_The Natural Enemies of Our Birds._
Now we come to the most serious question that the bird-lovers of America
are up against; and until this great question is settled, we shall
continue to pull against each other.
At a sportsmen’s show in Michigan I once saw one-half dozen mounted
hawks in a glass case, and there were thousands of school children
looking at them. The label read: “These are all valuable hawks.” Another
man will say, “Protect the cat-owl, or great horned owl,” and possibly
this same man will advocate the destruction of the wild house-cat, when
the positive fact is that this owl is nothing but a wild house-cat with
the advantage of wings, and for cruel, bloodthirsty, murderous
depredations he has got the house-cat chased right out of the
slaughter-house, for he will kill and eat a great variety of adult birds
and animals I have never known a house-cat to destroy, such as turkeys,
wild geese, peacocks, all kinds of hawks and all other owls, and animals
such as skunks, muskrats, groundhogs, minks, weasels and hares. Now,
although I have no personal knowledge of this, yet a gentleman farmer
who lived near the woods told me (and I believe him, or I would not
repeat it) that his bunch of house cats which were about half grown,
were in the habit of climbing upon the roof of the house and sitting
near the chimney to keep warm during the winter months; these horned
owls came and took away every one of the cats. However, I have no
positive proof of this last statement. But this I do know: There is
nothing roosts high enough or sleeps low enough to be out of reach of
this heartless cannibal. One regrettable fact to me is that I have never
seen where another bird or animal ever killed a great horned owl,
although they have lived in the township with me all my life.
A particular friend of mine was dissecting a shrike. This shrike is a
bird about the size and color of a blue jay, known to a great many
people as the butcher bird. I said to those standing by, “He is a bad
one; always shoot him on sight.” My friend stopped for a moment and
said, “Beg your pardon, Jack, but you are wrong; this is not the big
northern shrike you have reference to.” “No, no, my dear fellow,” I
replied; “I mean the very one you are skinning, and again I say, shoot
him on sight.” My friend smiled and replied in a kind, cheerful manner,
“Jack, I am surprised at you.” Now, dear reader, here were two natural
born naturalists right opposite each other, one advocating the
protection, the other the destruction, of the same bird. I had watched
this shrike in Ohio when I was a kid. I had often found his nest and
knew what he fed his young upon. I have caught dozens of them, right in
the act, in Canada, and they are always searching for birds, chiefly the
small fly-catchers. Well, we dissected this fellow, and found two little
birds’ legs, and they were not mates. Last fall I saw a shrike follow a
snow bird fully five hundred feet high, but the snow bird won out.
I said to another man, “The crow and bronze grackle take the robin’s
eggs.” “Why,” he said, “I don’t understand that; there is a robin’s nest
within a rod of my door, and the woods are full of crows.” Why, bless
your life, that is just the reason why the robin built there, it simply
came to him for protection.
Now first of all we must not lose sight of this fact: That there never
was but one perfect Manager stood on this earth, and He put these
creatures all here. So let us roll back the pages of time and take a
look at nature before man interfered. Likely you have read the history
of America; I haven’t; but I doubt if there is any account known of the
clouds of birds that once hovered over this continent. The settlings in
the bottom of the little artificial pond near my house, caused from the
wild goose and duck droppings, are exactly of the same material that we
find in our marshes, and which is from three to ten feet deep in the
average marsh. I will not attempt to mention the number of birds I have
seen in one day, because the average boy of the present would not
believe it; but I will say that I firmly believe I have seen more birds
in one day, before I was ten years of age, than the average ten-year-old
boy of the present day has seen in all his life. Time and time again
during my life have I seen a wounded bird lag behind as the flock flew
to cover; and often have I seen a hawk dart at them, and he never failed
to get the wounded one. And some wounded quail have been stolen from me
by hawks before I got to where they lit, and if it were not for the snow
I wouldn’t have known what had happened as I did not always see the
hawk.
Once in my life I had a flock of about thirty young wild ducks. There
were two little runts that appeared to want to die, but I rebelled and
kept patching them up. Finally one took with a sore eye disease, and in
a few days the other little scab had it, and both died, but not until
they had introduced these sore eyes to the rest of the ducks and all my
nice, healthy ducks started drooping. When I eventually got this disease
checked I had only seven ducks left. Now, according to my own
experience, if a hawk had come along he would have picked up the weak
ones and prevented this disease. So, after all my life’s study I am
fully convinced that these cannibal birds were put here to destroy the
weak and sickly and prevent contagious disease, letting the strong and
healthy survive. But man has interfered. He has paid all his attention
to the destruction of the food birds and has almost annihilated them and
let what we now call their enemies go; or, in other words, we human
beings have combined our forces with the food birds’ enemies.
Now Point Pelee marsh is about fifteen miles from where I am sitting.
Point Pelee is the most southerly part of mainland in Canada, and the
hawks cross there by the thousands every fall; yet I never knew of a
hunter going purposely to shoot them. But if there were twenty-five
ducks in a pond down there and twenty-five men knew it to-night, there
would likely be fifty guns there to-morrow morning. Yes, I honestly
believe there are as many hawks and owls in America to-day as there were
thirty years ago.
Last fall, when the hawks were migrating, in October, they started
roosting in our woods, and in less than a week there were thousands upon
thousands coming there. So I took a flash-light and the .22 rifle and
went down and I am sure as high as twenty-five would fly out of one
little tree every time I shot. It was a bright moonlight night, and they
soon took the hint, and I only killed fifteen or twenty. But to hear
their wings as they hovered around, over the woods, would cause one to
wonder where they came from and where they were going. However, once was
enough; the rest took the hint for the next night not one was seen going
there. So don’t let us blame the Great Provider; it is man’s mistake,
that is all; we have gone wrong.
“Oh, but say, Jack Miner, do you pretend to say that there were once
birds enough in America that the old and the delicate, crippled, maimed
and diseased would supply all these hawks and owls with food?” Yes, that
is just exactly what I want to say, yet I have no proof of it. I only
know that the hawks will take a cripple every time and let the strong
and healthy go. “Well,” you say, “how about a flock of little ducks? He
could take any one of them.” Not so easily. Wild ducks at six hours old
will dive like a lot of frogs, but a delicate one cannot; he will
possibly just put his head under, and his body will stick out like a
bloated toad. Yes, I believe that less than one hundred years ago there
were more of the above class of birds for the hawks, each year, in
America, than there are altogether, now. So, after having a lifetime of
experience raising birds, instead of doctoring the sickly ones and
petting the droopies and sore eyes, I just take the hawk’s plan and
destroy them.
While I would not like to see these cannibal birds become extinct, yet I
would be pleased to see them decreased the same as our other birds have
become during the last forty years.