Birds As Insect Destroyers
The farmer has no greater enemy to his crops and to his consequent well-being
than the obnoxious insect, and there is seldom one which does not retard some
form of vegetable life if allowed to flourish unchecked. Consequently certain
varieties of the feathered tribe are the farmers' most useful friends; which
they are, and what kind of obnoxious insects are their specially favored diets
are thus told by 0. M. Schantz, president of the
Illinois Audubon Society:
"It is with very mixed feelings that I come to this meeting of the State
Farmers' Institute to talk to the people of southern Illinois about birds. I am
not a farmer and do not belong to this part of the country, but my wife was born
in Carbondale and my mother-in-law in Metropolis, and I have heard of southern
Illinois ever since I married into this interesting family of which I am a
member. [Applause.]
"The State of Illinois is 378 miles long in its greatest length and 210 miles
wide. Owing to its length and its peculiar position, it has almost as great a
range of climatic influences, geographical influences, and so on, as any State
in the Union. Therefore, its flora and fauna, its animal and vegetable life are
extremely varied. The northern part is entirely different in its geography and
its animal life from the southern part. By its location, part of it touching
Lake Michigan and the rest of it being tributary to the great Mississippi
Valley, except for the water fowl of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, more
migratory birds pass through the Mississippi Valley than through any other part
of the United States.
"In the consideration of a question of so great importance to the Illinois
farmer as the relation of birds to farm economy, it is very necessary to make
clear in the most direct manner possible, just how and why the farmer is to be
benefited.
"The proper time to plant, seasonable weather during the growing season and also
for the harvesting of crops, are, naturally, the most evident factors in
successful farming.
"The old-fashioned, unprogressive farmer gave little thought to other and less
noticeable handicaps, such as plant diseases and the myriads of insects that
were the natural enemies of both his fruit and cereal crops. With the rapid
increase in the value of farm lands, the competition for markets, and so forth,
it has become absolutely necessary for a farmer to know every factor that may
enter farm economy, or he fails to win out.
"The lax use of powers of observation is rapidly disappearing, and today our
farmers are growing more ajid more alive to the fact that a knowledge of
scientific farming is the only way to make 150 to 250 acres yield a profit.
"The agricultural colleges of many states, and the Federal Department of
Agriculture, have for many years past conducted most exhaustive research as to
the losses due to noxious insects, and the most effective means of curtailing
these losses.
"We have, by cultivation and removal of forests, disturbed the natural balance
of nature. Some of the changes have been beneficial, others very harmful. We
have made conditions extremely favorable for the rapid increase of certain
noxious insects. Insect life increases at such an incredible rate that with no
check of any kind everything green would soon disappear, and in a short time the
land would be uninhabitable.
"On the other hand, it is a well known fact that certain of our most useful
birds increase as a result of the settlement of land.
"Many birds are very tolerant of man, if reasonably protected and allowed to
rear their young undisturbed.
"In the earlier years of the settlement of the country there did not exist the
same need for watchfulness that is necessary today.
"The problem of adequate food supply for the world is a part of the problem of
the United States. One hundred years ago, very few men devoted even a small
portion of their time to the study of insects in their relation to the food
supply, or to the careful study of birds as the most effective check on the
spreading of injurious insects. Today thousands of men and women are preparing
earnestly for these very important studies, and the biological departments of
our colleges and universities are of the most importance and popular in all
parts of the United States.
"The Illinois Audubon Society was organized less than twenty years ago by a few
very earnest bird lovers in Chicago. Their primary object was no doubt a humane
desire to protect from destruction the many beautiful birds that came in such
great numbers to the woodlands and parks in and around Chicago. The time has
come when a much greater field is open for it and similar societies, for
intelligent work for the protection of birds, not only for their beauty and
wonderful songs, but as a vital factor in the economics of the country's food
supply.
"The problem of the city bird lover is largely different from that of the farmer
and the people of the smaller cities and villages.
"The larger cities, particularly Chicago, are flooded with thousands of
immigrants, to whom the United States means all sorts of liberty. License to
kill birds, we understand, is in some parts of southern Europe held out as a
great inducement to prospective emigrants in connection with cheaper living.
Cheap firearms are sold everywhere, and Sundays and holidays during the summer
months see each day a veritable 'armed host' scouring the prairies and woodlands
ready to kill anything that flies.
"Where transportation is cheap, these irresponsible shooters reach the farms,
and not only trespass on the fields of growing grain, but shoot thousands of the
farmers' best friends, the birds, or if no birds can be found, his domestic
chickens, ducks or turkeys.
"The problems of Illinois are those of Iowa and the other adjoining prairie
states.
"No crop raised by the farmer is immune from insect foes. Many of these insects
are so minute that they ordinarily escape the notice of the casual observer, yet
the damage annually done on a single farm by these inconspicuous insects may run
into large sums of money.
"The different aphides or plant lice, whose life cycle is only a few days,
increase with such astounding rapidity that the figures startle.
