A Farmer's Enemies
A farmer should know his friends and be sure that he is destroying only his foes when he lifts his gun or baits his trap, but sometimes the evidence of a few uprooted plants, a dead chicken or a broken egg is enough to make him declare war on rooks, badgers, crows, owls, kestrels and anything else at hand without discrimination. Recently I was shown the toes of a kestrel that had been destroyed as a " sparrow hawk," and its destruction was justified, in the opinion of the man concerned, because "everyone knows a hawk will take anything, even young chicks." The kill-all rule may be a safe one, but it is poor justice. 1 hope that before anyone decides to take preventive action against the starling as a bird suspected of being responsible for the spread of foot and mouth disease, he weighs in the balance the starling's work on the pasture where the flocks have never done picking up insects and the eggs of insects that could ravage a future crop. Even taking into account the damage the starling does to timber, I think there is enough to be said in his favour to allow him to be spared.
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