Good Birds and Bad The kestrel has recently earned good
conduct marks in an assessment of the value of birds to human economy. It does not, I think, take other birds on the wing, in the manner preferred by the peregrine and indeed the sparrow hawk, and it is principally a mouser, like that much more successful flesh-eating bird, the barn owl, which comes very nearly, perhaps quite, at the top of benefactors. Even the cat is no rival as a successful hunter of mice and rats. Once again the unfortunate pigeon is put at the other extremity as the worst of enemies. Someone counted 160 peas in one bird's crop, and even that is nothing to the amount of green leaves that it can consume. I once shot one that broke its crop on falling, and the ground was littered with enough sprouts to make a good dish. On the whole, carnivorous creatures do us much less harm than the vegetarians ; witness mouse as well as pigeon. Of the carnivores, the very worst, in my opinion, is the carrion crow, and it is numerous in suburb as in the country.
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