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Birds in Their Relation to Agriculture: Plovers

Birds in Their Relation to Agriculture 127 The Herons, Cranes, and Rails are frequenters of marshes and the margins of streams and bodies of water, where they assist in keeping the various forms among the animal life balanced. Fishes, frogs, snails, insects, and crustaceans are alike devoured by them. The Snipe, Sandpipers, Plovers, Phalaropes, Curlews, etc., are great destroyers of insects. Moving as many of them do in great flocks and spreading out over the meadows, pastures, and hillsides, as well as among the cultivated fields, they do a large amount of careful police service in arresting the culprits among insects. They even pry them out of burrows and crevices in the earth where these creatures lurk during daytime only to come forth after nightfall to destroy vegetation. The large flocks of Eskimo Curlews that formerly passed through eastern Nebraska did magnificent work during years when the Rocky Mountain Locust was with us, as did also the equally large flocks of Golden Plovers. The Bartramian Sandpiper even now is a great factor each summer in checking the increasing locusts on our prairies.