As I have already said, some of the birds like cherries and green peas, and other things we prefer to keep for ourselves. But we should never forget that they have earned, by their work among the worms, all they can take.
CEDAR-BIRD
I say this, not merely because I love the birds, and want to have them live and be happy, but because it is true. It has been proved true by scientific men in the service of the United States government.
These men have had thousands of birds killed to see what they were eating, and have found out that nearly all the birds they have examined—blackbirds, cedar-birds, blue jays, hawks, owls, even crows—do us more good by the injurious creatures they destroy, than harm by the fruits and vegetables they eat. To this there is, among the small birds, but one exception, the English sparrow, and, of the large ones, only the two hawks and one owl, mentioned on page [53].
Chickadees like to eat the eggs of cankerworms; and for a single meal, one of these tiny birds will eat two hundred and fifty eggs, and he will take several meals a day. Now cankerworms destroy our apples. When they get into an orchard in force, it looks, as Miss Merriam says, as if it had been burned over.
Robins, catbirds, and shrikes, and several others, like to eat cutworms, which destroy grass and other plants. As many as three hundred of them have been found in the stomach of one robin, of course for one meal. Ants are very troublesome in many ways, and three thousand of them have been taken from the stomach of one flicker.
Rats and mice, ground squirrels and gophers, make great havoc in our crops, and farmers spend much time and labor trying to get rid of them; but these creatures are the favorite food of most hawks and owls.
If the farmer would stop shooting the birds, and protect them instead, they would do this work for him, and much better than he can. But because (as I said in a former chapter) one or two hawks and owls have a taste for chickens, he generally kills every hawk and owl he sees, and for this folly has to spend half his time trying to kill the little animals they would gladly have eaten.
A great deal of refuse, dead sea creatures, and other matter, is thrown up on the seashore, or floats on the water. On this feed the water birds,—herons, gulls, terns, and others. If this were not disposed of, it would make us sick. Indeed, on the shores where so many herons have been killed, to get their plumes for ladies' hats, the result has been sickness and death among the people, as Dr. Gaumer, of Yucatan, told Mr. Chapman.