Errric—A PARADISE FOR LONGSPURS. 49 
A PARADISE FOR LONGSPURS: 
(Notes on the Birds of Addison, Illinois.) 
BY G. ELFRIG. 
First, a few words on the topography of this section. Ad- 
dison is a small village, twenty miles west of Chicago, in Du 
Page County, hence it is in the prairies. which, however, at 
this point, reach their greatest altitude for this section of the 
state, namely, 350 feet. It is a rather prosaic, uninteresting re- 
gion, being a purely agricultural district, with nothing but 
fields as far as one can see. There are next to no trees 
not even along ditches and creeks, excepting a few tall cot- 
tonwoods surrounding the farm-yards, and a rather large 
wood a half mile northeast of my residence. All around us 
there is more woodland to be seen, as e.g. at Glen Ellyn, about 
four miles from here, the home of our secretary, Mr, B. T. 
Gault, which is a very pretty, park-like place. The Addison 
woods is two miles long by one mile wide, and is mainly com- 
posed of Burr, Scarlet, Red, and White Oaks, Hickory, Elm, 
Ash, and Hazel, and several species of primus bushes. 
In the open parts as well as in the woods nearly every de- 
pression is a small swamp, or even pond. Those in the woods 
are grown over with Water Hemlock (Cicuta maculata) and 
Button bush (Cephaianthus occidentalis), the latter giving 
them a somewhat southern appearance. Here the Green Her- 
ons build, Yellow-throats are plentiful, and I even found a 
female Prothonotary Warbler at the edge of one of them, a 
rarity for Du Page County. The swamps in the open are 
overgrown with cattails, sparganum, scirpus, ete., and are 
difficult to negotiate, owing to the soft bottom, and to the 
hummocks and holes made by the cows, which are let in in 
the fall and late summer, when there is little if any water in 
these places. The last summer (1910) being exceptionally 
dry here, all swamps and ponds were dry, so that in one at 
least the Pied-billed Grebes, which had been there, had to al- 
low one a good look at them, as the water was too shallow for 
diving, and later disappeared entirely. One that I cornered 
