FACTS ABOUT HAWKS -By JACK MINER, Kingsville, Ontario, Canada 
Mr. Editor: For release at once. 
As a boy living in the open 365 days in the year and-please let me go back
still further---as a child down 
in Ohio, hanging on to mother's hand, strolling through a little jungle near
our humble buckeye home, visiting 
as high as nine Brown Thrashers' occupied nests in practically that many
minutes, and then both Spring and Fall 
back in the Seventies, watching the passenger pigeons, not by the thousands,
but by the clouds; then in the first 
year of my teens we moved here to the sunny side of Canada where the woods
and the few cleared fields were 
simply all aglow with birds. I am absolutely sure I have seen as high as
twenty-five Scarlet Tanagers, I called 
them red birds, in sight at once and when the red bird storm came, as we
called it, along about the 20th of May, 
I wish every naturalist of today could have followed me a few hours in the
woods and he would have seen more 
warblers in an hour than I can find in a week right now, and the long poverty
hours of no boy's life could be 
made shorter and richer than all these God-given cretaures did mine. In fact
I forgot all about my appearance- 
long red hair and freckles-and every Sunday in the summer would find me in
my little hiding places allowing 
these creatures to come closer to me than I could get to them, but of course
I did not know the scientific and 
Latin name for them. For illustration, I called the Goshawk and Cooper's
Hawks "Bullet Hawks." The Sharp 
Shinned Hawk my brothers and I called the "Quail Hawk," and the
NutHatch I called the "Tree Creeper," 
and the Wood Thrush I called the "Brown Linent." Yes, I knew them
and their habits but not their college- 
given names, and I am persuaded that today there are many with their university
degrees, who know their names 
but not their habits. 
Let me give you the natural methods of our wickedest hawks' hunting system
in their natural home, nai-nd 17, 
the virgin forest. He darts through the woods at a height of about six or
eight feet from the ground, then noise- 
lessly he shoots up at about a one o'clock angle where he will perch on a
limb as motionless as a statue about 
fifty feet from the ground, then in about five or ten minutes he will come
darting down at a five o'clock angl' 
creating speed and making no more noise than a dart, and if any bird moves
in front of him he is on it like light- 
ning. When in the open field he travels high and I have seen a Goshawk come
down out of the air like a 
miniature aeroplane, and the Bobolinks and Meadow Larks dart and hide in
the tall grass, and so swift is this 
hawk coming from this elevated position I have seen him pick an adult forked-tail
Barn Swallow right out o4 
the air and go on. As for game birds here in Canada at that time, very true,
there were no Mourning D-"-e, 
worthy of mention, but I have seen over one hundred and fifty Bob-White Quail
fly to the surrounding woods -,r 
of one settler's partly cleared farm, and Ruffed Grouse, they were in the
woods by the hundreds; in fact I a," 
absolutely certain that taking all classes of song, insectivorous and game
birds into consideration, there wer- 
ninety-five per cent. more than there are today. Of course, this includes
the Passenger pigeons that were here in 
the early Seventies, but as far as the hawks and owls are concerned, according
to my observations, they are as 
plentiful now as they ever were, and before any of you contradict this statement
let me ask you what has 
decreased them? Have the hunters gone out to kill them? No, but we have gone
out by the millions, and 
combined our force with them and shot the game birds right and left. I do
not know when the Passenger 
pigeon started dying but in 1878 I do know they were dying by the hundreds
and in 1885 they were practically 
extinct. 
The great complaint about killing the hawk is, you are "Interfering
with nature," or "Upsetting nature's 
balance," as they killed the weak and the delicate one, which I firmly
believe they did, and the great Provider 
put them here for that purpose. And now with the ninety-five per cent. of
their food birds gone, which 
includes the Passenger pigeons, the hawks are left here hungry, and the only
way to restore nature, or bring 
nature back to her own, is to reduce them to the same extent that other bird
life has been reduced; for rernem- 
her, while a hawk will take a weak, delicate bird first, he can and does
catch any he wants to, all except the 
larger variety of hawks, which include the Red-Tail, Red-Shoulder and Broad-Winged
Hawks. Personally, I do 
not shoot these big, clumsy varieties, for while they will take rabbits and
a few domestic fowl and so on, that 
does not bother me so much, but to find the feathers of our cheerful Cardinals
and dozens of places where Mourn- 
ing Doves have been killed and eaten by such varieties as Cooper's, Sharp
Shinned and Marsh Hawks, just 
says to me, Jack Miner you are not humane and do not love and know the value
of our song and insectivorous 
birds if you will stand for it. Readers, one Cardinal singing good cheer
near my home brings me more enjoy- 
ment than to see a hundred hawks and hear the terrorized cries of other valuable
birds getting away from them. 
As far as interfering with nature is concerned the same may be said of the
sheep dog. Are you going to 
allow him to continue unchecked in your community or are you going to control
him? 
The same can be said of the wolves in Ontario, that have been allowed to
multiply and have decreased our 
deer alarmingly the last twenty years and will continue to do so until they
are controlled by man. 
The same could apply to our field mice or rabbits in our young orchards.
If man goes and kills them, 
you, according to some men's arguments would be interfering with nature.
I say this is nonsense, go and kill 
them and save your orchard that it may bear fruit for the rising generations.

The same argument, re interfering with nature, applies when you kill the
typhoid fly. God created it, 
but he created man to control it. 
So I say, as far as this argument is concerned, it is up to men to control
the hawks. Why bless your 
life, He has even given us power to control Niagara Falls. 
It is true the Sparrow Hawk's chief living in the Fall of the year is crickets
and grasshoppers and I might 
say he is a good little mouse catcher, but years ago when I raised pheasants
and quail in captivity, the first two 
or three weeks of these baby game birds' life, the Sparrow Hawk was one of
my worst enemies. In fact one 
Sparrow Hawk carried away ten little baby pheasants in three hours. 
Yes, a great deal is said about the mouse-destroying ability of the hawks
and owls and, in reply to this, 
the little weasel is the biggest mouse destroyer we have in America, yet
I knew one weasel to kill and carry 
away thirty-three baby pheasants in one night and pile them up under mullein
leaves, etc. Next to the weasel 
there is nothing to equal the house cat, for both the weasel and the house
cat are natural mouse killers, but the 
quicker they are buried side by side the better for the song, insectivorous
and game birds; but remember, the 
hawks are natural bird killers.