32 Birds of Lakeside and Prairie 



of their red-robed lords. A man who was at work clearing 

 land back of the cardinals' retreat said that the redbirds were 

 more plentiful than ever. Here was some recompense for days 

 spent in stuffy Chicago justice shops in the effort to secure 

 the punishment of receivers of stolen goods in the shape of 

 trapped and caged cardinals. 



On our right was a great field whose soil was pierced with 

 standing stalks of withered corn. One of the cardinals left 

 his undergrowth retreat, and crossing our path lighted on one 

 of the stalks about midway of its height. An ear of corn that 

 the gleaners had overlooked was still clinging to the stem. 

 The cardinal at once began the process of husking and shell- 

 ing. With his powerful beak he pulled a strip of the husk 

 outward and downward, and then he attacked the disclosed 

 kernels. The sun struck the bird full and fair. His plumage 

 was like fire, and a brilliant picture it made against the con- 

 trasting brown of the corn. The cardinal shelled at least a 

 dozen kernels and dropped them one by one to the ground. 

 Then he took to the ground himself and began the work of 

 cracking the provender; at least I think he cracked it. He 

 went through a process that was remarkably like chewing, but 

 even a strong field-glass did not enable me to determine posi- 

 tively whether or not he swallowed the kernels whole. In a 

 few minutes he left his feeding-place and went back to his 

 friends in the underbrush. I went down into the field and 

 examined his breakfast-table, but he had cleared it so thor- 

 oughly that not a crumb remained. 



It was hard to leave the whistling redbirds behind, but 

 there were other feathered friends and feathered strangers to 

 be looked for, and forsooth, all the cardinals of southern 

 Indiana are not confined to one bit of underbrush. We left 



