THE OSPREY. 



An Illustrated Monthly Magazine Devoted Exclusively to the Interests of 



ORNITHOLOGY. 



Vol.. 1. No. 4. 



GALESBURG, ILL., DECEMBER, 1896. 



$1.00 A Year. 



On the Wing. 



BY MARY L. RANN. 



" Sweet summer's dead : O, ye south steering- swallows, 

 Heith the daj^ come then for saying- g-ood-bye? 



Ply then ye roving- crew. 



What ! Will no one of you 



Stay to have winter throug-h? 

 Neither would I. 



Sweet was the song, sing-er, just as you sang- it once. 

 Smiles to the lips \'ou broug-ht, tears to the eye. 



Sing'-, sing- ag-ain we sighed, 



Ivig-htly you turned aside. 



Wise little witch, I cried. 

 Neither would I." 



THE pensive sadness of Autumn is 

 intensified to bird lovers when we 

 beg-in to miss the sig^ht of our favo- 

 rite birds whose voices have been stilled 

 by the advancing- season. The time of 

 their stay with us is so short, and the 

 interval of their return so long-, that we 

 no more than g-et a taste of g-ood thing-s 

 than the revel is done. We refuse to 

 accept the inevitable till we awake some 

 day to hear the last check-check of the 

 Brown Thrasher, or see a Catbird or a 

 Wren, skulking- about as if ashamed of 

 not having- made off before. And how 

 different the coming- from the g-oing. 

 Then, in song- and merry-making- they 

 fill our trees and fields, coming- about our 

 doors, peering- into our windows, building- 

 and raising- their young- in a confiding- 

 nearness. Now like the veriest vag-a- 

 bonds they hide in secret places, or g-ather 

 in numbers and steal off in the nig-ht. No 

 amount of vi^ilence can fix the time to a 

 certainty, when the ear shall hearken and 

 a g-reat stillness shall reig-n. These 

 movements are determined by intuitions 

 of their own. We say climatic chang-es, 

 food demands and many another reeison 

 is g-iven for early bird mig-ration, but the 

 fact remains that many of our birds g-o 

 before a frost has touched the fields, and 



when food is much more plentiful than 

 when they come. And they do not g-o to 

 fresher fields than they leave, for the 

 South has had her season of charm, and 

 thoug-h the rice fields may attract the 

 Bobolinks, only those birds that desire 

 uniform warmth and ever spring-ing- ver- 

 dure, would seem to be benefitted by so 

 early a chang-e. 



Of the American Warblers not more 

 than a half dozen varieties nest 

 with us, and their stay doth not much 

 exceed the necessities of rearing- their 

 young-. The Swifts g-o from the first to 

 the tenth of Aug-ust, but most Swallows 

 remain a little long-er. King-birds and 

 many water birds move on early, and in 

 neither case can it be said that cold or 

 lack of food has driven them away. Mead- 

 owlarks forsake their grounds and 

 gather in flocks for leave taking-, when 

 g-rasshoppers, millers and other insects 

 are in abundance, and as Professor Beal 

 tells us the number of g-rasshoppers eaten 

 by the Meadowlark is so enormous that 

 it ranks among- our most efficient birds as 

 a g-rasshopper destroyer, it would puzzle 

 a Chinese to know what he goes for. 



Since the beg-inning- of scientific obser- 

 vations and collection of information 

 from the various lig-ht-house stations and 



