Page 102 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

80 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE
numerical strength, the red squirrel is a bad citizen, and, while we do not by any means favor his extermina- tion, he should resolutely be kept within bounds by the rifle.
Whenacrownestedinour
woods, near the Beaver Pond,
we were greatly pleased ; but
with the feeding of the first
brood, the crows began to
carry off ducklings from the
wild-fowl pond. After one
crow had been seen to seize
and carry away five young
ducks in one forenoon, we
decided that the constitu-
tional limit had beenreached,
for we did not propose that
all our young mallards should
be swept into the awful vor-
tex of that crow nest. We
took those young crows and
reared them by hand; but
the old one had acquired a
bad habit, and she persisted
in carrying off young ducks
until we had to end her exis-
tence with a gun. It was a painful operation, but there was no other way.
Bird-Destroying Birds.—There are several species of birds that may at once be put under sentence of death for their destructiveness of useful birds, without any extenuating circumstances worth mention- ing. Four of these are Cooper's Hawk, the Sharp-Shinned Hawk, Pigeon Hawk and Duck Hawk. Fortunately these species are not so numerous thatweneedloseanysleepoverthem. Indeed,Ithinkthattodayit would be a mighty good collector who could find one specimen in seven days'hunting. Likealletherspecies,these,too,arebeingshotoutof of our bird fauna.
Several species of bird-eating birds are trembling in the balance, and under grave suspicion. Some of them are the Great Horned Owl, Barred Owl, Screech Owl, Butcher Bird or Great Northern Shrike. The only circumstance that saves these birds from instant condemnation is the delightful amount of rats, mice, moles, gophers and noxious insects that they annually consume. In view of the awful destructiveness of the accursed bubonic-plague-carrying rat, we are impelled to think long before placing in our killing list even the great horned owl, who really
COOPER'S HAWK A Species to be Destroyed