"These soft small insects, of which thousands could be held in one's hand,
frequently cover the stems of their host plants completely.
"The greatest enemy of the different aphides is the warbler family, which
numbers among the twenty-five or thirty varieties that visit us many of our
smallest birds. The number of insects that a pair of these little birds will
consume for a single meal is almost beyond comprehension.
"To better understand the ability of birds to check insects, it is necessary to
know something of their marvelous powers of digestion. Birds fill themselves to
running over with either weed seeds or insects so that frequently they are
replete up to the bill. The process of digestion is so powerful and rapid that
they can eat almost without stopping, many birds consuming an amount of food
each day equal to about one-third of their own weight.
"The temperature of birds and their circulation is much greater than that of
other animals, consequently it is largely a matter of fuel enough to keep the
machinery going properly.
"Much painstaking work has been done recently in the State of Massachusetts in
order to ascertain the effect that wild birds have on the awful insect pests
which have become so serious a problem in that State.
"While the conditions in Illinois are vastly different from those in
Massachusetts, the results of the investigation should be of great interest to
Illinois farmers.
"It has been proven that almost without exception all birds have a good balance
to their credit over and above the damage they do; that even such conspicuously
aggressive birds as the bluejay, grackle and crow have a large credit in
assisting to destroy both larvas and adults of the gypsy and brown-tailed moths.
Such birds as feed on fruits robins, catbirds, cedar birds and others also
devour enough insect pests to have the balance in their favor.
"Many birds are peculiarly adapted to attend certain insects, and the birds have
been very happily alluded to by one writer as the police of the orchard and
garden.
"The seed-eating birds, which include the sparrows and finches, destroy weeds by
the million. Three mourning doves' stomachs contained by actual count a total of
23,100 weed seeds, consumed at one meal.
"All of the thrush family, of which the robin and bluebird are the best known
members, are valuable insect destroyers. The flycatchers, headed by the kingbird
and phoebe, and containing about eighty nearly related species, the swallows,
martins, night hawks and chimneyswifts, are policemen of the air.
"The towhee and many sparrows forage on the ground; the nut-hatches, woodpeckers
and brown creepers take care of the trunk and branches; and the warblers and
vireos examine the leaves and buds. The entire tree or shrub is thoroughly
guarded. Out in the open, the meadow lark, bobolink, bobwhite, prairie chicken
and many others keep tab on grasshoppers, crickets and myriads of other insects.
No insect family escapes; it has an ardent, relentless foe in some bird.
"Now, what is your duty to your bird friends? Make your premises attractive.
Furnish bird boxes or nests; feed the birds in winter; exterminate stray cats;
plant vines and shrubbery bearing fruits agreeable to birds; help to legislate
against shooting; train the small boy to respect and love the birds and not to
collect birds' eggs; teach him also to shoot with a field or opera glass. If a
bird helps itself to a little of your fruit, before destroying the bird look up
its record and see what insects he preys upon.
"Observe closely the birds at nesting time and note the tireless energy with
which the young birds eat, and then do a little calculating by multiplying the
number of times fed by the insects fed at a meal.
"Read literature on the subject of bird conservation. Result: Sure and lasting
conversion to the side of the birds. .
"Scientific men look with alarm at the rapidly decreasing bird population. The
rapid increase of population, encroaching more and more on the nesting places,
lessens the available woodland and prairie where the birds may nest and not be
disturbed.
"Intelligent planting of shrubbery and vines along roadsides, as is contemplated
by the Lincoln Highway movement, will in part overcome this condition.
"Concerted efforts by states and at Washington for better bird protection, the
education of all classes as to the beneficial part the bird has in our daily
life, vigorous prosecution for violation of our present game laws, the taxing of
cats, the encouragement of organizations for bird study all these are necessary
and important features of the growing intelligent effort for bird conservation.
"See that some one attends to the purchasing of good bird books for your public
library; offer prizes to your children for best observations or well written
papers about birds, their habits and usefulness these papers, or the best of
them, to be published in your local paper.
"There is no reason why, in this tremendous State, a powerful and concerted
effort should not be made for bird conservation and protection which would place
the State of Illinois in the first rank in the Union for such work.
"Nowhere in the entire United States is there a greater and more interesting
bird' migration, both spring and fall, than in this State. The State's length
gives it a wonderfully interesting plant life and variety of climate. This, in
part, explains its variety of bird life.
"A very small sum as an individual contribution, if given by enough people,
would maintain a paid expert whose duty might be that of State ornithologist.
"There is a man in Massachusetts who gives his entire time and energy to this
very important work, and whose book, 'Useful Birds and Their Protection,' is the
last word in bird conservation."
Additional Bird Websites for your perusal:
- Birds of America
Birds of America provides a detailed description of all types of birds found in North America, to include pictures, photographs, etc. - National Audubon Society
Audubon's mission is to conserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and the earth's biological diversity.
Source: A Standard History of Champaign County, Illinois, by J. R. Stewart, published by The Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago And New York, 1918.