xt7jh98zct60_26 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7jh98zct60/data/mets.xml https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7jh98zct60/data/2015ms086.dao.xml Bevins, Martha 0.05 Cubic Feet 55 items archival material 2015ms086 English University of Kentucky The physical rights to the materials in this collection are held by the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.  Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Martha Bevins letters to Tom McCarthy Radio broadcasting. Agriculture -- Kentucky. Birds Women air pilots. 1957 July 3 text 1957 July 3 2016 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7jh98zct60/data/2015ms086/Box_ms_42/Folder_1/Item_26/1957_7_3_Bevins_Cow_Birds_p1.pdf 1957 July 3 1957 1957 July 3 section false xt7jh98zct60_26 xt7jh98zct60 ' ,

Morning View Kentucky

3 July 1957
Sorry, Mr. McCarthy,
But I am not at all remorseful about the Gowbirds. I slew one
just yesterday with considerable contentment, and the satisfying
feeling that I had done my good deed for the day.
I think we fail to agree on the Cowbird question because of a
basic difference in our attitude toward birds. You are able to
view them with complete objectivity, whereas, to me, they are

- friends and neighbors. I am as impelled to assist young birds

in trouble as I would be to help neighbors' children if they
were being attacked by a dog or had lit themselves with matches.
I have never seen an English cuckoo, young or old, but that
pain-reaction business you read seems an incredibly wild tale.

. Apparently any very young, unfeathered bird will Jerk Spasmodically
to the touch of something strange, but I doubt that pain is
involved.

Yesterday the Carolina Wrens hatched in the nest atop the electric
soldering iron on the shelf in the tool house, and, when both
parents were absent, I touched them lightly with assorted

objects. They twitched and fidgeted uneasily, but showed no

signs of actual suffering. To the touch of my fingers, which

were warm, they responded not at all.

There would appear to be one fundamental difference in the
behavior of the young Cowbird, and the yuung Cuckoo. According

to What you read, the Cuckoo endeavors to shove everything out

of the nest within the first few days of his life, When he is

as yet unfeathered. The Cowbird, on the contrary, waits until he
is well feathered and his bill has hardened sufficiently to
inflict injury. Then, if the rightful proprietors of the nest have
not already starved, the young Cowbird, with great deliberation,
either ruthlessly hacks them up with his bill, or graSps them
firmly, usually by the neck, and hauls them about until he
succeeds in heaving them over the side of the nest.

 I
-2- .
I hays more than once been attracted by trouble noise to a
nest where a young Cobird has hatched along with smaller birds,
to find several of the little ones already bloodily dead, and
the Cowbird happily finishing off the rest. Coming upon such
a scene in the nest of a Bunting or Song Sparrow or yellow
Warbler, wouli probably don much to alter your tolerance of
the Cowbird and its evil ways.
This is a fearfully grim letter to be writing on such a lovely
day. When you spoke of_the military aircraft flying low above
your farm on several occasions recently, I could not but wonder
whether they were inspecting you as a possible Nike missle site.
Ever since they installed the Nikos around Washington and I
realized the approximate radius of that installation, I have been
chilled more than once by the thought that, on some future day,
they might Want the tree patch area. I am as patriotic as others,
but I Was a long time finding the tree patch, and, despite
that eminent domain stuff, the dogs and I would offer constderable
resistance before yielding one inch of it.
bincerely,
R Qon