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Show BIRD SLAUGHTER IS COSTLY Direct Connection Between Increase of Insect Pest and Killing Off of Little Songsters. Dr. William T. Horuaday, director of the New York Zoological park, estimates esti-mates that if the bird population of this country was as large today as it was 60 years ago, it would mean a saving of $250,000,000 to American farmers. There is a direct connection, in his opinion, between the multiplication multiplica-tion 6f insect pests, which are among the gravest problems of modern agriculture, agri-culture, aud the slaughter of migratory migra-tory birds. The most common orchard visitant of the woodpecker tribe is the red headed woodpecker (Melanerpes ery-throcephalus). ery-throcephalus). Generally speaking lie is the most sociable of all the bird V:..V.S Golden-Winged Woodpecker. folks, frequenting orchards, parks, shade trees, and the wooded districts near farms. This'L. '- si"-eeon makes a nest near the summit of some dead topped tree where he and his wife rear their brood of ten to twelve healthy, hungry youngsters, each of them requiring, nay, demanding to be fed. Practically all this bird's food Is obtained by boring. It is Impossible Impos-sible to even guess at the number of noxious insects destroyed by them in a season. A pair of them nested in a dead Cottonwood near my uncle's orchard in Yakima valley one year, and I watched them one day through a pair of glasses when the young were about half grown, says a writer in an exchange. The two birds made ninety-six trips in one hour to the tree, each time carrying carry-ing a worm." It is pretty safe to calculate that ninety-six apples were saved in that hour, practically a box, worth ,say, one dollar. If the birds worked ten hours per day they were worth to my uncle ten dollars, or in three weeks the young were in the nest $210- Can you afford to kill a woodpecker? |