The answer to this question needs to be presented from two distinctly
different points of view--the commercial and the esthetic. In
presenting the commercial point of view it will be necessary to ignore
the use of any bird as an article of food, because we are now speaking
of the living bird. Likewise it will be necessary to ignore the side
which might be presented by the millinery trade, because that, too, has
to do with the dead bird. We shall have occasion to present the general
subject of the demands of fashion at a later time. This paper, then, is
concerned only with our debt to the living bird.
In the June number of Birds and Nature some general remarks were made
about what the birds eat. In this paper it will be necessary to go more
into particulars in order to get clearly before us just wherein our
debt lies.
First of all, we owe our physical comfort to the birds, because they
check the increase in insect life. The mosquito and gnat, the horse
fly and common housefly would soon rival the plagues of Egypt were the
birds to disappear. If anyone doubts this let him go into the Cascade
mountains where the scarcity of the birds gives great liberties to the
"deer flies." And they take all liberties without so much as a "thank
you, I guess I will!"
We owe our fruits largely to the birds. This statement anyone may prove
by simple experiment. First drive the birds from your garden because
you think they are eating the buds and blossoms, instead of the insects
which sting the buds. You will be rewarded with a scanty and stunted
fruit crop. Next conclude that you won't get fruit anyway, and so let
the birds do as they please. You will be pretty sure to harvest a
fairly good crop at least. Lastly, encourage the birds to visit your
garden and orchard in their northward passage, as well as during the
summer season. Build nesting boxes for the swallows, wrens and martins.
Plant a mulberry tree for the fruit-loving robins and cat-birds. Now
your fruit and garden are returning an abundant yield of the best
grade. If the birds take a little for themselves have they not earned
it? There is enough and to spare.
We owe corn and other grains largely to the birds, because they help
to keep in check the insects which attack the cereals. During the
grasshopper plagues very many birds feed upon the grasshoppers which
do not usually touch grasshoppers. Probably chief among our grain
field helpers is the Bronzed Grackle, who is so much in disfavor for
the ravages he makes upon those same fields when the corn is in the
roasting-ear stage. But he earns far more than he eats. The birds of
prey destroy vast numbers of the little rodents which help themselves
too freely to the planted grains.
We owe the preservation of the remnant of our forests, and all our
trees and bushes largely to the birds who eat the insects which attack
the trees and bushes. The woodpeckers are after the insect which is
destroying the tree, not after the life of the tree.
Space would fail us to speak of the debt we owe to all the birds. There
are the scavenger water-birds--gulls, terns and the like--the scavenger
land birds--the vultures--the ducks, geese and swans, who check the
encroachments of vegetable life upon our streams, ponds and lakes; the
herons, cranes, rails, coots, gallinules and shore-birds, which feed
upon the water and mud-inhabiting insects and other small animals; the
sparrows and grouse, which destroy vast quantities of the seeds of
harmful plants. In short, the only birds about whose usefulness there
is any doubt are the English Sparrow, Crow, Blue Jay and four of the
hawks. These are far too few for us to condemn all birds.
We cannot afford to overlook the esthetic side of this question. How
much of our pleasure and happiness do we owe the birds directly for
their intensely busy lives, the neatness and beauty of their dress,
the perpetual joy of their songs? Can you imagine a world without
birds? Are the returned warmth and the green vegetation all that make
the summer months more pleasant than the winter season? Rob the tropics
of their birds and you rob them of their heart. Pasadena, California,
is a bird paradise, but take away its mocking birds, its orioles, its
towhees, its gorgeous humming birds, and the many other birds which
enliven every lawn, and you have taken away one of its chief charms.
But it is not simply that we are entertained by the birds, nor even
that we are pleased with their neatness and beauty. Where their lives
touch ours we feel an uplifting influence. We are better fitted for the
service which it is our privilege to render to the world by the touch
of the bird life. Our horizon is broadened beyond the self-interest,
the egoistic, to the altruistic conception of life. We cannot live in
the presence of these creatures so full of life without being spurred
to more earnest effort ourselves. When we fail to see in the world of
nature about us what it is our privilege to see we are losing that much
of life. Let us open our eyes to all the influences that may shape our
lives toward best living.
Lynds Jones.