THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF BIRDS.

Forest and Bird, Issue 28, 1 October 1932, Page 2

THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF BIRDS.

Michelet long ago said:— “If it were not for the birds no human being could live upon the earth, for the insects upon which birds live would destroy all vegetation.” Very much later a writer in “Forest and Stream” said:— “If the birds were all destroyed, agriculture in the United States would instantly cease.” Still later Forbush, one of our foremost writers on the subject, said: — “An acquaintance with useful birds of the farm is as important to the farmer as is a knowledge of the insect pests which attack his crops. . . . Were the natural enemies of forest insects annihilated, every tree in our woods would be threatened with destruction, and man would be powerless to prevent it.” These startling assertions are not the vain vapourings of dreamers and sentimentalists. They are the conclusions of trained scientists, based upon a great accumulation of information acquired only by the most painstaking and tedious investigation. Most of the very extensive literature upon this subject in America is written by investigators connected with the United States Department of Agriculture and various State Agricultural and Horticultural Departments and Societies, largely appearing as public documents, but a great deal of it, partly written by independent experts, scattered through scientific periodicals. In some instances there has been a tendency to exaggerate the facts and to make assertions too extravagant concerning the value of birds. It may even be that if all birds were destroyed, other enemies of insects would be able to take care of the situation before desolation would become complete, but that no one can know. We do very definitely know that birds destroy a vast number of injurious insects, rodents and weed seeds every year, and are to be considered one of the most important factors in checking the increase of such pests, which, if unchecked by any means, would quickly prove very disastrous to the human race because of their wholesale and widespread destruction of vegetation. It is quite definitely known that ruthless slaughter of insectivorous birds has been followed locally by immediate increase in the numbers of insects, to the great injury of forest and agricultural crops; that wholesale destruction of birds of prey has been followed by “plagues” of mice and other mammal pests.

Through a very large amount of scientific research it is now known that the great majority of wild birds are highly beneficial to man, that many other species do much more good than harm, and that very few do more harm than good. This information forms the foundation of the laws for the protection of non-game birds which have been enacted in many States, not at the behest of sentimentalists, for aesthetic reasons, but upon the urgent recommendation of the Department of Agriculture, for purely practical reasons. So thoroughly is the economic value of birds now established that even Italy, where destruction of small birds was greatest, has enacted laws for their protection.* Some species are with us the year round, others remain only during the summer, while others come in from the North to spend the winter months. Thus the good work goes on winter and summer, from the peep of dawn to the late hours of twilight, the owls even working on night shift. The birds, with their extremely variable but in a very large measure useful food habits, fill a large place in the Economy of Nature. It is strange that men were so long in coming to recognise the value of the feathered tribe, and even at the present time there is appalling and widespread ignorance of the real facts, even among otherwise wellinformed people. Perhaps it was the fact that in some European and other countries insectivorous song birds are still considered a source of human food, or possibly the fact that not a great while ago such useful birds as the Flicker were sold in the open markets of the United States that inspired this bit of verse:— I saw with open eyes I saw in a vision Singing birds sweet The worm in the wheat, Sold in the shops And in the shops nothing For people to eat, For people to eat; Sold in the shops of Nothing for sale in Stupidity Street. Stupidity Street. —Ralf Hodgson. —Extracted from “The Practical Value of Birds,” by Tunius Henderson. * Science, n. s., XLIII., 65, 1916.