20 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 



many friends that I have made along its pleasant way. It is 

 rarely used, and at its beginning in the town of Highland 

 Park it is but little more than a tree-shadowed lane. The 

 orioles build in the swaying elm-boughs that droop above 

 the fences, and many robins place their mud houses in the 

 maples along the beginning of the way. 



A tragedy is perhaps not an auspicious thing with which 

 to begin a day's outing. The bird-student, however, must 

 harden himself to endure the sight of the tragic, or else it were 

 better to put the field-glass in its case and forego the study. 

 There is perhaps something of the savage still left in us, and 

 I am free to confess that tragedies are not altogether uninter- 

 esting things. I am likewise free to confess that I have a 

 sort of a "sneaking admiration" for the hawk family. They 

 are freebooters and murderers, but there is something in the 

 lives of these birds that is typical of the wildness of the woods 

 and the freedom of the fields. There is a charm about their 

 very boldness, and that landscape lacks something which does 

 not have occasionally the living interest which is added by a 

 hawk beating the covers to startle its cowering quarry into 

 flight. 



One May morning, before the sun was showing above the 

 bluff, I started westward along this favorite Skokie road. 

 Just beyond the elms and the maples at the road's beginning 

 lie some open cultivated fields with a barn and outbuildings 

 at their western border. One of the great barns was the 

 home of scores of domestic pigeons, which fed the greater 

 part of the day in the fields. I afterward learned that the 

 birds played havoc with the newly planted seeds. A detached 

 flock of the pigeons was foraging in the first field not more 

 than twenty yards from the fence. I stood leaning on the 



