worth a less sum. I think that fifteen dollars would be a fair figure,–at least low enough!
Even when computed at fifteen dollars per carcass, those deer were worth to the people of Vermont $107,790. It would seem, therefore, that the soundness of Vermont’s policy leaves no room for argument; and we hope that other states, and also private individuals, will profit by Vermont’s very successful experiment in bringing back the deer to her forests, and in increasing the food supply of her people.
KILLING FEMALE DEER.–To say one word on this subject which might by any possibility be construed as favoring it, is like juggling with a lighted torch over a barrel of gunpowder. Already, in Pennsylvania at least one gentleman has appeared anxious to represent me as favoring the killing of does, which in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand I distinctly and emphatically do not. The slaughter of female hoofed game animals is necessarily destructive and reprehensible, and not one man out of every ten thousand in this country ever will see the place and time wherein the opposite is true.
At present there are just two places in America, and I think only two, wherein there exists the slightest exception on this point. The state of Vermont is becoming overstocked with deer, and the females have in _some_ counties (not in all), become so tame and destructive in orchards, gardens and farm crops as to constitute a great annoyance. For this reason, the experiment is being made of permitting does to be killed under license, until their number is somewhat reduced.
The first returns from this trial have now come in, from the county game wardens of Vermont to the state game warden. Mr. John W. Titcomb. I will quote the gist of the opinion of each.
The State Commissioner says: “This law should remain in force at least until there is some indication of a decrease in the number of deer.” Warden W.H. Taft (Addison County) says: “The killing of does I believe did away with a good many of these tame deer that cause most of the damage to farmers’ crops.” Harry Chase (Bennington County) says the doe-killing law is “a good law, and I sincerely trust it will not be