Quite unintentionally on his part, Man, the arch destroyer and the most predatory and merciless of all animal species except the wolves, has rendered a great service to all the birds that live or nest upon the ground.  His relentless pursuit and destruction of the savage-tempered, strong-jawed fur-bearing animals is in part the salvation of the ground birds of to-day and yesterday.  If the teeth and claws had been permitted to multiply unchecked down to the present time, with man’s warfare on the upland game proceeding as it has done, scores upon scores of species long ere this would have been exterminated.

But the slaughter of the millions of North American foxes, wolves, weasels, skunks, and mink has so overwhelmingly reduced the four-footed enemies of the birds that the balance of wild Nature has been preserved.  As a rule, the few predatory wild animals that remain are not slaughtering the birds to a serious extent; and for this we may well be thankful.

THE DOMESTIC CAT.—­In such thickly settled communities as our northern states, from the Atlantic coast to the sandhills of Kansas and Nebraska, the domestic cat is probably the greatest four-footed scourge of bird life.  Thousands of persons who never have seen a hunting cat in action will doubt this statement, but the proof of its truthfulness is only too painfully abundant.

Unhappily it is the way of the hunting cat to stalk unseen, and to kill the very birds that are most friendly with man, and most helpful to him in his farming and fruit-growing business.  The quail is about the only game bird that the cat affects seriously, and to it the cat is very destructive.  It is the robin, catbird, thrush, bluebird, dove, woodpecker, chickadee, phoebe, tanager and other birds of the lawn, the garden and orchard that afford good hunting for sly and savage old Thomas.

When I was a boy in my ’teens, I had a lasting series of object lessons on the cat as a predatory animal.  Our “Betty” was the most ambitious and successful domestic-cat hunter of wild mammals of which I ever have heard.  To her, rats and mice were mere child’s-play, and after a time their pursuit offered such tame sport that she sought fresh fields for her prowess.  Then she brought in young rabbits, chipmunks and thirteen-lined spermophiles, and once she came in, quite exhausted, half dragging and half carrying a big, fat pocket gopher.  With her it seemed to be a point of honor that she should bring in her game and display it.  Little did we realize then that in course of time the wild birds would become so scarce that their slaughter by house cats would demand legislative action in the states.

In considering the hunting cat, let us call in a credible witness of the effects of domestic cats on the bob white.  The following is an eye-witness report, by Ernest B. Beardsley, in Outdoor Life for April, 1912.  The locality was Wellington, Sumner County, Kansas.