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By Orcn Arnold
AFTER many years of bold rob
bery and killing, two notorious
American thieves are about to
receive their just deserts.
Government agents—G-men. if you
will—and others who know most about
them, have developed some new clews
and theories recently, so that rather
startling facts can be revealed.
The “just deserts" of the notorious
pair is—protection! As quickly as citi
zens can oe made to understand it, the
bandit pair will be let strictly alone,
allowed to go right on with their busi
ness of death and destruction.
The two killers are the hawk and the
owl, aerial raiders known and despised
for a century or more.
It is virtually an American tradition
for the farmer’s boy to get out the old •
shotgun and shoot the hawk that is
soaring over the chicken yard. The
chickens themselves, rest assured, are
making him out a gangster, a cutthroat,
a villain, a murderer, and a fiend.
Even worse, in away, is the night
time raiding of the owL That ominous
Thing with the staring eyes steals baby
chickens, too. and goodness knows what
all else. He is—why he's terrible! They
say he sucks blood of horses in the
Carolinas. They say he calls for the
soul when a person dies in Texas. They
say he causes crops to fail in Califor
nia, and they say he is a harbinger of
death in Massachusetts. They say.
SCIENTISTS within the past five or
six years, and more definitely within
the past year, have verified what they
thought they already knew—that hawk
and ow] are most valuable if left strict-
,; u'-iJ-j *i\i' ■■■V^^^^" i vfe *'silence and ran utter the most blood curdling screerh
ly alone. The national Association of
Audubon Societier—greatest organiza
tion of bird specialists in the world—is
just one of the agencies backing the
predators’ New Deal.
Many Americans, many who have
felt themselves sincere naturalists, are
going to be diehards. Farm folk espe
cially are likely to go oof
hawks and owls for a decade or so, or.
until the news eventually gets around
and sinks in. You can't blame them.
Habit is a strong thing, and if your
prize Rhode Island Red pullet were
snatched dramatically from under your
nose some sunny afternoon, you too
The barred awl is the fel
law who sits an a limb an VWZftrl ~~
mean light nights and XlMOw
wants ta knaw “Who— Wjߧ// V . q
whaa- -whooa are you?" I
... At right, dawn like ljyßf \ jnjkt \
a ballet, the hawk dives.
wings outspread. feet IllUfrvW' \Fj A
- .
IfllMif I sl* .■ - 'sSl
would want ta shoot the invader.
That's the way it usually happens—
dramatically.
The poultry yards will be quiet at $
p. m. Old hens will be fluffed up in
the shade of fig trees, and roosters will
doze ungallantly on shady limbs.
Away off in the sky is a speck.
Nature has given it uncanny eyes.
Half a mile high, it Can detect a morsel
of food on the ground.
It lets out no battle call, no warning
Instead, its wings fold, its neck dis
tends, its body streamlines—and down
it plunges.
Down, like a feathered bullet, it dives
at the farmyard. Twenty feet up, wings
check its speed, feet open in great
clutching talcns.
Faster, almost, than you can see ft,
the raider picks up a tender chicken
and skims away out of sight ever Am
trees.
Bird lovers, even as farmers, rise ka
indigation. Kill the hawks. It it •
logical cry. But no longer, the scien
tists at last are agreeing. Nature mrant
for the hawk to kill the smaller birds,
and it is a serious mistake to interrupt
him.
And therein lies the key ta the whole
situation—when you shoot a hawk or
J* c f Owls aren't sa vicious after aIL
S» v Here’s a tame short-horn owl
J that is its tiny mistress’ fs
f vorite pet.
an owl, you shoot the bird that would
normally destroy maybe a dozen go
phers and rats. The hawk might once a
year steal a chicken worth one dollar.
But the dozen gophers and rats left
alive would destroy SIOO worth of your
grain or garden crops.
OUT what about the song birds, and
y the colored gems of the garden?
“The mortality in our common birds
has to approach something like 50 to 80
per cent every year, or we would be
overrun by them,** says Richard H.
Pough, of the Audubon Societies.
‘Therefore the hawk does no harm,
provided it kills no more than half the
birds in a vicinity, but in the eyes of
nature probably benefits the small bird
species.
“Furthermore, the hawk benefits the
smaller species on which it preys by
eliminating continually weak, injured,
diseased birds, and allowing the future
generations to come from the strongest
and healthiest that are best able to
escape.”
Finally, there is one more clinching
argument predatory birds such as
hawks and owls get more rodents than
anything else, and rodents (especially
rats and gophers) cost American peo
ple more in destroyed food than any
other agency. Killing a hawk may save
the lives of two quail and two chickena,
but spare the lives of ten times as many
highly destructive rodent pests.
The owl especially is a friend of man
ha the destruction of rodents, but It la
difficult to get most people to under
stand that, die scientists declare. Owl
takes over the night shift of aerial raid
ing, when hawk is content to go to
roost as "respectable" birds do.
Two common bam owls will destroy
more rats, mice, and gophers in a year's
time than will a dozen cats. But the
two owls will also upset the emotional
stability of the farmer’s entire family,
unless the people are exceptionally
wise.
Owls do about M per cent of the
ghosting that is done in America. A
bam owl is a beautiful white creature,
with a wingspread of three or four feet.
In a dim reflected moonlight as your
attic, your garage, or especially as an
abandoned empty residence, the bird la
an ideal phantom.
The barred owl is the ghost most
likely to “haunt” you an lonely roads,
as along the village cemetery. On
aooonlit nights this fellow wwni to
have an insatiable curiosity ta know
“WHO WHOO WHOO-ARE-YOU-
U-U?" and he usually fonows his ques
tion with a mirthless laugh.