tions, the Sharp-shinned and Cooper's Hawk, all our commoner Hawks and Owls are beneficial. In his exhaustive study of the foods of these birds Dr. A. K. Fisher, Assistant Ornithologist of the United States Department of Agriculture, has found that ninety per cent of the food of the Red-shouldered Hawk, commonly called “ Chicken Hawk ” or “ Hen Hawk,” consists of injurious mammals and insects, while two hundred castings of the Barn Owl contained the skulls of four hundred and fifty-four small mammals, no less than two hundred and twenty-five of these being skulls of the destructive field or meadow mouse.
Still, these birds are not only not protected, but in some States a price is actually set upon their heads ! Dr. C. Hart Merriam, Ornithologist and Mammalogist of the United States Department of Agriculture, has estimated that in offering a bounty on Hawks and Owls, which resulted in the killing of over one hundred thousand of these birds, the State of Pennsylvania sustained a loss of nearly four million dollars in one year and a half !
As destroyers of the seeds of harmful plants, the good done by birds can not be overestimated. From late fall to early spring, seeds form the only food of many birds, and every keeper of cage-birds can realize how many a bird may eat in a day. Thus, while the Chickadees, Nuthatches, Woodpeckers, and some other winter birds are ridding the trees of myriads of insects' eggs and larvae, the granivorous birds are reaping a crop of seeds which, if left to germinate, would cause a heavy loss to our agricultural interests.
As scavengers we understand that certain birds are of value to us, and therefore we protect them. Thus the Vultures or Buzzards of the South are protected both by law and public sentiment, and as a result they are not only exceedingly abundant, but remarkably tame. But
