ther species
generally termed game birds. They deposit only three or four eggs, and
hatch only one brood yearly. Nor are they in any wise immune from the
great mortality known to prevail among the smaller birds. Their eggs and
young are constantly preyed upon during the breeding season by crows,
gulls, and jaegers, and the far northern country to which so many of
them resort to nest is subject to sudden cold storms, which kill many of
the young. In the more temperate climate of the United States small
birds, in general, do not bring up more than one young bird for every
two eggs laid. Sometimes the proportion of loss is much greater, actual
count revealing a destruction of 70 to 80 per cent of nests and eggs.
Shorebirds, with sets of three or four eggs, probably do not on the
average rear more than two young for each breeding pair.

It is not surprising, therefore, that birds of this family, with their
limited powers of reproduction, melt away under the relentless warfare
waged upon them. Until recent years shorebirds have had almost no
protection. Thus, the species most in need of stringent protection have
really had the least. No useful birds which lay only three or four eggs
should be retained on the list of game birds. The shorebirds should be
relieved from persecution, and if we desire to save from extermination a
majority of the species, action must be prompt.

The protection of shorebirds need not be based solely on esthetic or
sentimental grounds, for few groups of birds more thoroughly deserve
protection from an economic standpoint. Shorebirds perform an important
service by their inroads upon mosquitoes, some of which play so
conspicuous a part in the dissemination of diseases. Thus, nine species
are known to feed upon mosquitoes, and hundreds of the larvae or
"wigglers" were found in several stomachs. Fifty-three per cent of the
food of twenty-eight northern phalaropes from one locality consisted of
mosquito larvae. The insects eaten include the salt-marsh mosquito
(_Aedes sollicitans_), for the suppression of which the State of New
Jersey has gone to great expense. The nine species of shorebirds known
to eat mosquitoes are:

Northern phalarope (_Lobipes lobatus_).
Semipalmated sandpiper (_Ereunetes pusillus_).
Wilson phalarope (_Steganopus tricolor_).
Stilt sandpiper (_Micropalama himantopus_).
Killdeer (_Oxyechus vociferus_).
Pectoral sandpiper (_Pisobia maculata_).
Semipalmated plover (_Aegialitis sem