a a 
209 
the fourteenth place of this series, with an average of only 46 to the 
mile, and no more abundant than the bluebird or the cardinal. 
The yearly ratios of these woodland birds (2187 to the mile in 
1909 and 1441 in 1907) confirm our general conclusion that birds were 
much the more numerous in Illinois in 1909. 
Birps IN ORCHARDS 
We have already reported on the orchard birds of a southern IIli- 
nois summer, with some reference to other parts of the state, in a 
paper* in which we made special use of data obtained in August and 
September of 1908 by a trip through a commercial orchard district of 
that section; and we have here to report more fully on the product of 
a survey of 117.69 acres of farm orchards only, of which 71 per cent. 
was in southern, 18 per cent. in central, and 11 per cent. in northern 
Illinois. 
In these orchard belts, 825 birds were identified, equivalent to 4026 
to the square mile. The English sparrow, however, made up more than 
half this number, leaving 1987 native birds to the square mile. Next 
to the sparrow, the more abundant species were the mourning dove 
(256 to the mile), quail (212), field sparrow (190), crow-blackbird 
(158), robin (152), brown thrasher (125), orchard oriole (120), blue 
jay (114), catbird (103), mockingbird (77), and flicker (76). The 
birds of these twelve species made up 80.4 per cent. of the aggregate 
number belonging to the 52 species found in these farm orchards. It 
will be seen from the table following that, as in other vegetation areas, 
the English sparrow decreased rapidly in numbers from north to south, 
and that both it and the native birds were much more numerous in 1909 
than in 1907 (1255 native birds to the square mile in 1907 and 1746 in 
1909) ; and this notwithstanding the fact that there were evidently no 
flocks of gregarious birds to confuse the record in the orchards visited. 
Although the orchard is, like the open woodland, essentially a field 
of closely set trees with a ground cover more or less deep and dense 
according to its treatment, and might hence be supposed to attract the 
same species of birds in something like the same average number, it 
is really so different from a forest in the relatively small variety of 
foods and situations which it offers, and especially in its human environ- 
ment, that the two make a widely different appeal to birds. In the 
comparatively simple orchard, a smaller number of species dominate, 
13 out of 52 native species comprising 70 per cent. of the whole number ; 
while in the complex forest 20 out of 49 must be taken to make up 
this 70 per cent. Moreover, a comparison of the corresponding species 
lists illustrates the wide difference of the two environments, as is shown 
in the table on page 211. In the first column are the numbers per square 
mile of birds found in farm orchards, and in the sceond are the numbers 
* The Orchard Birds of an Illinois Summer, by crepoee A. Forbes and Alfred 
O. Gross. Bul. Nat, Hist. Survey, Vol. XIV, Art. 1, June, 1921. 
