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 semipalmata). 
Baird sandpiper (Pisobia bairdi). 
Least sandpiper (Pisobia minutilla).

Cattle and other live stock also are seriously molested by mosquitoes as well as by another set of pests, the horse-flies.  Adults and larvae of these flies have been found in the stomachs of the dowitcher, the pectoral sandpiper, the hudsonian godwit, and the killdeer.  Two species of shorebirds, the killdeer and upland plover, still further befriend cattle by devouring the North American fever tick.

Among other fly larvae consumed are those of the crane flies (leather-jackets) devoured by the following species: 

Northern phalarope (Lobipes lobatus). 
Pectoral sandpiper (Pisobia maculata). 
Wilson phalarope (Steganopus tricolor). 
Baird sandpiper (Pisobia bairdi). 
Woodcock (Philohela minor). 
Upland plover (Bartramia longicauda). 
Jacksnipe (Gallinago delicata). 
Killdeer (Oxyechus vociferus).