Bird Notes

Abstract

THE Agricultural Research Institute at Pusa, Bengal, has taken up the subject of the food of Indian birds, and issued a preliminary report (Mem. Dept. Agric. India, Entomology, vol. iii., January, 1912) by Mr. C. W. Mason, edited and supplemented by Mr. H. Maxwell Lefroy. To a great extent the report is a compilation of extracts from the writings of Indian ornithologists relating to the food of birds, but it also includes an analysis of the contents of the stomachs of a considerable number of specimens (1325) which have been examined in the laboratory. It is very largely a confession of ignorance, as at present little is known with certainty as to the economic utility or harmfulness of Indian birds, and it is consequently impossible in most cases to make definite statements. Mr. Mason is, however, of opinion that as weed-killers—by consuming seeds—birds are of no value at all in India. Such birds “may keep weeds down to a certain extent, but this is of minor importance in a country where labour is cheap and where farming is not practised on such intensive lines as elsewhere. Even in intensive cultivation we cannot rely on weeds being kept down by birds, and the expense of cultivation to eliminate weeds is, I believe, not reduced in the slightest by the action of birds.”