Hollinger Corp.

361

Calendar No. 606.

CONGRESS, t SENATE. | REPORT

wet SESSiOn.

TO PROTECT MIGRATORY GAME AND INSECTIVOROUS
BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES.

Aprit 26, 1912.—Ordered to be printed.

2

Mr. McLean, from the Committee on Forest Reservations and
the Protection of Game, submitted the following

REPORT.

[To accompany S. 6497.]

The Committee on Forest Reservations and the Protection of Game,
to whom was referred the bill (S. 6497) to protect migratory game
and insectivorous birds of the United States, submit the following
favorable report thereon:

For many years the necessity and importance of effective protec-
tion for the bird life of this and other nations has been apparent to
ornithologists and all others who have interested sHeenenies in the
subject.

The several States of the Union have enacted many laws prohibit-
ing and regulating the killing of birds, but the strong temptation
pressing upon every State to secure its full share of edible game birds
during the spring and fall migrations has rendered harmonious and
effective State supervision impossible.

Game commissioners and other officials representing 43 of the 48
States of the Union, together with some of the leading ornithologists
of the country, appeared before your committee, and their testimony,
based upon years of experience and practical observation, was con-
clusive to the fact that State control of migratory birds must, from
the very nature of the surrounding temptations and conditions, end
in failure.

Conceding the necessity of Federal regulation and the willingness
of Congress to exert its power to prevent the extermination of the
useful migratory birds, the question of the extent and nature of that
power was at once raised and very carefully considered by your
cominittee.

The nations of Europe have for many years been alive to the neces-
sity of the protection of bird life by treaties, regulations, and interna-
tional declarations and conventions. As early as 1873, the Congress
of Agriculturists and Foresters moved, ‘‘that the Imperial Austrian

be -45 5 73

9 TO PROTECT MIGRATORY GAME.

Government be requested to secure the protection of birds by means
of treaties with other States of Europe.”’

In 1875, Germany, Austria, and Italy entered into a joint declara-
tion for the protection of birds. Since that time international orni-
thological congresses have been held in London, Paris, Budapest, and
Vienna. In 1906, 11 European powers ratified an international agree-
ment consisting of 11 articles, which formed a comprehensive code
for the protection of birds. :

The fact that several States of the Union have, up-to date, exercised
the right to regulate the taking of both migratory and nonmigratory
birds where no discrimination or distinction has been suggested or
desired does not preclude the Nation from asserting its right to pro-
tect migratory birds whenever conditions make such protection
necessary. A dormant and unused power in a nation may be asserted
at any time.

The power of the Federal Government to regulate by treaty the
taking of migratory seals and fish can not be questioned, and your
committee can see no distinction between the right to regulate by
law and treaty the taking of seals and fish that to-day may be in the
waters of one State or Nation and to-morrow in the waters of another
State or Nation, and the right to regulate the taking of wild birds
whose habitat changes from one State or Nation to another with the
changing seasons.

The printed report of hearings before your committee, a copy of
which has been sent to every Member of the Senate, contains the
argument of able lawyers in support of the conclusions reached by
your committee. In many of the States of the Union spring shooting
is allowed and there are hundreds of sporting clubs in the United
States where the shooting is exclusively confined to the spring months.

SoMmE REASONS WHY THIS CONGRESS SHOULD Pass THIS BILL.

The destruction of game birds for food has been enormous and
ruthless during the past 40 years. There are many living now who
remember when all of the markets of the East were glutted with
partridge, quail, prairie chickens, and wild water fowls, and an enor-
mous game business was carried on by provision dealers. Few accu-
rate statistics of the amount of game sold are obtainable, but Mr. D.
G. Elhot, in the report of the United States Commissioner of Agri-
culture for the year 1864, says:

One dealer in New York was known to have received 20 tons of prairie chickens in
one consignment, and some of the larger poultry dealers are estimated to have sold
from 150,000 to 200,000 game birds in six months.

VALUE OF INSECTIVOROUS BIRDS.

Anyone who has read recent estimates of the decrease in insectiv-
orous birds and the increase of herbivorous insects can readily believe
that as the mammals succeeded reptiles insects will soon possess the
earth unless some agency is discovered to check their increase.

We are prone to bear the usual and slowly accumulating burdens
with dull resignation and patience. The life and property losses and
taxes that are inherited and constant we take for granted. It is the
concentrated and unusual calamities that shock and excite the spirit

ry. eh:

44%)

ss co TO PROTECT MIGRATORY GAME. 3

“of opposition and the desire to prevent a reoccurrence. By the sink-

ing of the Titanic 1,300 lives were lost, and the world was filled with
fear and sympathy. Tuberculosis claims 190,000 victims a year in
this country and pneumonia 160,000, yet we bear this awful loss of
life with the passing comment, that it is a ereat pity.

