212 
of 1757 birds to the square mile which may be supposed to seek, or at 
least not obviously to avoid, the companionship of man. 
WASTE AND FALLOw LANDS 
Under the heading of waste and fallow lands we have brought 
together a heterogeneous variety of situations which have in common 
only the negative character of a lack of growing crops, at least for the 
year, and the fact that they can not be classified under any of the other 
vegetation areas of our grouping. These wastes and fallows seem, how- 
ever, to make an appeal of their own to a more or less definite group 
of birds, or to many birds, perhaps, under certain conditions, for we 
find in them a marked inverse relation, such as we have called attention 
to in discussing other situations, between the acreage of this habitat in 
each section of the state and the birds found in it per square mile. The 
smaller the percentage of waste and fallow land to the general area 
the greater the density of its bird population, as is seen in the table 
following: 
Section Acres surveyed Birds per square mile 
Southern Illinois 479 708 
Northern Illinois 147 > 955 
Central Illinois 28 1236 
It is perhaps in the central part of the state, where this special kind 
of surface is smallest, that we shall find among the commonest species 
those which may be distinguished as birds of the waste lands, and these 
our MS table shows to be the crow-blackbird (247 to the square mile in 
that section), red-winged blackbird (202), quail (202), English sparrow 
(157), field sparrow (112) dickcissel (112), and Maryland yellow-throat 
(90). In northern Illinois, it is true, the English sparrow leads the list, 
and the bobolink stands next, the sparrow being, in fact, most abundant 
northward in nearly all situations, and the bobolink confined in Illinois 
to that part of the state by the limitations of its general range. 
Ii, on the other hand, we take the larger area and more numerous 
observations of southern Illinois as furnishing a better index to the 
true relations of birds and their environment, we shall find the hetero- 
geneous character of wastes and fallows (particularly evident in that 
section) reflected in the absence of any strongly dominant species or 
group of species, and the consequent large number of species which we 
must take into account to include any large majority of the whole num- 
ber of birds. Of the 61 species identified on 479 acres of our southern 
waste and fallow lands, 19 are needed to make only 72 per cent. of our 
total number of 804 birds from that situation. 
First among these more abundant species of southern Illinois stands 
the meadowlark, with 182 to the square mile for the southern section 
and 142 for the state at large, averages to be compared with 319 for 
meadows in southern Illinois and 194 for those of the whole state. 
1° ee~ oa 
