Page 241 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS 219
hour after hour, it will con- vince 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 wood- pecker, chickadee, tit- mouse, 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.
The Bob-White.—And take the Bob White Qtiail, 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 one of the Most Valuable of all Birds to the Southern Cotton forth strenuous efforts to
planter, and Northern farmer. Shot for "Food" in the South.
Driven out of the North by the English Sparrow Pest. protect the bird of all birds
that docs most to help him keep down the weeds ? Far from it ! All that the average farmer thinks
^bout 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 bobwhite,isoneofthemostvaluable. Itstaysonthefarmalltheyear round. Wheninsectsaremostnumerousandbusy.BobWliitedevotes to them his entire time. He cheerfully fights them, from sixteen to eighteenhoursperday. Whentheinsectsaregone,heturnshisatten- tion 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 thegroundbythereapers;buthedoesvodamage. InCalifornia,M^here 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 twent}'-ninc 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,whileothershadeatenasmanyseedsofcrab-grass. Abird 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 takenaboutten thousand seeds of the pig-weed. (Elizabeth A. Reed.)
THE PURPLE MARTIN
A Representative of the Swallow Family. A Gruat Insect-eater;