The San Francisco earthquake destroyed property to the value of
$400,000,000. This loss was the superinducing cause of the panic of
1907, which reduced values by the billions. If it were known to- day
that the country would suffer another such loss within its borders in
the year 1912, the wheels of progress the world over would halt in
sympathetic fear.

A short time ago the farmers of the country, especially in the North-
west, were much agitated because of the proposed reciprocity agree-
ment with Canada. The loss which they, together with other farmers
of the country, will suffer this year and which will benefit no one will
exceed by hundreds of millions of dollars the total value of the entire
wheat crop of the nation.

As long ago as 1904 Dr. C. L. Marlatt, basing his estimates on the
crop reports of the United States Department of Agriculture, asserted
that the loss to the agricultural industries in that year, caused by
insects alone, could be conservatively placed at $795,100, 000, and this
estimate does not include a dollar for the use of insecticides.

Mr. Forbush, in his most comprehensive book entitled ‘‘ Useful
Birds,” maintains that the insect pests destroy agricultural products
to the value of $800,000,000 a year. We use large numbers so freely
in these days, both in science and finance, that hundreds of millions
mean no more to us than hundreds of thousands did a few years ago.
There are about 600 colleges in the United States to- day. Their
buildings and endowments have been centuries in. accumulation.
The value of the college and university buildings is estimated at

§260,000,000 and the endowments at $219,000,000. If they should be
destroyed to-morrow—buildings and endowments—the insect tax of
one year would replace them and leave a balance sufficient to endow
32 new universities in the sum of $10,000,000 each.

We have in this country to-day about 20,000,000 school children,
and the cost of their education has become by far the heaviest tax
laid upon the surplus of the country, yet it costs more by many mil-
lions to feed our insects than it does to educate our children. If there
is any way in which this vast and destructive tax upon the national
income can be prevented or stayed or resisted in any appreciable
measure it would seem to be the part of wisdom to act without delay.

For many years individuals, at their own expense, and voluntary
societies and representatives of the civilized nations the world over
have studied and estimated the value of birds to the human race.
We call attention at this time to but a few of the estimates made, and
such as seem to be fair and reliable, but enough, we think, to prove
that in this country at least we have ruthlessly disturbed, if not
destroyed, one of nature’s wisest and most valuable balances between
the birds and their natural food, and it is clear to those informed upon
this subject that unless radical and immediate measures are adopted
to restore a sure, safe, and natural equilibrium between insectivorous
birds and their foods the time will soon come when the annual loss
caused by insects to agriculture in this country alone will be counted
in billions instead of millions of dollars.

4 TO PROTECT MIGRATORY GAME.

Most insects, like the green leaf louse, or aphis, so destructive to
the hop industry and many other of our most valuable fruits and
vegetables, reproduce their kind at the rate of ten sextillion to the
pair in one season. This number means 40,000 for every square inch
of land that is above water. Placed in Indian file, 10 to the inch, it
Bawa take light, traveling at the rate of 180,000 miles per second,

2,500 years to reach the file leader.

The potato bug is less fecund. One pair will reproduce from
fifty to sixty millions only in a season. The natural increase of one
pair of gipsy moths wo ould defoliate the United States in eight years.

These estimates I quote from Prof. Forbush, who in turn gathered
them from the United States Biological Survey, and we may say that
these cases are fair examples of the reproductive powers of the
insectile world. Locusts, army worm, and chinch bugs, unless
checked in procreation soon become countless hordes, devastating
wide areas of the earth’s surface.

It is to be remembered that insects live to eat. Some of them
increase their size at birth 10,000 times in 30 days. Dr. Lintner, of
the New Jersey Board of Agriculture, reports 176 species of insects
attacking the apple tree. (U. S. Biological Survey.) About the
same number attack the peach, plum, and cherry trees. Dr. Packard
finds 400 species feeding upon the oak; 300 attack the conifera.
The number feeding upon cereals, grains, and garden crops is also
very large.

The reports of the Bureau of Entomology show that destruction
by some insects is widely spread and are increasing. Dr. Marlatt
estimates that the loss to the wheat-growing States in 1904 occasioned
by the Hessian fly was about $50, 000 000. Dr. Shinar estimates the
damage done to crops in the Mississippi Valley caused by the chinch
bug in one year as high as $100,000,000. The Rocky Mountain
locusts, in years of their greatest activity, caused the States of the
Northwest more than $150,000,000. Dr. Lintner estimates the
‘annual loss to farmers caused by cut-worms at $100,000,000. The
terrible loss of $800,006,000 a year is fairly easy of proof.

