Page 131 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

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BIRD-SLAUGHTER IN THE SOUTH 109
for food purposes when they are usually plentiful, is a quarter of a million
The food of the robin is as follows
Insects, 40 per cent; wild fruit, 43 per cent; cultivated fruit, 8 per cent, miscellaneous vegetable food, 5 per cent.
Special Work of the Southern Negroes.—In 1912 a female colored servant who recently had arrived from country life in Virginia chanced to remark to me at our country home in the middle of August : "I wish I could find some birds' nests!"
"What for?" I asked, rather puzzled.
"Why, to get the aigs and eat 'em!" she responded with a bright
smile and flashing teeth.
''' ' Do you eat the eggs of wild birds
"Yes indeed! It's fine to get a pattridge nest! From them we nearly always git a whole dozen of aigs at once,—back where I live, in Virginia."
"Do the colored people of Virginia make a practice of hunting for the eggs of wild birds, and eating them?"
"Yes, indeed we do. In the spring and summer, when the birds are around,weusedtogetouteverySunday,andhuntallday. Somedays we'd come back with a whole bucket full of aigs; and then we'd set up halfthenight,cookin'andeatin''em. Theywasawfulgood!"
Her face fairly beamed at the memory of it.
A few days later, this story of the doings of Virginia negroes was fully corroborated by a colored man who came from another section of that state. Three months later, after special inquiries made at my request, a gentleman of Richmond obtained further corroboration, from negroes. He was himself much surprised by the state of fact that was revealed to him.
In the North, the economic value of our song birds and other de- stroyers of insects and weed seeds is understood by a majority of the people, and as far as possible those birds are protected from all human enemies. ButintheSouth,anewdivisionoftheArmyofDestruction has risen into deadly prominence.
In Recreation Magazine for May, 1909, Mr. Charles Askins published a most startling and illuminating article, entitled "The South's Problem in Game Protection." It brought together in concrete form and with eye-witness reliability the impressions that for months previous had been gaining ground in the North. In order to give the testimony of a man who has seen what he describes, I shall now give numerous quo- tations from Mr. Askins' article, which certainly bears the stamp of truthfulness, without any "race prejudice" whatever. It is a calm, judicial, unemotional analysis of a very bad situation: and I particularly commend it alike to the farmers of the North and all the true sportsmen of the South.