ILLINOIS AUDUBON SOCIETY 39 



black-and-white checkered bird, wearing his wee red cap on the back of 

 his head. His sharp eye and auger-like bill make him a useful citizen, as 

 no injurious grub escapes his vigilance. While he is at work below, chick- 

 adee swings on a trapeze above his head, and spears quite as many with his 

 needle-like bill. 



Their first aids are the nuthatches and brown creepers. The former 

 is a notorious acrobat, coming down a tree head first, without losing his 

 balance, a feat no other feathered being can do. We have two varieties 

 here, the white-breasted and the red-breasted. Both have blue-gray backs, 

 with black heads, but the latter is the tinier and daintier of the two, and has 

 a clear tawny breast, with the shortest of tails to balance him. The brown 

 creeper, who can scarcely be distinguished from the bark of the tree, 

 creeps spirally around the trunk, and when he reaches the top, flies down 

 to the bottom of the next tree and begins all over again. Such a lone- 

 some little fellow as he is — never playing tag like the chickadees or running 

 races like the nuthatches. However, he fills a quiet little niche, doing his 

 share in ridding the trees of their destroyers. 



Genevieve Zimmer, Rock Island. 



Book and Magazine Notes 



TWELVE months with the birds and poets 



This book embodies the observations of one who has lived much afield 

 and who reports the sights and sounds of our own hedge rows and thickets. 

 Northern Illinois and the sand dunes of Indiana come into the story and 

 all this seems appropriate when one learns that the author is President of 

 the Maywood Bird Club and a member of the Illinois Audubon Society. 

 To an intimate knowledge of out-of-doors, the author adds a fondness 

 for good books, a discriminating fondness for poetry and a wide acquaint- 

 ance with it. Quotations from poets of the past and of our own day appear 

 so naturally in the narrative of the months that it is only as one is well 

 through the book that one realizes what a wealth of poetic material is 

 available, and appreciates the wide acquaintance with poetry involved in 

 bringing together in this w r ay so many fine selections. The author chooses 

 April as the first month of the bird year and shows that from month to 

 month how rich in observation or in the materials for reflection every vary- 

 ing phase of the passing seasons may be. Even when winter strips the 

 landscape and leaves only the occasional birds that hover about feeding 

 shelves, the fewness of observations to record gives opportunity to review 

 events when actors crowded every stage. There is an introduction by 

 Jean Stratton Porter which adds to the attractiveness of the book. The 

 illustrations are by Ralph Fletcher Seymour and the book comes from the 

 Alderbrook Press. 



BIRD-LORE 



Bird-Lore for November-December, 1917, has the usual number of 

 interesting general articles with excellent illustrations, together with notes 

 from field and study, book new^s, etc. The school department, edited by 

 Mrs. Alice Hall Walter, includes among other valuable material a bird 

 masque for children by Ella Florence Padon w r hich the author has success- 

 fully staged at Fort Smith, Arkansas. The announcement is made that 



