Blackbirds as Tobacco Hands

From the Kentucky Bureau of Agriculture, Labor and Statistics' Fifteenth Biennial Report--1902-1903:

Blackbirds as Tobacco Hands.

The Harrodsburg (Ky.) Herald is responsible for the following:  Mr. R. W. Anderson, of Shaker Bend, informed us of the great good done him by a flock of blackbirds some days ago.  He had employed two men to worm his tobacco, and while they were standing on the back porch receiving instructions from him, myriads of the birds came out of the cliffs and lighted in the tobacco and began cleaning it of worms.  Fearing that it would knock them out of two or three days' work, Mr. Anderson says one of them grabbed a shotgun and the other a rifle, and both started for the tobacco patch on a run to scare them away, but he stopped them and told them to let the birds alone and he would find something else for them to do.  In an hour the birds flew away, and an investigation showed that not a worm was left.  He put the men to work enlarging his tobacco barn.