Book Description

Excerpt from A Determination of the Economic Status of the Western Meadowlark (Sturnella Neglecta) In California The investigation has consisted primarily of field investiga tion, experimentation, and stomach examination. A large part of the field work has been carried on at Lathrop, San Joaquin County, California, a place admirably suited for the work in hand. Duties on the agricultural and horticultural demonstra tion train, which toured the. State in 1911 and 1912 under the auspices of the Department of Agriculture of the University of California and the Southern Pacific Railway Company, have afiorded additional opportunity to study conditions from one end of the state to the other. Economic ornithology is a new science and has hardly pro gressed further than the stage of preliminary interest and study. As a result practically all of the work attempted thus far has been of the extensive rather than of the intensive sort, and has been made up largely of a study of the food of birds. In this investigation the attempt has been made' to improve on past methods and, by determining the food of birds taken in the same locality each month, or twice each month, to furnish reliable evidence as to their food throughout the whole year. A study of the bird in the field, its depredations, and its life-history, has also been made in order that all available evidence might be obtained. Considerable difficulty has been experienced in that there has been, and now is, a difference of Opinion as to the criteria to be used in the determination of the economic status of a bird. The ideas which have been advanced in the past, and even those of the present day, appear to be unsatisfactory, or at least nu trustworthy. It seemed, therefore, that a review of past methods, with the addition of such new ones as appeared to be valuable, might prove not only interesting but of considerable value to future workers in the field. A similar lack of information re garding methods of stomach examination has been evident. A detailed account of the method used in this investigation, there fore seems justified. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.