Our Vanishing Wild Life Part 38

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 compet.i.tors. 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, t.i.tlark, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 woodp.e.c.k.e.r, chickadee, t.i.tmouse, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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-gra.s.s. A bird shot at Pine Brook, N.J., in October, 1902, had eaten five thousand seeds of green fox-tail gra.s.s, 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, Ma.s.s., 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 gra.s.s 2,500 Milkweed 770 Beggar ticks 1,400 Peppergra.s.s 2,400 Black mustard 2,500 Pigweed 12,000 Burdock 600 Plantain 12,500 Crab gra.s.s 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 Cuc.u.mber beetle Chinch bug Bean-leaf beetle Wireworm May beetle Corn billbug Imbricated-snout beetle Plant lice Cabbage b.u.t.terfly Mosquito Squash beetle Clover leaf beetle Cotton boll weevil Cotton boll worm Striped garden caterpillar Cutworms Gra.s.shoppers Corn-louse ants Rocky Mountain locust Codling moth Canker worm Hessian fly Stable fly

SUMMARY OF THE QUAIL'S INSECT FOOD

Orthoptera--Gra.s.shoppers and locusts 13 species.

Hemiptera--Bugs 24 "

h.o.m.optera--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 "

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 gra.s.shoppers, 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 gra.s.shoppers; 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 appet.i.te 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 G.o.d ever put together of flesh and blood. He was good, beautiful and true; and his small life was blameless. And here he lies, dead; s.n.a.t.c.hed 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" partic.i.p.ated. Regarding this, Mayor Nooe later on wrote to the editor of Bird Lore as follows: