280 Proceedings of Indiana Academy of Science. 
THE BIRDS OF THE SAND DUNES OF NORTHWESTERN INDIANA. 
C. W. G. E1rric, Oak Park, Illinois. 
The region covered by this list is not the entire area of sand dunes 
in Lake and Porter counties, but is the “Dunes” in the narrower sense, 
i.e., the strip of dune country immediately adjoining the south end of 
Lake Michigan to a width of from one to two miles, extending from 
Gary to Michigan City, a distance of about twenty-five miles. This is 
an immensely interesting region to nature lovers and students of various 
branches of natural history or science. It is interesting to the physiog- 
rapher, geologist and geographer, as here may be seen the destructive 
as well as the constructive forces of nature actually at work. It is a 
perfect Eldorado to the zoologist, especially those devoted to the study 
of ornithology and entomology, as well as the botanist. And in few 
other regions can studies in ecology be carried on as well as here. All 
of this needs no further elucidation in this connection. Most phases of 
it have been written upon, as, e.g., by Prof. W. S. Blatchley and Mr. 
A. W. Butler in the twenty-second annual report of the Indiana Depart- 
ment of Geology and Natural Resources for 1897; by Dr. H. C. Cowles, 
in his “Plant Societies of Chicago and Vicinity”; by R. D. Salisbury, 
in “The Geography of Chicago and Its Environs”; by V. E. Shelford, 
in his “Animal Communities’; and others. There is also a well-written 
account of the Dunes by Mr. A. F. Knotts of Gary in the Indiana geo- 
logical report for 1916. Lately, artistically gotten-up books on the 
Dunes are beginning to appear, as “The Sand Dunes of Indiana,” by 
E. S. Bailey; “The Dune Country,” by E. H. Reed, and others. 
Since the publication of Mr. Butler’s “Birds of Indiana” in the 1897 
report, which is one of the best if not the best state list of birds known 
to the writer, little has been published on the avifauna of the Dunes. 
Some short notes have been published on certain rare species here by 
Mr. H. L. Stoddard, of the Harris Public School Extension of Field 
Museum, who has spent much time in the Dunes in connection with his 
work. The notes are to be found in the “Auk,” Vols. 33 and 34. 
The writer’s idea in compiling this list is not so much to quote old 
records, but to give the present status of the avifauna of this section. 
He has spent many days in the Dunes, in every month of the year, and 
has also accumulated material from the observations of members of the 
Chicago Ornithological Society, many of whom also go to the Dunes as 
often as they can. As an example of what may be seen here, at a time 
