30 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 



doubt if there be many places on earth better adapted to bird 

 life and better loved by the birds than this southern Indiana 

 country. 



With a companion who was willing to become an enthusi- 

 ast, I left the hotel on the morning following my arrival, just 

 as the sun was touching the top of a chain of sugar-loaf hills 

 to the east. Although we were nearly three hundred miles 

 south of the shore of Lake Michigan, we were not quite near 

 enough to Dixie to have left behind us the last trace of win- 

 ter. A light cloak of snow clothed the hilltops, and upon 

 the lawn that stretched away from the hotel steps, white 

 patches showed here and there. At the edge of one of 

 these snowy spots a male robin, with the "brighter crimson" 

 of the springtime on his breast, was pulling a reluctant worm 

 from the sod. He was especially welcome to his discoverers, 

 for he was their first robin of the season. Before we had 

 crossed the bridge which spans the little river, we passed a 

 score of robin brothers and sisters, all industriously and suc- 

 cessfully "digging for bait." We startled some of the birds 

 from their feeding-places, and thereat they made straight for 

 the maples, where their breasts 'added another bit of red to 

 the budding trees. They did not seem to resent our discour- 

 tesy, but in the joy coming from full stomachs and a glori- 

 ous morning, they told us in chorus to "cheer up." 



My heart was set on redbirds. I had never been so placed 

 that I could form a close acquaintance with these gold- 

 tongued creatures. I had seen the cardinal grosbeak — that 

 is the redbird's other name — only on rare occasions. One 

 year a pair of the birds visited Graceland cemetery in the city 

 of Chicago. They were accidental visitors, and my com- 

 panionship with them was limited to the space of thirty min- 