That the worm does not eat everything that grows is due to sev-
eral causes—weather, parasites, fungi, insect diseases, insectivorous
birds, and mechanically applied poisons, which are expensive,
unnatur al, and dangerous. However large may be the share of para-
sites, fungi, and weather in checking the increase of destructive
insects, investigation shows that it is lamentably insufficient, and the
briefs of the bird defenders pretty clearly indicate that the birds
have been, are, and will be without question one of the most impor-
tant agencies in staying the inroads of insect devastation. Men who
have had this subject at heart and in hand for many years assert that
bird life is one of the most indispensable balancing forces of nature.

We cite a few instances in support of the foregoing. All birds eat,
and most of them eat most of the time, and they, eat insects and little
else. The old bird has just as keen an appetite as the young bird, and
he is much larger and his daily ration is almost incredible.

Mr. Treadwell, of the Boston Society of Natural History, fed a
young robin 68 angle or earth worms in one day. Mr. Nash, of the
Ontario Depar tment of Agriculture, fed a robin 70 cutworms a day
for 15 days. A young crow will eat twice its weight a day of almost
anything that happens to be brought before him. The State ornithol-

TO PROTECT MIGRATORY GAME. 5

ogist of Massachusetts, Mr. Forbush, by careful and painstaking
observation has collected much reliable information on this subject.
He has seen two parent grosbeaks in 11 hours make 450 trips to their
nests carrying two or more larve at a time. Sparrows, chickadees,
vireos, martens, and warblers made from 40 to 60 trips an hour with
their beaks filled with all manner of insects. Under the supervision of
the United States Biological Survey the crops of 3,500 birds were
examined. Thirty grasshoppers and 250 caterpillars were found in the
crops of cuckoos. In the crop of a nighthawk were found 60 grass-
hoppers and in another 500 mosquitoes; 38 cutworms were found in
the crop of a blackbird; 70 cankerworms were found in the crop of a
cedar bird. Prof. Tschudi estimates the diet of a song sparrow at
1,500 larve a day.

Mr. Forbush estimates that a single yellow-throated warbler will
consume 10,000 aphids or tree lice in a day. Scarlet tanagers have
been seen to eat 35 gypsy moths a minute for 18 minutes at a time.

To quote further from Mr. Forbush on Birds:

More than 50 kinds of birds feed upon different varieties of caterpillars; 38 varieties
are known to feed upon devastating plant lice.

Mr. McAtee, of the United States Biological Survey, reports that several of the
most destructive species of scale insects are the food of not less than 50 kinds of birds.
Beetles, cutworms, grubs, borers, locusts, grasshoppers, crickets, in fact most all of the
injurious insects are food for a very great majority of the different kinds of birds.

It is the general belief that the so-called game birds are seed rather than insect
eaters. The fact is that the bulk of food of most of this class of birds consists of insects
when insects are to be had.

The quail, though not a migratory bird, and, therefore, not within the scope of the
pending bill should, however, be carefully protected by State legislation. It feeds
upon locusts, chinchbugs, cotton worms, cotton-boll weevils, army worms, Colorado
potato beetles, striped cucumber beetles, grasshoppers, ground beetles, and many
others. The young feed almost entirely upon insects. Such seeds as they eat are
largely those of the harmful weeds as ragweed, smartweed, red sorrel, mercury, pig-
weed, and the ike. If the quail can be protected and become numerous and fearless,
they would become the most useful assistants and allies of the farmer.

This is true in a great measure of the partridge or ruffled grouse, snipe, plover, sand-
piper, woodcock, wood duck, and black duck, once so common all along the shores of
our streams and pools. They were formerly great insect eaters, but they have been
so persecuted bv the hunters that they hardly now ever live there.

Prairie chickens, like the grouse and wild turkey, feed their growing
young almost entirely upon insects and the mature birds prefer this
diet.

We quote from Prof. Forbush a few instances of crops saved from
destruction by birds:

In Pomerania an immense forest was in danger of being utterly ruined by cater-
pillars and was unexpectedly saved by cuckoos, which though on the point of migrating
established themselves there for weeks and so thoroughly cleared the trees that next
year neither depredators nor depredations were seen.

In Europe, in 1848, there was a great outbreak of gypsy moths. The hand of man
seemed powerless to work off the affliction, but on the approach of the winter titmice
and wrens paid daily visits to the infested trees, and before spring the eggs of the
moths were entirely destroyed.

According to ‘‘ Reaumer,”’ the larvee of the gypsy moth were at one time so numerous
on the Limes at Brussels that many of the great trees were nearly defoliated. The
moths swarmed like bees in the summer. If one-half of the eggs had hatched the
following spring scarcely a leaf would have remained in these favorite places of public
resort. ‘Two months later scarcely an egg cluster would be found. This happy result
was attributed to the titmice and creepers, which were seen busily running up and
down the tree trunks.

