Orleans Independent Standard, July 28, 1868. The idea that birds were considered sacred in Japan was repeated in U.S. newspapers throughout the 19th century.

In its June 1857 edition, the Boston-based agricultural monthly New England Farmer ran an article titled “Spare the Birds.” It began:

Spring is at hand, and with its pleasures will come the daily nuisance to those who dwell amid rural scenes, of hearing the ‘soft notes of the shot-gun.’ Everyone who has paid attention to the matter, knows that even crows and blackbirds are productive of more good than harm, and that the vast increase of late years of destructive insects, is owing almost entirely to the wanton destruction of birds which are not even legitimate game. (p. 291)

The “spare the birds” article was a seasonal staple of nineteenth-century American periodicals, particularly agricultural journals, which had, since their inception in the 1820s as a publication genre, engaged in a crusade against the needless shooting of birds (Oehlkers 2015). Birds, even those considered pests, were the “farmer’s best friend,” controlling insects that would otherwise ruin crops. To shoot insectivorous birds for sport was not only cruel—it also damaged the agricultural economy. The Audubon movement at the end of the century, which would go on to ensure nationwide legislative protection for non-game birds, drew energy and arguments from decades of these “spare the birds”-style essays.