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Indispensable allies or overly-sentimentalized critters?: Debating the merits of insectivorous birds as defenders of crop, 1850-1914

ABSTRACT From the 1850s through 1914 – in Northern Hemisphere states from the USA and Canada to Western Europe and the Russian Empire – a long and occasionally acrimonious debate raged among agriculturalists, entomologists and conservationists about the relationship of wild birds to agriculture. Conceived initially as a relatively simple question – weighing the damage done by birds that ate crops against the benefits many species occasioned by also consuming insects harmful to agriculture – over time, the issue revealed itself to be complex and controversial. An examination of this debate sheds light on several important historical developments: the emergence of modern chemical approaches to agriculture; bird conservation; and the developing relationship between knowledge professionalization and social-political power, as cohorts of “rival experts” from agriculture, entomology and ornithology jostled for influence. Finally, it also produced methodologies and research agendas currently overlooked in studies of the emergence of the science of ecology.