In 1892 Australia was afflicted with incursions of immense clouds of locusts. In
Glen Thompson district several large flocks of ibis were seen eating the young locusts

6 TO PROTECT MIGRATORY GAME.

in a wholesale manner. Near Victoria swarms of locusts were seen in a paddock.
Just as it was feared that all the sheep would have to be sold for want of grass, starlings,
spoonbills, and cranes made their appearance and in a few days made so complete a
destruction of the locusts that but a few acres of grass were lost.

When Utah was settled, the first year’s crop was almost utterly destroyed by myriads
of crickets that came down from the mountains. The first crop having been almost
destroyed, they had sowed seed for the second year. The crop promised well, but
when the crickets appeared the people were in danger of starvation. In describing
the condition Mr. George Q. Cannon said: ‘‘ Black crickets came down by millions
and destroyed our grain crops, promising fields of wheat in the morning were by
evening as smooth as a man’s hand—devoured by insects. At this juncture, sea
culls came by thousands, and before the crops were entirely destroyed, these gulls
devoured the crickets, so that our fields were entirely free from them.’’ Several
times afterwards the crops were attacked by the crickets and were saved by the gulls.

In 1865 locusts hatched out in countless numbers in Nebraska. Some fields of cornand
wheat were entirely destroyed by them. A large field of corn near Dacotah City was
literally covered with locusts, and there were indications that not a stalk would escape.
About this time, blackbirds appeared in large numbers and made this field their
feeding ground. The locusts gradually disappeared. Although the crop had to be
replanted, it was due to the birds that a crop was raised at all. Many fields were
saved with but slight loss by the work of blackbirds, plover, quail, and prairie chickens.

A severe outbreak of forest tent caterpillars occurred in New York and parts of New
England in 1898. Thousands of acres of woodland were devastated, and great damage
was done to the sugar maple orchards of New York and Vermont. Birds—warblers
orioles, sparrows, robins, cuckoos, cedar birds, and many others—attacked the cater-
pillars vigorously, and by 1900 the plague had been so reduced that the injury was
not seen.

Increase of insects and damage by them follows destruction of birds. Frederick of
Prussia, being particularly fond of cherries, was annoyed to see the sparrows destroy-
ing his favorite fruit. An edict was issued ordering sparrow extermination. The
campaign against the birds was so successful that not only were the sparrows destroyed,
but many other birds were either killed or driven away. Within two years, cherries
and most other fruits were wanting. The trees were defoliated by caterpillars and
other insects and the King, seeing his error, imported sparrows to take the place of
those that had been killed.

A few years since, the harvests of France began to fail. A commission to investigate
the cause of the deficiency was appointed by the minister of agriculture. This com-
mission took counsel with experienced naturalists and the deficiency was attributed
to the ravages of insects that 1t is the function of birds to destroy. It seems that the
French people had been killing and eating not only the game birds, but the smaller
birds as well. Birds’ eges had been taken in immense numbers. A single child
had been known to come in at night with a hundred eggs. The number of eggs of
birds destroyed in the country annually was estimated to be from eighty to one hundred
millions. Before such persecution the birds were rapidly disappearing. As an ap-
parent result of the destruction of the birds, the vines, fruit trees, forest trees, grain
and field crops were suffering much from destructive insects. It was concluded that
by no other agency than the birds could the ravages of insects be kept down and the
commission called for prompt and energetic remedies to prevent the destruction
of birds.

The greatest losses from the ravages of the Rocky Mountain locust were coincident
with or followed soon after the destruction by the people of countless thousands of
blackbirds, prairie chickens, quail, upland plover, curlew, and other birds. This
coincidence is significant at least. Prof. Aughey tells how this slaughter was accom-
plished. Vast numbers of them were poisoned with strychnine in and around the
cornfields. It was done under the belief that the blackbirds were damaging the corn
heey but a great number of birds of other species were destroyed as well as the black-

ids.

In Dakota County, in Nebraska, in one autumn, not less than 30,000 birds must have
been destroyed. Prof. Aughey writes thus of this destruction: ‘‘Supposing that each
of these 30,000 birds ate 150 insects daily, we then have the enormous number of
135,000,000 insects saved in this one county in one month that ought to have been
destroyed by the agency of birds.’? When we consider that most of these birds were
migratory, and that they would have been busy in other regions the rest of the time
in helping to keep down the increase of insects, the harm that their destruction did
is beyond computation. The killing of such birds is not a local, it is a national, a
continental loss.

TO PROTECT MIGRATORY GAME. {

All of the foregoing evidence goes to demonstrate the existence of a
natural economic relation between these three orders of life. There
is a sort of interdependence, and the existence of each one is depend-
ent upon the existence of the others. But for the vegetation the
insects would perish, and but for the insects the birds would perish,
and but for the birds the vegetation would be utterly destroyed by
the unchecked increase of insect destroyers.

It is the earnest recommendation of your committee that the
pending bill receive favorable consideration.

O

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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