File:Wild life conservation in theory and practice; lectures delivered before the Forest School of Yale University, 1914 (1914) (14762328184).jpg

Identifier: wildlifeconserva00horn (find matches)
Title: Wild life conservation in theory and practice; lectures delivered before the Forest School of Yale University, 1914
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Hornaday, William T. (William Temple), 1854-1937 Walcott, Frederic Collin, 1869-1949
Subjects: Game protection
Publisher: New Haven, Yale University Press (etc., etc.)
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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one of the most valuableof the birds that persistently frequent farmingregions. During the insect season, 90 per cent ofits food consists of insects, and during the year asa whole, insects make up 73 per cent. Even the Crow Blackbird, with a reputation notof the best, finds 27 per cent of its food in the ranksof our insect enemies, and it has been fully ac-quitted of the ancient charge of nest-robbing. Perhaps the most interesting single exhibit inall the long list of good services of insectivorousbirds is that which brings together the knownenemies and destroyers of the devastating cotton-boll weevil. This is really a southern exhibit ofnorthern birds, and directly concerns half a dozenstates of the Gulf coast of the South, states whichwe long have been earnestly exhorting to considerthe economic value of birds, and stop within theirborders the slaughter of the crop-protecting species. The list of birds that wage war on the cotton-bollweevil contains fifty-two species, some of which
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o* S t < ^ X -J o M O* ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 57 make a specialty of the weevil, while others take itincidentally, in the course of each days work. Thelist is far too long to quote in full, but to show thegallant manner in which a great number of birdfamilies, and orders also, are endeavoring to dotheir part in the weevil warfare, we will offer a fewitems from the list. We notice the followingspecies: six orioles, six sparrows, one goatsucker,one martin, five swallows, and various fly-catchers,wrens, blackbirds, the killdeer plover, titlark,meadow-lark and quail. Of these birds, the martin,swallows and nighthawk capture the weevils whilethey are flying high in the air; the song-birds takethem from the cotton plants, and the quail andmeadow-lark glean them near the ground. Afarmer of Beeville, Texas, once reported as fol-lows: The bob-whites shot in this vicinity had theircrops filled with the boll-weevils. Another Texasfarmer reported his cotton-fields full of quail, andan ent

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