Destruction by Elements and Disease 17 



fail to find enough to support life and these of 

 course starve to death. 



We cannot control the elements, but we can at 

 times, by offerings of food and shelter help the 

 birds in their battle against the cold and the 

 storms, and this matter will be taken up in detail 

 in a later chapter. 



THE DESTRUCTION OF BIRDS BY DISEASE 



That wild birds sometimes become ill is a 

 fact not very generally thought of perhaps, and 

 comparatively few of us have ever seen a sick 

 bird in its native haunts. Yet birds are some- 

 times attacked by epidemics which work as 

 much destruction among them as cholera or 

 the bubonic plague works among human beings. 

 Such an epidemic has recently been playing 

 havoc with the waterfowl and marsh birds of 

 Utah. In a letter to the writer, Mr. Fred. W. 

 Chambers, State Commissioner of Fish and 

 Game, says: 



"Since 19 10 we have had an epidemic among 

 the marsh birds of Utah, especially the ducks, 

 though the snipe family has suffered consider- 

 ably. We collected and buried in quicklime 

 over a million birds in the year 1910, and each 

 year thereafter until the present time, not in- 



