Salt Lake Tribune | 1919-12-28 | Page 29 | Quail Survival due to Utah Aid

ii son DUE MM ID Food Provided Enables Thousands of Birds to Escape Es-cape Starvation. In a successful effort to save the lives of quail in Utah from the effects of tne unusually severe winter and.deep snow, some 20,000 or 25,000 of these birds have been fed by the state. With the lowering of the snow through melting and evaporation, evapora-tion, seeds are again appearing on the surface, and the birds are again to be left to their own resources, at least until another deep snow may come. J. C. Smith and R. H. Doran had charge of the feeding of about 5000 birds in Halt Pake county and about 2 00 if in Davis county, south of Farmington. They report re-port that the birds have come through the season of stress in good shape, and that undoubtedly tiie lives of many thousands thou-sands were saved by the action of the state. Sportsmen of Utah county were the first to appeal to R. H. Siddoway, state fish and game commissioner, and the fish and game committee of the Provo Commercial club asserted that if feeding were not carried on, the effects of years of state protection of these birds would be wiped out in a week or two. The method of feeding is to dig a trench in the snow, two feet wide and several feet long, and there to leave chick feed for the quail. There are several hundred of these feeding stations In Salt Lake, Weber, Davis, Wasatch, Utah and other counties. The quail are not slow to take advantage of them, either. In some cases it was necessary to drive the birds toward them the first time. Some of the birds soon became relatively tame, and it was possible tn take pictures of them without any special preparations. Mr. Doran and Mr. Smith repori. that the cold weather possibly cost tho lives of a few of the quail, for the reason that they were rendered slow to move and torpid by the cold weather, and so fell prey to hawks or other larger birds. They were quick enough in their movements yesterday, however, and well able to take their chances with the other wild denizens deni-zens of this and neighboring count ica.