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identifier/filename
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371-00050
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title
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Letter, Myron H. Swenk to C. W. Pugsley, 1918, Oct. 1
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description
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Typewritten letter, 3 pages, from Myron H. Swenk to C.W. Pugsley, "I am in receipt of your letter of September…"
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Transcription
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October 1, 1915 Prof. C. W. Pugsley, Editor, The Nebraska Farmer, City. My dear Pugsley: I am in receipt of your letter of September 26 advising me that some farmers in western Nebraska are asking if it would be possible to create sufficient sentiment favoring the protection of prairie chickens and quail that the Legislature would pass laws at the next session to prohibit the further killing of these birds for sport or food. You ask me to write you my views on this matter at some length, and this I will be very glad to do. First, as to the quail or bob-white. Fortunately, the existing Nebraska law allows no open season on these birds, but the season has been closed and again re-opened in this state so frequently that there is no certainty as to how long this protection will continue without a persistently active sentiment in its favor. To illustrate, the Legislature of 1901 set the open season for quail as November 1 to December 1, but protected it until November 1, 1903; the Legislature of 1903 allowed this protected period to lapse and gave an open season for the month of November; the Legislature of 1905 reduced the open season to November 15 to December 1, and this was continued by the Legislature of 1907; the Legislature of 1909 again closed the open season and gave the birds full protection; the Legislature of 1911 gave an open season of two weeks in November (November 1 to 16), and this was continued by the Legislatures of 1913 and 1915; finally, the last Legislature again closed the open season, and at the preent time the quail is under the protection of the law the year around. In view of the above, however, I am not surprised that your correspondents believed that an open season on quail existed. I am strongly of the belief that the present protection on the quail or bob-white should never be removed, for no more valuable bird, from an economic standpoint is to be found in the state. This bird eats insects the year around, and they form over 15% of its entire food. During the summer months over one-third of the food of the quail is insects, most of them of notoriously injurious kinds. For instance, during a chinch outbreak in Nebraska a number of years ago we found the quails feeding on this unsavory insect, which most other birds avoided, to a remarkable extent, and one quail stomach examined contained more than 500 of these bugs, representing a single meal. Another injurious insect which very few birds will eat is the common Colorado potato beetle, yet from 75 of over 100 of these insects have been found repeatedly in the distended crop of a quail, and it is a well known fact that where these birds have nested about potato fields that spraying has rarely been necessary. During the
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date
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10/1/1918
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source/RG#/MS#
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MS 0371
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isPartOf/Collection
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Nebraska Ornithologists' Union (NOU), Records
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rights
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For copyright information, please contact the repository.
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publisher
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Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
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language
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English
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